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TechnoratiIndigenous Peoples: 'We Are Fighting for Our Lives and Our Dignity'
Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are battling to defend their lands – often paying the ultimate price
It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.
![[Natives set up a road block at the entrance of the Amazonian town of Yurimaguas, northern Peru. "For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
(AFP/Ernesto Benavides)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/peruvians.jpg "peruvians.jpg")
In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in
20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen
if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests
to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they
like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use
force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.
In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".
"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.
Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.
A massive military force continued this week to raid communities opposed to oil companies' presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90% of Nigeria's foreign earnings, has always been volatile, but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated. In the last month a military taskforce has been sent in and helicopter gunships have shelled villages suspected of harbouring militia. Thousands of people have fled. Activists from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have responded by killing 12 soldiers and this week set fire to a Chevron oil facility. Yesterday seven more civilians were shot by the military.
The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7m to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995.
Meanwhile in West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world's largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the last few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.
"An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.
"This is happening in Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Amazon, all over Latin America, Papua New Guinea and Africa. It is global. We are seeing a human rights emergency. A battle is taking place for natural resources everywhere. Much of the world's natural capital – oil, gas, timber, minerals – lies on or beneath lands occupied by indigenous people," says Tauli-Corpus.
What until quite recently were isolated incidents of indigenous peoples in conflict with states and corporations are now becoming common as government-backed companies move deeper on to lands long ignored as unproductive or wild. As countries and the World Bank increase spending on major infrastructural projects to counter the economic crisis, the conflicts are expected to grow.
Indigenous groups say that large-scale mining is the most damaging. When new laws opened the Philippines up to international mining 10 years ago, companies flooded in and wreaked havoc in indigenous communities, says MP Clare Short, former UK international development secretary and now chair of the UK-based Working Group on Mining in the Philippines.
Short visited people affected by mining there in 2007: "I have never seen anything so systematically destructive. The environmental effects are catastrophic as are the effects on people's livelihoods. They take the tops off mountains, which are holy, they destroy the water sources and make it impossible to farm," she said.
In a report published earlier this year, the group said: "Mining generates or exacerbates corruption, fuels armed conflicts, increases militarisation and human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings."
The arrival of dams, mining or oil spells cultural death for communities. The Dongria Kondh in Orissa, eastern India, are certain that their way of life will be destroyed when British FTSE 100 company Vedanta shortly starts to legally exploit their sacred Nyamgiri mountain for bauxite, the raw material for aluminium. The huge open cast mine will destroy a vast swath of untouched forest, and will reduce the mountain to an industrial wasteland. More than 60 villages will be affected.
"If Vedanta mines our mountain, the water will dry up. In the forest there are tigers, bears, monkeys. Where will they go? We have been living here for generations. Why should we leave?" asks Kumbradi, a tribesman. "We live here for Nyamgiri, for its trees and leaves and all that is here."
Davi Yanomami, a shaman of the Yanomami, one of the largest but most isolated Brazilian indigenous groups, came to London this week to warn MPs that the Amazonian forests were being destroyed, and to appeal for help to prevent his tribe being wiped out.
"History is repeating itself", he told the MPs. "Twenty years ago many thousand gold miners flooded into Yanomami land and one in five of us died from the diseases and violence they brought. We were in danger of being exterminated then, but people in Europe persuaded the Brazilian government to act and they were removed.
"But now 3,000 more miners and ranchers have come back. More are coming. They are bringing in guns, rafts, machines, and destroying and polluting rivers. People are being killed. They are opening up and expanding old airstrips. They are flooding into Yanomami land. We need your help.
"Governments must treat us with respect. This creates great suffering. We kill nothing, we live on the land, we never rob nature. Yet governments always want more. We are warning the world that our people will die."
According to Victor Menotti, director of the California-based International Forum on Globalisation, "This is a paradigm war taking place from the arctic to tropical forests. Wherever you find indigenous peoples you will find resource conflicts. It is a battle between the industrial and indigenous world views."
There is some hope, says Tauli-Corpus. "Indigenous peoples are now much more aware of their rights. They are challenging the companies and governments at every point."
In Ecuador, Chevron may be fined billions of dollars in the next few months if an epic court case goes against them. The company is accused of dumping, in the 1970s and 1980s, more than 19bn gallons of toxic waste and millions of gallons of crude oil into waste pits in the forests, leading to more than 1,400 cancer deaths and devastation of indigenous communities. The pits are said to be still there, mixing chemicals with groundwater and killing fish and wildlife.
