AWASQA

  • The Voice of Ckuri: The Revitalization of the Kunza Language in the Salta Puna Region, Argentina

    We agreed to meet at a linguistics conference in the city of Salta. Our common interests were joining the sessions on glottopolitics and sociolinguistics and scant opportunities to discuss current research on the country’s indigenous languages. We wondered whether the topic had made it on the research and academic linguistic event’s agenda, after the United…

  • Indigenous women and peasants unite for the largest women’s action in Brazil

    SOURCE: MidiaNinja, translated from Portuguese by Awasqa. The Margaridas meeting was attended by 100,000 people in Brasilia. The first march of indigenous women joins the peasants to fight against social setbacks. To resist the current political scenario, indigenous women decided to unify movements. The first March of Indigenous Women will occur simultaneously with the March…

  • Can human rights be exercised in Native American communities?

    Last June 24, 2019, the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program on behalf of the Water Protector Legal Collective, made public the report “Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders of Indigenous Peoples Resisting Extractive Industries in the United States” summarizing reports, complaints and denunciations filed with the Inter-American Commission…

  • Hawaian Unite. Photo: Walter Ritte

    Native Hawaiians Sue Governor, Fight Against Telescope on Sacred Lands

    For four days over 1000 Native Hawaiians have been standing ground to block an access road to Mauna Kea, a mountain regarded as one of the most sacred places in Hawaii, to protest the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on sacred land. “From time immemorial through the present, Native Hawaiians view, revere, care…

  • Privacy Policy

    Para leer nuestra política de privacidad en español, ver abajo. Awasqa operates a website, found at www.awasqa.org; operates a Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages; delivers newsletters and other content via email; and makes the same or similar content available to mobile users. Our Privacy Policy applies when you use any of these Services. It describes…

  • Natural Dyes as Part of Mexico’s Cultural and Spiritual Heritage: A Hands-On Workshop

    This spring I had the great privilege of meeting Porfirio Gutiérrez, an educator and social justice activist from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, who with his Zapotec family is part of an indigenous movement striving to revive the ancient practice of handcrafted dyes for textiles. His sister Juana Gutiérrez Contreras has become a master in the…

  • Organic oil produced communally in the village, pequi oil, or Hwĩn Mbê (in the indigenous language) is essential in the culture and diet of the Kĩsêdjê. It is also planted to reforest deforested areas of the Amazon. Photo: Associação Indígena Kisedje

    Pequi, A Medicinal Tree, Promoted by the Indigenous Communities of Brazil Against Monocultures

    In the Alto Xingu area, 16 indigenous communties of Mato Grosso, the most deforested state by the soja monoculture agroindustry, are struggling to preserve the rainforest and their way of life, as well as protect water, land and their territories. Among the species of endemic trees with which they have been reforesting the land is…

  • Restorative Justice for the Disappearance and Murder of Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada

    The Government in Canada has embarked on a path of no return, exemplary, hard, full of regret, but a symbol of hope, even for all humanity. Institutionally, a truth commission was created to carry out a National Investigation on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. It is not the first continental effort to arrive…

  • Osh-Tisch, (picture Indian Country Today)

    Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders

    SOURCE: Indian Country Today. Indian Country Today is a daily digital news platform and nonprofit organization that covers the Indigenous world, including American Indians and Alaska Natives. This story was originally published on January 23, 2016. For European settlers the Original Peoples way of life was perplexing, including the Two Spirits tradition. “The New World.”…