Arise! Various ways in which indigenous people are fighting back

New Internationalist, April, 2008

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Not everyone sees the logic of withdrawal from treaties. Rodney Bordeaux, president of the neighbouring Rosebud reservation, says: 'Our grandfathers fought and died for these treaties ... Without these treaties, the United States Congress and the multinational corporations that control it will attempt to steal the remaining treaty lands and sovereignty we have left.'

But 48-year-old Oglala resident Arlette Loudhawk is just grateful that someone is doing something. She is angry that the conditions her children are growing up in are so bleak--the youth suicide rate of Native Americans is high and nearly a third of teenagers on the Pine Ridge Reservation don't finish high school. The gutting of Indian Health Services means that the infant mortality rate is the highest on the continent; and that she herself is dying of a cancer that could have been cured.

For a fuller version of Shane Bauer's story, see www.newint.org/issue410/features/special/2008/04/01/lakota/

Adivasis vs Big Al

Good news is in short supply for India's thousands of adivasi ('tribal') people--especially during these times of economic boom. But tribal activists saw some reward for their efforts when the Canadian transnational Alcan pulled out of a project to create a vast aluminium smelter plant at Kashipur in the northern state of Orissa. The struggle against the Utkal project, in which Indian company Hidalco has a 55 per cent share, has rumbled on for some time. Eight years ago police opened fire on protesters opposed to the mine and smelter, killing three. One of the partners at that time, Norsk Hydro of Norway, immediately pulled out and sold its share to Alcan. The Canadian company had since been under pressure to withdraw as well.

Mukta Jhodia, a tribal woman leader who recently won an award for Women Fighting Corporate Crime, has been a key source of inspiration. A fiery speaker, she has tirelessly travelled to tribal villages, often by bicycle, informing them about plans to exploit bheeta mati--their motherland. 'The Government has made its intentions of submitting to corporate-led globalization extremely clear. The coming years will see some of the world's most powerful corporations pitted against some of the most marginalized people--adivasis, dalits and peasants--with the police playing hitman for the investors,' she says. Meanwhile, activists from Alcan't in India, a solidarity group based in Montreal, are pressuring Alcan to compensate people whose 'lives have been ruined through jailings, beatings, displacement, and even death due to Alcan's involvement'.

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For more, see www.alcantinindia.org www.corpwatch.org

I'm looking very closely

'I'm looking very closely into your eyes so that you can listen to me,' said indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami to the Brazilian President when he met him recently. 'Mr Lula, I don't want mining to invade our Yanomani land because it will destroy the water we drink and the rivers we bath in. It will destroy our land. It will destroy the lungs of the earth. Mining won't bring any good to Indians in Brazil. We don't want any money. What we want is for you to respect the Yanomani people, respect for our land which has been demarcated as indigenous and ratified under Brazilian law.' Many within the Brazilian political and business establishment are pushing for indigenous land in the demarcated 'Yanomani Park' to be opened up for mining and colonization. Recent months have seen renewed invasions by gold miners and ranchers--echoing those of the 1970s and 1980s when miners destroyed villages, shot Indians and exposed them to diseases, causing the Yanomani population to plummet by 20 per cent in seven years. In February this year, Yanomanis were once again forced to leave their village by invading miners and ranchers, Davi himself receiving death threats. Meanwhile, new threats are also coming from climate change 'solutions' such as biofuel development and the purchase of rainforest for conservation. 'I think that buying up forest with money will not resolve anything,' says Davi. 'It is better for the white people to sit down and talk with Indians to find out what the solution is.'