With detailed field studies from Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda and Namibia, a new report sheds light on the consequences of extractive industries on land rights and indigenous peoples in Africa. “Worrying that so little is done to protect the environment and the indigenous peoples,” says the report.

 

Environmental degradation, cultural ethnocide and gross human rights violations: For indigenous peoples these are some of the consequences of the current global race for natural resources and raw materials.

 A Brazilian congressional commission, led by a powerful farming lobby, has recommended dismantling the National Indian Foundation, or FUNAI, indigenous rights agency following a land boundary investigation.

The commission suggested FUNAI, which is run by anthropologists, should be replaced with an agency run by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice.

Critics have slammed the suggestion, arguing dismantling FUNAI would empower farmers who seek to use more land in the Amazon rainforest, Jornal O Globo reported.

Annastacia Palaszczuk says lands back with ‘rightful owners’, including site of scheme pushed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen

Traditional owners whose elders fought off a grandiose scheme for a spaceport pushed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen a generation ago have taken back their north Queensland country.

The battle for Bromley, a seminal event in the land rights movement on Cape York, came full circle with a state government handover on Wednesday.

“Stop environmental destruction and get out of our territories!”

The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, COPINH, issued a statement on Thursday slamming “right-wing invaders” who are allegedly burning crops to intimidate Indigenous Lenca land defenders.

Colombia’s Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, announced in a press release on Tuesday that recent police aggression involving a firearm resulted in one death and two injuries. 

ACIN claims three police trucks approached a “Liberation of Mother Earth” action in Corinto, dedicated to promoting environmentalism and Indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral lands, and opened fire. 

The Father Ring Parish Hall in Punta Gorda will be the venue for a lecture on the CCJ’s judgement in the Maya Leaders Alliance case that was brought against the Attorney General of Belize. The initiative is a collaboration between the National Garifuna Council and the Impact Justice Project. Sandra Miranda is the President of the National Garifuna Council.

SANDRA MIRANDA

Federal police in the Mexican state of Michoacan killed four Indigenous campesinos Wednesday, entering their homes and shooting them on site, Ruptura Colectiva reports.

The four victims, whose names have yet to be released, were members of the Arantepacua Communal Property Collective, a grassroots organization that fights for Indigenous land rights in Michoacan. Eight members were left injured and 40 more were arrested, Mexico News Daily reports.

Witnesses also claim police threatened women and children who arrived at the scene of the murder with violence.

Indigenous Peoples and community advocates in Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, Taiwan, and 21 other countries to take action for community land rights, April 22-29 (Earth Day)

New research provides yet more evidence that granting indigenous and other local communities formal title to their traditional lands can be a boon to efforts to conserve forests.

Deforestation is responsible for as much as 10 percent of total global carbon emissions, which means that finding effective means of keeping forests standing is crucial to global efforts to halt climate change.

THE Whanganui River has been granted the same legal status as a human being by New Zealand’s House of Representatives.

Explaining the world-first decision, the country’s Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson said the river would “have its own legal identity with all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person.”

Across the wide world, women are rising up to protect the Earth, one another, and the common good