Australia: Queensland National Park Handed Back To Aboriginal Owners The historic first return to indigenous owners of an Australian national park in the state of Queensland took place Friday on the Cape York Peninsula.
Queensland Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones visited the Aboriginal town of Kowanyama to hand back ownership of the 37,000-hectare Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park to the region's traditional owners, the Kunjen and Oykangand People.
"This is the first existing national park to be returned to traditional owners," Jones said at the ceremony marking the transfer. "This is a momentous occasion and represents a breakthrough in indigenous land tenure resolutions."
Established in October 1977 as the Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park, the park covers an area of 371 square kilometers (143 sq miles) between the Mitchell and Alice Rivers 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Kowanyama on the Gulf of Carpinteria side of the Cape.
It was renamed the Errk Oykangand National Park (Cape York Aboriginal Land) on Friday. This protected area will be jointly managed by traditional owners and the Queensland government, under an Indigenous Management Agreement.
Uw Oykangand elder Colin Lawrence said the move was the culmination of 19 years of "hard work and dedication to land management." Read more about the
Kunjen and Oykangand peoples and Queensland National Park here....
Ecuador: The Battle For Natural Resources Deepens A new indigenous uprising began in defense of water sources threatened by open air mining in Ecuador in late September. This time indigenous organizations find themselves up against a government that claims to be anti-neoliberal, a player in the "socialism of the 21st century," and one that has begun a "citizen's revolution."
"What happened in Cochabamba in the fight for water will be dwarfed by what is about to happen in Ecuador. An uprising is coming because it is coming," affirms a convinced Carlos Pérez Guartambel, president of the Azuay Union of Community Water Systems (Unión de Sistemas Comunitarios de Agua del Azuay).1 Pérez is referring to the Water War of Cochabamba, Bolivia, a vast social insurrection that put a stop to the privatization of water and, in April 2000, began a succession of protests that brought Evo Morales to the presidency.
"My parents taught me that water and electricity are to be shared, not sold," he says almost indignantly as we walk toward a community assembly in La Victoria del Portete located in an immense and beautiful valley, 15 kilometers from Cuenca, (capital of the southern Azuay Province) a pretty colonial town plagued by tourists. As we turn right onto the Pan-American Highway, he points out his parents' home where he was born a little more than 40 years ago.
"When I was a child I would go to a spring to look for water with a ceramic jug. The jug was sealed with a pocón, a biodegradable corn stalk leaf. I never imagined that I would one day buy a bottle of water, never. Each liter costs one dollar and 30 cents, in other words, a liter of water costs more than a liter of milk or a liter of gas. The struggle for water will be the struggle for life." The social distinctions caused by the remittances sent back by emigrants is obvious: next to modest homes with roofs made of sheet metal they are building three story houses, affecting an affluent appearance though the inhabitants remain campesinos.
Carlos Pérez is Quichua (Quechua) and a lawyer specializing in community rights with a postgraduate degree in environmental studies and he has also written an important book on community justice. In the last few years he has dedicated himself to the resistance against the introduction of mining companies with eloquent names like IAM Gold, in and around Quimscocha, where a source of springs is located that irrigate the valley where thousands of campesinos practice animal husbandry. Pérez belongs to a new generation of university educated indigenous leaders that speak several languages, attend international forums, and are trained in the use of new technologies, but who also remain dedicated to their communities and continue to speak their native languages. Read more about
Ecuador and indigenous struggles here....
Peru: Amazonian Natives Say They Will Defend Tribal Lands From Hunt Oil With "Their Lives" Indigenous natives in the Amazon are headed to the town of Salvacion in Peru with a plan to forcibly remove the Texas-based Hunt Oil company from their land as early as today. Peruvian police forces, numbering in the hundreds, are said to be waiting in the town.
The crisis has risen over an area known as Lot 76, or the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. The 400,000 hectare reserve was created in 2002 to protect the flora and fauna of the area, as well as to safeguard watersheds of particular importance to indigenous groups in the region.
Despite its protected status, in 2006 the Peruvian government granted concessions within the reserve to two oil companies, Hunt Oil and the Spanish company Repsol.
According to FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios) protections had been slowly and systematically stripped from the reserve without indigenous groups' input. In addition, FENADMAD contends that Hunt Oil has violated international standards and the Peruvian constitution by going ahead with their operations without approval from the indigenous groups.
Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for Lot 76, Silvana Lay, disagrees. He told the Indian Country Today that “we weren’t going to come in until the Master Plan was approved. We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead – within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.” Read more about the
Amarakaeri Communal Reserve here....
United States: A New Demand For Uranium Power Brings Concerns For Navajo Groups Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel for reactors and atomic bombs.
Now, interest in carbon-free nuclear power is fueling a potential resurgence of uranium mining. But Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease.
Uranium companies and government authorities do not dispute this, and federal environmental remediation and workers' compensation programs related to past uranium mining are ongoing. But mining companies say today's methods and regulations have improved so much that locals have nothing to fear. Read more about
Native American concerns over uranium here....
Philippines: Senate Asked To Look Into Plight Of Caraga Tribals Tribal leaders in the Caraga Region urged the Senate on Saturday to look into issues affecting indigenous peoples, including use of their ancestral lands that prompted a group of Manobos to abduct government workers earlier this week.
In a press statement, Manobo tribal chieftains led by Datu Kaguyangan-an said the abduction of the eight workers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) by tribal warriors is a sign that the problems facing indigenous peoples in the region have escalated from bad to worse.
“We expect more social unrest from our people if government continues to ignore our deep-seated problems," said Kaguyangan-an, who denounced the alleged practice of some government agencies of “giving candies and lollipops" whenever indigenous peoples assert their rights over ancestral lands.
He warned that the use of palliative measures and institutionalization of divide and rule tactics would only serve to aggravate problems. Read more about the
Caraga Region and indigenous struggles here....
Last Weeks Five Key Indigenous People's Issues can be read here.
