The Ngöbe people issued an urgent appeal for solidarity from the international community yesterday after Panama police forces launched a violent attack on protesters, killing at least one person and injuring many more. Ngöbe protesters have blockaded the Pan-American highway since last Monday in opposition to a proposed mining law that would open their traditional lands to mining and hydroelectric development.
In Momostenango, a small town in the highland region of Guatemala, the Quiche Mayan community did not enter the 2012 year dreading doomsday predictions. Instead, they’re gearing up for their biggest party yet.
In December, Brazil’s Indian Agency (Fundação Nacional do Índio) approved delimitation of the 146,000 hectare Wedezé Indigenous Reserve in the state of Mato Grosso. Occupied by the Xavante people since the mid-1800s, the area was illegally sold to private interests in the 1950s and to accommodate its new owners the Indigenous residents were resettled elsewhere in the 1970s. The reserve includes the site of the historical village São Domingos, where Cultural Survival’s founder David Maybury-Lewis did ethnographic research in the 1950s.
In December, Brazil’s Indian Agency (Fundação Nacional do Índio) approved delimitation of the 146,000 hectare Wedezé Indigenous Reserve in the state of Mato Grosso. Occupied by the Xavante people since the mid-1800s, the area was illegally sold to private interests in the 1950s and to accommodate its new owners the Indigenous residents were resettled elsewhere in the 1970s. The reserve includes the site of the historical village São Domingos, where Cultural Survival’s founder David Maybury-Lewis did ethnographic research in the 1950s.
On January 19, Minister for Environment in the O’Neil-Namah Government, Hon Thompson Haroquave, carried through on his promise to the people of Papua New Guinea and ensured that Parliament repealed amendments to the Environment Act that had been made in favor of the Chinese mining company, MCC.
Please take another step today in the campaign to protect the sacred Ukok Plateau from the construction of a damaging gas pipeline.
Noe Navarro is from an Indigenous Maya Mam community in the north-western part of Guatemala, called San Miguel Ixtahuacan, San Marcos. He has been involved in social activism over the past ten years, helping to organize the community's struggle against the infamous Marlin gold mine, which has been operating in San Miguel since 2005, and has been environmentally as well as socially damaging for his community.
In a protest to defend the natural resources of Bangladesh on December 29th, more than 35 people were left injured after police confronted the activists with batons and tear gas. The demonstration aimed to pressure the Bangladesh Ministry of Power and Energy to accept a set of seven demands, including the cancellation of concessions to build the Phulbari open-pit coal mine as well the eviction of GCM Resources, the London-based mining company currently financing the Phulbari project.
Gazprom, the major financer for Russia’s natural gas pipeline that would bisect the Ukok Plateau en route to China, appears to have dropped the project for 2012.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
