Underreported Indigenous Struggles

18th Sep­tem­ber 2013 Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Cry has released Under­re­port­ed Strug­gles #77.

• Two Maya Q’eqchi chil­dren from Monte Oli­vo com­mu­ni­ty, in Alta Ver­a­paz depart­ment, Guatemala, died from bul­let injuries after being shot by a “hit­man” that was report­ed­ly hired by the com­pa­ny Hidro San­ta Rita SA. Accord­ing to Real World Radio, the two chil­dren, aged 11 and 13, were shot dur­ing the attempt­ed mur­der of David Chen, leader of the resis­tance to the company’s hydro­elec­tric project. No one has been arrest­ed from mur­der of the two chil­dren, David Eduar­do Pacay Maas and Hageo Isaac Gui­tz.

• Three Indige­nous Tolu­pan from Yoro dis­trict in Hon­duras, were mur­dered while car­ry­ing out peace­ful actions to pre­vent ille­gal for­est clear­ing and exploita­tion of nat­ur­al resources in their ter­ri­to­ry. Accord­ing to The Broad Move­ment for Dig­ni­ty and Jus­tice (Movimien­to Amplio por la Dig­nidad y Jus­ti­cia, MADJ), the Tolu­pan had been receiv­ing death threats from indi­vid­u­als who were brazen­ly walk­ing around the com­mu­ni­ty ful­ly armed, pro­vok­ing fear in the res­i­dents of the area. The Nation­al Pre­ven­tive Police Force and var­i­ous gov­ern­ment offi­cials, despite being warned of the threats, failed to take any kind of action to pro­tect the Tolu­pan.

• In British Colom­bia, Cana­da, mem­bers of the well-known Klabona Keep­ers served For­tune Min­er­als Lim­it­ed with a “24-hour evic­tion notice” inform­ing the com­pa­ny that it must vacate the Tahltan’s unced­ed tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry. For­tune Min­er­als ignored the dead­line, lead­ing the Tahltan activists to block the road lead­ing to the site of the company’s pro­posed open pit coal mine. The pro­test­ers then pro­ceed­ed to occu­py some of the company’s drills.

• The Black­feet Trib­al Busi­ness Coun­cil unex­pect­ed­ly can­celled pro­posed oil and gas devel­op­ments near Chief Moun­tain . The moun­tain, locat­ed near the Cana­di­an bor­der and on the bound­ary between the Black­feet Indi­an Reser­va­tion and Glac­i­er Nation­al Park, is con­sid­ered sacred by many of the Black­feet peo­ple; how­ev­er, some mem­bers of the Black­feet busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty (like Ron Cross­guns of the Black­feet Oil and Gas Depart­ment), have deri­sive­ly dis­missed any­thing sacred about the Moun­tain.

• The Oglala Lako­ta passed a res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing the pro­posed Otter Creek coal mine and Tongue Riv­er Rail­road in their his­tor­i­cal home­lands of south­east­ern Mon­tana. The Oglala Lako­ta have thus far been exclud­ed from any con­sul­ta­tions despite the fact that the pro­posed mine site is an area of great cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance con­tain­ing count­less bur­ial sites, human remains, bat­tle sites, stone fea­tures and arti­facts. In addi­tion to call­ing for prop­er con­sul­ta­tion, the Oglala Lako­ta have called on all Trib­al Nations who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty to stand with them in oppos­ing the mine and rail­road.

• The Buf­fa­lo Riv­er Dene Nation is mov­ing for­ward with a plan to reclaim a vast area of tra­di­tion­al land that was seized by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment in 1953. As report­ed by the Domin­ion, the area–Spanning 11,700 square kilo­me­tres along the Alber­ta-Saskatchewan border–has been used for the past 60 years as a tac­ti­cal bomb­ing range; how­ev­er, it is now being opened up to oil and gas extrac­tion activ­i­ties and an Enbridge pipeline. The Buf­fa­lo Riv­er Dene, who were evict­ed from the area, have sim­ply had enough.

• The Nahua Peo­ples in the Peru­vian Ama­zon announced that they will refuse to allow a gas con­sor­tium led by Plus­petrol to oper­ate in their ter­ri­to­ry. In a let­ter that was deliv­ered to the Min­istry of Cul­ture in Lima, the Nahua stat­ed that, “Giv­en the repeat­ed bro­ken promis­es by the com­pa­ny Plus­petrol, our peo­ple have decid­ed to pro­hib­it it from oper­at­ing in our ances­tral ter­ri­to­ry in the head­wa­ters of the Riv­er Ser­jali.” Plus­petrol is cur­rent­ly wait­ing for gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Ener­gy and Mines to explore for deposits by drilling 18 wells and con­duct­ing inten­sive seis­mic tests in the head­wa­ters region of the Riv­er Ser­jali, which the Nahua con­sid­er to be their ter­ri­to­ry.

Read all of Under­re­port­ed Strug­gles #77