The Ecuadorian courts have set damages at $27bn (£16.5bn). Chevron, which inherited the case when it bought Texaco, does not deny the original spills, but says the damage was cleaned up.
Back in the Niger delta, Shell was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the Ijaw people in 2006 – though the company has so far escaped paying the fines. After settling with Ogoni families in New York this week, it now faces a second class action suit in New York over alleged human rights abuses, and a further case in Holland brought by Niger Delta villagers working with Dutch groups.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil is being sued by Indonesian indigenous villagers who claim their guards committed human rights violations, and there are dozens of outstanding cases against other companies operating in the Niger Delta.
"Indigenous groups are using the courts more but there is still collusion at the highest levels in court systems to ignore land rights when they conflict with economic opportunities," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "Everything is for sale, including the Indians' rights. Governments often do not recognise land titles of Indians and the big landowners just take the land."
Indigenous leaders want an immediate cessation to mining on their lands. Last month, a conference on mining and indigenous peoples in Manila called on governments to appoint an ombudsman or an international court system to handle indigenous peoples' complaints.
"Most indigenous peoples barely have resources to ensure their basic survival, much less to bring their cases to court. Members of the judiciary in many countries are bribed by corporations and are threatened or killed if they rule in favour of indigenous peoples.
"States have an obligation to provide them with better access to justice and maintain an independent judiciary," said the declaration.
But as the complaints grow, so does the chance that peaceful protests will grow into intractable conflicts as they have in Nigeria, West Papua and now Peru. "There is a massive resistance movement growing," says Clare Short. "But the danger is that as it grows, so does the violence."
29 Comments so far
Show AllHello, I am new to this site and I like it very much! I also enjoy reading everyone's comments, people here are actually thinking about things in intelligent ways! This gives me much hope! OK, I am an "old timer" (according to my kids!) from back in the 70s. I remember someone in a study group said, "by the 21st century, the world's governing system will either be a social democracy or a police state". There are some who might say we are living in a global police state. But, given that people are willing to pick up stones and throw them at "the powers that be", I'd say that it's clear that not everyone is going to put up with this type of system. Which challenges us to think about what we can do. After all, we live in a place that is built on the theft and destruction of people and the planet. So, what can we do to throw a stone in all of this? Well, it seems that we have many choices, and I am curious as to what you all think those choices might be. For me, the first choice is to start putting alternative energy to work in our own lives. Get solar panels if you can afford to. Stop using your microwave. eat at home, good food, grow it if you can. Even in an apartment you can grow veggies in pots. know it might sound "hippie-dippie" but I think that little things like this will throw more stones into the machine. And, eventually, with enough stones, the machine will break down. We do not have to live the way "they" tell us to. In fact, right now, with the "economy" falling apart, it's time for us to question if this way of life of ours is good for anyone other than the robber barons. The answer is obvious, I think. It's time for us to throw some stones of our own! Much peace to all!
Hello and welcome. If I wasn't ready for bed I would give you a more thoughtful reply. So instead I will do the lazy thing and share a link to a video of how one suburban family is trowing stones from right where they are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPEBM5ol0Q
It's called, HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION - Radical Change Taking Root
We're all going to have to become a little more hippy-dippy and a lot more indigenous if we hope to have a sustainable future.
Again, welcome, acuera! Please make yourself at home here and post your thoughtful insights often! Some of us need to learn how to throw stones.
I'm not really surprised by this piece of news. It's business as usual to take land from the natives. Industrial civilisation likes to claim it's "matured" so much from the time of stealing land from Indians/Indigenous, but they haven't. It's the same shit, different century.
What did surprise me was that Indigenous peoples are fighting back and I support their right to do so, violently, if they deem it.
But I still feel pessimisstic about our collective global future and that of these peoples. They will be swallowed up by Civilisation just as everyone else was and soon there will be no Indigenous peoples left, save maybe the Inuit, but that's only until consumer culture discovers oil under their ice.
Indigenous peoples have never been swallowed up by Civilization.
You think that Cortes and his jailbird minions were civilized?
Indigenous people have always been murdered by barbarians.
The Inuit love snowmobiles, rifles, harpoons, nylon, Goretex, Thinsulate, rubber, televisions, radios, the Internet, DVD's, cocacola, playboy, cigarettes, beer, whiskey...
They use oil to run their snowmobiles, outboard motors, generators and for heating their modular homes.
What makes them any different than the rest of us?
