Photos: Cintia Morales Braungart Can you imagine living a lifestyle that allows you to stop, observe, say hello, and contemplate the landscape every day? In Telchaquillo, that’s how people live, without rushing nor mishaps, because the roads are traveled on foot, by bicycle, and by tricycle, creating a peaceful, humane, and joyful way of life.…
FROM THE EDITORS: An impressive coalition of Mapuche, Kerwen, Aymara, Quechua, Likan Antai, Colla, and Kawesqar indigenous peoples in Chile has launched a call for the lack of specialized attention for Original Communities suffering from COVID-19, who are also leading a historic fight against extractive-development projects imposed by various governments and the militarization of their…
On April 7 a catastrophic oil spill in Ecuador polluted the Coca and Napo Rivers where 27 thousand indigenous and 90 thousand mestizo people depend on for drinking water and fishing. It was a predictable industry-provoked disaster that geologists and environmentalists long warned about: the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant was generating heavy erosion near…
FROM THE EDITORS: The COVID pandemic has exposed an urgent global need to generate fundamental changes that reject the unlimited accumulation of capital through the exploitation of our bodies and Mother Earth. In April, indigenous, Afro-descendants people and popular organizations of Latin America already made a call to change “the economic inertia of the neoliberal…
In 2009, right in the middle of the Free Trade Agreement negotiations with the United States, and as part of the government’s strategy to bypass the legislative branch, the president of Peru Alan Garcia, issued a series of decrees that “facilitated” mining and oil extraction in indigenous territories. This, in fact, led to the cancellation…
FROM THE EDITORS: The indigenous leader of the Kayapó people, “Paulinho” Bepkororoti Payakan, who led the fight against the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, fell victim to COVID yesterday. At just 67 years of age, he died in a hospital in the State of Pará, after a tireless struggle was able to include the right of…
From the Editors: The Yanomani and Ye’kwana are indigenous people living in the Roraima e Amazonas states, in the northeastern region of the Amazon under control of the Brazilian government. Under the umbrella of the Fórum de Lideranças Yanomami e Ye’kwana [Yanomami and Ye’kwana Leadership Forum], they have launched a campaign #ForaGarimpoForaCovid and are asking…
Voluntary self-isolation has been practiced for millennia by uncontacted peoples, so as not to be victims of the devastating consequences of Western civilization and progress. Several intergovernmental organizations have recognized this legal right and survival strategy of peoples to protect their land and territory, as a way of protecting themselves against genocide, colonization, and the…
This month, tens of thousands of Irish people are donating to a $5 million fundraising campaign to help the Navajo and Hopi tribes battling the Coronavirus. Irish donors see this as a long-overdue payback for the gift of $170 sent by the Choctaw Tribe to Ireland during the famine. My own reason for donating was…