Lakota march on the United Nations, April 9, 2013

From Counterpunch:

In April, a grassroots movement led by Lakota grandmothers toured the country to build support for a formal complaint of genocide against the United States government and its constituent states. Though temporarily overturned, the recent conviction of Efrain Rios Montt for genocide against indigenous Guatemalans should give US officials, particularly members of the Supreme Court, pause before dismissing the UN petition as a feeble symbolic gesture.

The tribal elders’ 12-city speaking tour culminated in an April 9 march on United Nations headquarters in New York and an April 18 press conference in Washington, D.C., where the Supreme Court had just heard arguments in a challenge to the landmark 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Attracting support from Occupy Wall Street and other non-Native allies in the New York march, the Lakota Truth Tour delegation was physically blocked by UN security officers from presenting Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s office a notice of charges against the U.S. under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

An excerpt from the complaint, still being refined into its final, legal form, reads: “This letter serves notice as complaint, that the crime of genocide is being committed, in an ongoing manner, against the matriarchal Tetuwan Lakota Oyate of the Oceti Sakowin, an Indigenous First Nation people whose ancestral lands comprise a large area of the Northern Great Plains of Turtle Island, the continent known as North America.” As evidence, the Lakota cite systematic American usurpation of their land and sovereignty rights, imposition of third-world living conditions on the majority of Lakota, US assimilation policies that threaten the future of their language, culture and identity, and environmental depredations including abandoned open uranium mines and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline slated to invade the Pine Ridge Reservation.

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The Navajo Nation was the site of extensive uranium mining for weapons during the Cold War. Although most of the physical hazards, including open mine shafts, have been fixed at hundreds of sites, concerns of radiation hazards remain.

The tribe banned uranium mining on its lands in 2005, and last year passed a law governing the transport of radioactive substances over its land. The ranch itself is not part of the reservation, although the Navajo Nation owns it.

“Given the (Navajo) Nation’s history with uranium mining, it is the nation’s intent to deny access to the land for the purpose of prospecting for or mining of uranium,” officials from the Navajo Department of Justice wrote in response to the mineral lease application.

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Kayapo Dancers vow to defend their territory from Brazil’s plans for the Belo Monte Dam in 2008

From Amazon Watch:

Hasankeyf, Turkey – Today representatives of dam-affected communities and organizations from South America, the Middle East, Europe, the US and Africa, including Brazilian indigenous leaders accompanied by Amazon Watch, blocked the entrance to the construction site of the Ilisu dam in southeast Turkey demanding an end to controversial development that would sink an ancient city dating back to the Bronze Age.

Some 20 people including Kayapó Chief Megaron Txucarramae, one of Brazil’s most noted indigenous leaders in the struggle against the Belo Monte dam in the Amazon, held up banners in English and Turkish reading ‘Rivers Unite, Dams Divide: Stop Ilisu and Belo Monte dams.’ Delegates from the International Rivers Conference held in Istanbul last Saturday joined local protestors to show solidarity with their struggle to stop the Ilisu dam on the Tigris River, Turkey’s last free-flowing river.

“The peace process cannot be completed without the cancellation of the controversial Ilisu dam project and the protection of Hasankeyf. At the same time, damming the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and stopping their flow reaching Syria and Iraq is a contradiction to Turkey’s ‘zero problems’ policy with its neighbors because the increasing water crisis in the Mesopotamian basin may lead to increased conflict,” said Dicle Tuba Kilic, Rivers Program Coordinator for Doga (BirdLife Turkey).

The Belo Monte dam in Brazil and the Ilisu dam in Turkey are two of the most controversial mega-dam projects in the world today. Both dams are located in cultural and natural hotspots, inflicting devastating consequences and displacing over 75,000 people in Amazonia and Mesopotamia. In addition, the Ilisu dam, located a few kilometers from the Iraqi border, will affect the livelihood of Marsh Arabs living in the newly restored Basra Marshes. Turkey controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, which dictates how much water flows downstream into Syria and Iraq.

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Members of COPINH, an indigenous campesino movement defending lands and rivers in Honduras against dams and other threats

From Weekly News Update on the Americas:

According to protesters, about 100 regular police and riot squad agents used tear gas and live ammunition on May 23 to break up a demonstration by members of the indigenous Lenca community of San Antonio Chuchuitepeque in the northwestern Honduran department of Santa Bárbara. A number of protesters were injured and five were arrested, according to Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores, the coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), who was present at the demonstration.