I care deeply about the land which sustains me. But with blue eyes, I would not be labeled as indigenous, even though I was born in North America as were my ancestors for many generations back. I too have ancestors that go back perhaps 10,000 years here in North America. Yet because of my blue eyes...
We're all indigenous, or we're all aliens. These lines we draw to separate ourselves from one another and the land which sustains us are artificial, superficial and imaginary. It creates other problems like prejudice and racism, which divides us further, keeping us from working together for the common good.
We all need to join as one people, one body against the tyranny and oppression from the greedy corporations that are stealing our birthright. The loss of the Amazon and any other well-cared-for lands is a loss to us all.
We can start by planting fruits and vegetables just outside our back door.
Dig it.
The only thing that differentiates the "indigenous" from your common American is that they care about the land that sustains them. Haven't you been here long enough to become indigenous? Or does your not declaring yourself indigenous sever you from any responsible action, or affinity, emotional or practical to the land that gives and supports your life? If the concern is so strong, advocate for the return of native peoples to the cities and towns that displaced them, just like we advocate for the return of "native" plants and animals amidst the scourge of invasive species.
Bring our indigenous out of the reservations, out of the ghettos, out of the barrios and into the suburbs and cities, into your neighborhoods.
Isn't it amazing that there are people in the world willing to give their lives and face violent authority figures for the land!?
It is also under you as you sleep, as you walk, as you drive with your two ton dinosaur between you and it. It is being abused by your very existence, and I would be hard-pressed to find many Americans who would die for the sake of the land that feeds, clothes and supplies the energy for their daily living.
To differentiate between "indigenous" and your average "first-world" consumers does two things: creates a false difference between humans and absolves one group from supporting the other in truly meaningful and supportive solidarity.
Help the indigenous affluent consumers, who are stuck in the nightmare of their stock market willingly trading each other as slaves and selling their very souls.
Being here long enough to be indigenous????
That's hilarious.
Indigenous means FROM here--not FROM anyplace else.
And it isn't about time.
Unless you believe the zionists who insist that the land is theirs even though they are NOT from there.
Palestinians are the Nez Perce of the Middle East.
If Jesus was there with those protesters & he got in the way of Mammon people they would kill him, too. Native Tribes have had legal cases in the Courts here only to find them beating their heads against the same old proverbial wall in Court rulings against them.
And Jesus said, Woe unto you lawyers.
What a world, but just another day of my journey being being completed through this world, whatever it is?
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
ShadowDancer: Life is good unless you are being killed off for your land and the fruit of the country of your birth. It is good unless you are regarded as a roadblock to the corporate destruction of the planet and the destruction of your ancient ways of life. It's good unless you are watching the very last of your particular race being killed off one by one by a faceless enemy in huge, jungle chewing machines that can't be stopped. It's good unless you are starving to death or being blown up or being refused clean drinking water while your island's precious and ancient water supply is being sucked up and sold to the world as you and your children dehydrate to death. It's good unless you are being blown up or shot or raped when you venture timidly out to get food. It's good unless you are being sold as a sex slave or child prostitute. Objectification of human beings can make our lives very miserable, but I'm glad you are enjoying YOUR life, and it IS best to always forgive and keep our hearts clean and pure, and open to channel love and light. But I personally think that there are some acts that are not forgivable, and for these particular acts, we will all suffer. No matter if the actions are not directed towards us personally, no matter if we never see them occur. No matter if we never know they have been committed. We will still suffer with those people's red blood on our hands, because all people's blood runs red, all people deserve to be left to live their lives... and we partly owe our way of life to the policies of destruction that have taken over the wilderness and the cities and the jungles of the whole world. It just proves that nobody is safe from these people, I refuse to think of corporations as entities...They are composed of people...What if WE get in their way? They would kill us, too, in a minute.
They are not Indians. They are Americans. How long will these European imperialists maintain the seige? As long as USans keep buying the cheap gasoline.
Wow, sorry, I should have edited...
I also meant to say after the biblical reference.
Those who will not inherit the earth:
No Oil Barons,
No CEO's of any corporations
No Mining tycoons
No, pentagon people
No, well, you get my drift.
...and I have to get in my car and drive to work,using the oil from these situations. I'm guilty. I do run through my mink what I could do. I can't live back in a city agoin. After 23 years in that kind of environment, I had to get back to my roots in a rural swetting. There are other things we have done. we do not own an oil furnace andymore, . When our house burnt down, we did not put one back in. We have a wood stove for heat and that's it. As for the trees, I'd like to think that some of what I've planted, like the fruit trees,5 in all and the red oak, will help make up for it. I will save as many of the little maples and oaks that springup in our back yard, nursing them along.