For some 50 days Lenca communities in the area have been protesting the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, which is being built by the Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) with the help of $24.4 million from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE [link added]). The dam will run with water from the Ulúa River, a tributary of the Gualcarque River. The indigenous communities are protesting the use of their territories and the exploitation of natural resources without prior consultation with the local population. They accuse the mayor of San Francisco de Ojuera municipality of complicity with the companies and of invading their lands. Cáceres warned of the possibility of further violence against the indigenous groups. (Adital (Brazil) 5/24/13 from Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más (LINyM))

On May 25, two days after the attack on the protest, a group of about 20 soldiers stopped a COPINH vehicle in which Cáceres was riding with another member of the organization, radio communicator Tómas Gómez Membreño. After an exhaustive search of the car, the soldiers claimed to have found an illegal firearm and arrested the two activists. Cáceres and Gómez were released the next day, but Cáceres has a trial date set for June 13; she is not allowed to leave the country and is required to register with the court once a week. Defense attorney Marcelino Martínez said the weapon was planted to inculpate the COPINH leader. (COPINH press release 5/26/13 via Kaos en la Red)

Canada has recently seen a wave of indigenous protest through the Idle No More Movement (Reuters)

The following article from Al Jazeera does a good job of analyzing a report recently issued by a corporate-funded think tank, warning that Canada’s indigenous people could be about to launch an “insurgency.” It addresses the way in which reports such as these ultimately function as a pretext for government repression of peaceful protesters and events (such as Idle No More’s Sovereignty Summer and the coming Unis’tot’en Action Camp).

At the same time, it’s worth noting that the tactical points raised in the report are accurate. Canada’s indigenous people are systemically oppressed, many are living in appalling conditions, and they do have incredible access to the colonist nation’s infrastructure. The power is there, should the First Nations choose to exercise it.

Report: Canada could see indigenous uprising

Former military official says poverty and anger in indigenous communities mean conditions for an “insurgency” are ripe.

Chris Arsenault

Living standards for indigenous people on par with “third world” countries, buttressed by a large population of unemployed young men in a “warrior cohort”, and easy-to-target economic infrastructure, all mean Canada has conditions for a potential indigenous “insurgency”.

That’s according to a new report penned by a former Canadian military officer for the MacDonald Laurier Institute, a think-tank supported by corporate executives.

“For many Aboriginal people in Canada, but especially for First Nations women and children, life on-reserve is dreary, dark and dangerous,” wrote Douglas Bland in the report, Canada and the first Nations: Cooperation or Conflict? ”Social fractionalisation significantly increases the risk of social conflict. The phenomenon provides motives for an insurgency,” read the report, issued in May.

Bland refused interview requests from Al Jazeera, but conclusions from the Queen’s University professor emeritus and 30-year military veteran have worried the Canadian establishment, especially in light of indigenous-led protests associated with the Idle No More movement, and Canada’s increasing dependence on natural resource extraction.

‘Ongoing injustice’

“The Canadian right-wing establishment is seizing on this to justify its own agenda of stricter controls and the continued criminalisation of native people who defend their rights,” Taiaiake Alfred, chair of the centre for indigenous governance at the University of Victoria, and one of Canada’s most influential aboriginal intellectuals, told Al Jazeera. “The positive elements of Canadian society – progressive values and social justice – are founded on the ongoing injustice of land theft and murder of indigenous people.”

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From the Earth First! Newswire:

The date for the Action Camp is set!!! Get a pen and paper (or smart phone) JULY 10, 2013 until JULY 14th, 2013. You will not want to miss out on this year’s camp as we are expecting much much much more people than ever!!! Please go to the Victoria Forest Action Network site

http://forestaction.wikidot.com/

to register to attend this year’s camp. We are working on getting all of the most amazing people here this year and are already developing more progressive workshops that will make you want to do everything we are doing to create a just world that our children will be proud of.

Members of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation are turning away pipeline workers and surveyors trying to start work on the pipelines. The intruders have been warned about trespassing on unceded land. The Unis’tot’en people are supported by their neighbours in the Likhts’amisyu Clan, the Gidem’ten Clan and other indigenous and non-indigenous allies.

For more information on their struggle -
http://unistotencamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/unistoten

See Also:

Unis’tot’en Eject Pipeline Surveyors  (Nov 22nd, 2012)

(Photo: Harley Soltes / Special to The Seattle Times)

Following the collapse of an I-5 highway bridge in Washington state (in which fortunately no one was killed), watch out for infrastructure apologists from liberals to energy companies to push for a massive increase in infrastructure spending.

Bloomberg’s coverage raises the issue in the fourth paragraph:

An interstate highway bridge in Washington state collapsed [Thursday], sending vehicles into the rushing waters of the Skagit River north of Seattle. Three people were rescued and none died, authorities said.

The bridge carried both north- and south-bound lanes of Interstate 5, which runs the length of the U.S. West Coast from Mexico to Canada. Investigators said a truck carrying an oversized load may have struck the span before it fell. [Note: it's been confirmed that a megaload truck did indeed cause the collapse -Root Force]

“A rough day,” Dan Sligh said in an interview with Seattle’s KOMO-TV after he escaped from his submerged pickup. “I’m glad to be here breathing.”

The bridge’s collapse put a new focus on the nation’s failing infrastructure, an issue that President Barack Obama has highlighted in his second-term agenda. It came almost six years after a highway span fell in Minnesota at rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Last week, Obama ordered a 50 percent cut in the time it takes executive-branch agencies to start major road and bridge projects.

Now, as little as we at Root Force like the globalized trade that depends so heavily on highways like I-5, we certainly don’t want people plunging off bridges to their deaths. A simple solution, from our point of view, would be to have people cross the Skagit River via smaller boats or bridges that are unsuitable for the “commerce” that’s killing our planet.

OK, so maybe it’s too much to ask (yet) for mainstream or even progressive news sources to be making that suggestion. Apparently, it’s even too much to ask that they refrain from blindly identifying big industry with the common good. Take a look at how progressive news site Common Dreams jumps from “let’s save people from falling to their deaths!” to “let’s beef up roads, rails and the energy grid!” They don’t even seem to recognize that there’s a difference:

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From Bloomberg:

Several major U.S. utilities are under “constant” cyberattack and haven’t taken precautions to protect critical systems from Iran, North Korea and other adversaries, according to a congressional survey of more than 100 companies accounting for much of the nation’s power system.

The survey shows the nation’s electrical grid remains “highly vulnerable” to attack after four years of failed efforts to pass major cyber-security legislation, according to an accompanying report. Industry trade groups, including the Edison Electric Institute, joined by Republicans in the Senate, opposed the bill, arguing minimum cyber-security standards would be out-of-date by the time they were implemented.

“Our enemies have the motive, the means, and the capacity to attack our grid with potentially catastrophic consequences,” Representative Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who co-wrote the report released yesterday, said in an e-mail. “The question is whether the utilities have the same determination to protect our country against these threats.”

Power utilities are part of a core of critical infrastructure that U.S. intelligence agencies are warning may be targets of aggressive cyberattacks designed to cloak the East Coast in darkness or shut off the sewers in New York City during a future conflict.

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From the Earth First! Newswire:

From Solidarity Spring To Sovereignty Summer: An International Callout To All Indigenous Peoples, Supporters, Allies Of Idle No More & Defenders Of The Land

by Idle No More

Over the past few months, Idle No More has ignited a spiritual fire in the hearts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples to come together to address issues related to: Honoring Treaties and Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights, Deepening Democracy reflecting a meaningful Nation to Nation relationship, and increasing Environmental Protections and protecting Mother Earth.

In March, Idle No More joined forces with Defenders of the Land to launch a Declaration that calls on all People to participate in a campaign that was called “Solidarity Spring” and “Sovereignty Summer”.

Idle No More and Defenders of the Land are now transitioning into Sovereignty Summer and people are calling for increased and escalated activities. The actions aim to bring attention to the Harper government agenda that undermines the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canadian citizens, and the ongoing policies disrupting Indigenous peoples’ lives – such as land claims, third party management, and no free and prior consent to development on Indigenous lands. We are in a critical time where lives, lands, waters and Creation are at-risk and they must be protected. …

Leading into Sovereignty Summer, Idle No More calls on all people to join in a grassroots gathering for a Public Awareness Campaign in all Cities, Towns, Indigenous Communities and Villages across Canada and Internationally.

WHEN:
An on-going gathering and occupation, starting on Saturday, May 25, 2013 at 5:00pm and continuing once a week, at the same time and at the same place as people/ groups see appropriate for them. As we move closer to summer, Nations/peoples/ groups may want to increase the frequency of their gatherings to each day of the week on a consistent basis.

WHERE:
People can determine for themselves the appropriate location that has significance to them. For those in urban Centre’s this could be: prominent Government Buildings (Federal or Provincial) in Canada and at Canadian Embassies around the World. For those in their communities, this could be sacred sites, places of cultural importance and locations that are significant to people.

Read the full call to action (including planned events in Toronto and Ottawa) here.

Anti-LNG Banner (Portland, OR, Mar. 1 2008)

From El Paso Inc, via the Earth First! Newswire:

The Energy Department on Friday conditionally approved a Texas company’s proposal to export liquefied natural gas, only the second such project allowed to move forward amid a production boom that has led to glut of domestic natural gas.

The action would allow Freeport LNG Expansion L.P. to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day from its terminal near Freeport, Texas, south of Houston. The DOE said granting such a permit for shipments to countries that do not have free trade agreements with the U.S. was in the public interest.

Freeport is the second export project to win Energy Department authorization, following the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal in Cameron Parish, La.

Energy companies are seeking federal permits for more than 20 export projects that could handle as much as 29 billion cubic feet of LNG a day. If approved, the resulting export boom could lead to further increases in hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique also known as fracking that has allowed companies to gain access to huge stores of natural gas but raised widespread concerns about alleged groundwater contamination and other problems.

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