I do not adhere to any of the major religions, I study wicca. But it sounds like me there's one point on which I agree with the bible. What's that saying?
"The meek shall inherit the earth"
Looks like that day is coming fast. The indigenous peoples of the world are finally standing up for themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get behind them some how...
This-
Tugs at my heart-strings.
1)If corporations are allowed are allowed to act as "individuals" for tax and law purposes why are they not tried as individuals for human rights violations?
2)Where is the ICC or the ICJ and why do they not have the DA equivalent to investigate such crimes to prosecute?
{In Ecuador, Chevron may be fined billions of dollars in the next few months if an epic court case goes against them. The company is accused of dumping, in the 1970s and 1980s, more than 19bn gallons of toxic waste and millions of gallons of crude oil into waste pits in the forests, leading to more than 1,400 cancer deaths and devastation of indigenous communities. The pits are said to be still there, mixing chemicals with groundwater and killing fish and wildlife.}
Chevron is just going to be fined for this? Why do Corporations get to commit heinous crimes? WHY? Then they just pay some money, that they have in some account for that very purpose, and raise the price of gas so we have to f.g pay for their slap on the wrist.
What in the hell are we going to do, if the people running these corporations don't stop acting like horrible spoiled demon brat children who just can't stand not to get what they want at the expense of everyone else?
What good does it do for journalists to report this stuff if the Corporations are allowed to do this shit and carry on with the pillaging and blatant SUPERCRIMES? Why do they get to pay fines, out of the corporate account, when there are actually PEOPLE ordering that these crimes be done,without being tried for them, then they are sending forces out into the wilderness to kill people and steal their land! Why can they get away with this? Maybe they should get THEIR land stolen and their families killed off brutally and thrown into a river and face extinction, if they don't feel like these folks matter more than profits. Why do they get dibs on all of the f.g oil anyway? Why do they get to go to other countries and steal from them and their future generations? My GOD!!! Why in the world is this shit still happening all over the place? People might be doomed. Our toxic lives are going to lead our future generations to be a bunch of short life span having, amoral cancer ridden mutants, but that is only if we will be able to bear children at all. We are headed to a dark disaster, but obviously after being saturated to our very brain cells by words that describe what most of us can't even imagine, about the tortures, deaths, and horrors our gov. and corporate pigs are causing other people, there is a huge disconnect between the words and the actual scenarios they are describing.
Why can corporations and governments commit these crimes and get away with it just because they have amassed a lot of money? We can't eat or drink money, we can't breath it, we can't use it to buy back our dead and mutilated brothers and sisters overseas and at home.
Most of us can't even manage to get enough money to buy food and gas and pay rent and electricity, and these psychopaths are using it to pay off the highest courts in order to commit genocide? F.k that. Can anybody explain how this could be happening? Without too much sarcasm or conspiracy theory included?
"Why can corporations and governments commit these crimes and get away with it just because they have amassed a lot of money?"
Because the makers of the laws, the enforcers of the laws and the criminals are all the same people. And so are the watchdogs (press). We, the people, are just pawns in their global game. I don't see any hope for meaningful change to the current system. The best evidence I can give for that is Obama. No one who will really change anything will ever get elected (not here, and not in Europe and they control a lot).
So if elections will not change anything, what alternatives do we have? Our only hope would be to start a new system, and merely abandon what exists. Make them irrelevant. But they have really big guns, prisons, surveillance equipment, control of infrastructure, not to mention unlimited resources -- it would take a lot of us, working together, being willing to take care of each other and to suffer -- even die. Revolution? Look around you -- look at yourself. Would you or any of your neighbors be willing to lose anything - let alone everything? To die? To step over dead bodies and keep moving forward? As long as we continue to race toward our inevitable extinction as species, it probably isn't even worth the trouble to fix it. So just relax, and try to enjoy what you can with your time left. And be sweet to everyone you meet.
I'm in agreement for starting a new system. As Bucky Fuller once said, "You cannot change things by fighting the existing reality. You must build a new model that makes the old model obsolete."
Easier said than done, though. Many of the pawns in this game wish they were the criminals and the top dogs and are still playing the game to win. Even the concept of the game, let alone abandoning the game for something BETTER is foreign to them.
Which is, naturally, just the way the hierarchy wants it. "THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE."
Actually the current system is already obsolete. The problem is that most of the people don't realized it. The Corporatocraty (Government, Corporation and Banks) is doing a good job of hiding the fact. But apparently it's becoming more and more evident.
Actually there are two alternatives ofter. The first is called a "Gift Economy" and the second is called a "Resource Based Economy". I don't give the Gift Economy much future since is still requires money to some extent. And as we know, money equals power ... and power always corrupts.
So history will for sure repeat it self in such a system.
I found the "Resource Based Economy" more sound and has a very good future perspective. You can look it up under "The Venus Project". The main idea is to create abundances in resources like in energy, water, food and housing. This can be done by using our greatest gift, TECHNOLOGY. Today technology is not used in such a way at all. Technology is used in a self destructing way only to feed the short term profit goals. You should read upon this topic...
it's called 'corporate personhood' which enables an amoral entity fueled by the profit motive to seek growth and profit by any means necessary. it is being fought against all over the planet and becoming more transparent everyday for what it is. a paradigm doesn't shift overnight, but every boycott of a product awash in blood and every truth fearlessly told to power DOES make an incremental difference.
rev charity, in the interests of sincerely answering your heartfelt question, here's a quote by wendell berry i recently ran across in woody tasch's book, 'slow money':
THE CORPORATE MIND IS REMARKABLY NARROW. IT CLAIMS TO UTILIZE ONLY EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE-THE PREFERRED TERM IS "SOUND SCIENCE", REDUCIBLE ULTIMATELY TO THE "BOTTOM LINE" OF PROFIT OR POWER-AND BECAUSE THIS RULES OUT ANY EXPLICIT RECOURSE TO EXPERIENCE OR... CONSCIENCE, THIS MIND IS READILY SUSCEPTIBLE TO EVEY KIND OF IGNORANCE AND IS PERHAPS NATURALLY PREDISPOSED TO COUNTERFEIT KNOWLEDGE. IT COMES TO ITS WORK EQUIPPED WITH FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE AND PERHAPS ALSO WITH KNOWLEDGE SKILLFULLY COUNTERFEITED, BUT WITHOUT RECOURSE TO ANY OF THOSE KNOWLEDGES THAT ENABLE US TO DEAL APPROPRIATELY WITH MYSTERY OR WITH HUMAN LIMITS. IT HAS NO HUMBLING KNOWLEDGE. THE CORPORATE MIND IS ARROGANTLY IGNORANT BY DEFINITION.
thank you. I appreciate your response.
"Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. "
hey and don't forget water.... privatization of water is one helluva venture for commodification true believers like jenna bush (in paraguay), coca cola and bechtel (bolivia)... when will we learn and become native to this place? whether the two following words become synonyms or opposites is up to us all.
indigenous: adj. originating and living in an area or environment; native
indigent: adj. lacking the means of subsistence; impoverished
EVERYBODY IS INDIGENOUS TO THE PLANET.-john trudell
This is terrible --killing indigenous people for oil, minerals and timber (for other people's cars, computers and furniture, not mine of course...)
Surprise: This is nothing new. All conquered indigenous people were killed for their land and its bounty.
Twenty Million in what is now called the US of A, just for starters.
In Peru, yesterday fatass Alan Garcia blamed the massacre on "foreign communists"--the same pitch that was used by the Diaz Ordaz government in Mexico for the massacre of students in Tlatelelco on Oct. 2, 1968.
"Foreign Communists" ? Thats rich. I wonder where they come up with some of this stuff.
Well, hazarding a guess--it was the CIA head of the Mexico City desk that told Diaz Ordaz to use that term in....1968.
I guess Fatass Garcia's CIA handler is not up to date in his phrasing.
Garcia also blamed it allon Evo Morales....
Same in the U.S.! Coal mining in the Appalachian mountains vs. local land owners.
I'm glad this article stressed the big picture. Our fight here is just as important as the fight elsewhere to save the natural state of the land.
I am all for indigenous peoples caring for the land vs. corporations destroying it for all time.
Give them the right to live in harmony and hold that up as a shining example.
This is probably the most important story of the year...The corporate war for the world's remaining resources against indigenous peoples and the environment.
Yes, this is ground zero in the war on the environment and the people who are the stewards of the planet's life support systems.
Aaaaaaaaaagh! Not this again! C'mon, it's bad enough reading about indigenous genocide in the history books. Why must we be reading about this in the news headlines?!!
If this doesn't make people quit driving their cars... I mean, can we see the connection here? How many "Indians" per gallon does your Land Rover get?