home.social

#indigenousrights — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #indigenousrights, aggregated by home.social.

  1. #News: Save Our Springs campaign by @GreeenpeaceNZ launches urgent petition to expand #Kahurangi National Park. The move aims to protect Sams Creek from #mining and safeguard the sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs. Sign the petition to protect our pristine waters! #Maori #IndigenousRights @palmoildetect #HumanRights 💧🌿
    community.greenpeace.org.nz/pe

  2. #News: Save Our Springs campaign by @GreeenpeaceNZ launches urgent petition to expand #Kahurangi National Park. The move aims to protect Sams Creek from #mining and safeguard the sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs. Sign the petition to protect our pristine waters! #Maori #IndigenousRights @palmoildetect #HumanRights 💧🌿
    community.greenpeace.org.nz/pe

  3. #News: Save Our Springs campaign by @GreeenpeaceNZ launches urgent petition to expand #Kahurangi National Park. The move aims to protect Sams Creek from #mining and safeguard the sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs. Sign the petition to protect our pristine waters! #Maori #IndigenousRights @palmoildetect #HumanRights 💧🌿
    community.greenpeace.org.nz/pe

  4. #News: Save Our Springs campaign by @GreeenpeaceNZ launches urgent petition to expand #Kahurangi National Park. The move aims to protect Sams Creek from #mining and safeguard the sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs. Sign the petition to protect our pristine waters! #Maori #IndigenousRights @palmoildetect #HumanRights 💧🌿
    community.greenpeace.org.nz/pe

  5. I wonder. Thousands of years ago, Borneo was cared for by its natives. Then colonisers came with weapons, taking the land by force. They brought outsiders to serve their needs. Now, the natives feel this is no longer their land — it belongs to landlords with no roots here, no ties to the people, and no conscience.

    #Borneo #Sabah #Sarawak #IndigenousRights #LandJustice #Colonialism #CustomaryLand #NativeCustomaryRights #NCR #Decolonisation #History #SocialJustice #LivedExperience #Extractive

  6. Critical minerals collide with #tourism in B.C. resort town.

    A #Calgary based mining company called West High Yield Resources wants to extract #magnesium ore from Record Ridge, about seven kilometres outside of town, and ship it overseas.

    West High Yield holds mineral claims over 8,972 hectares at the site — an area 4.6 times bigger than the city of Victoria. In October 2025, the #BCgovernment approved the company’s #mining permit.

    Several #Rossland residents say they have been confounded by what they see as abnormalities in the siting and permitting of the mine. Many have united under the banner of the non-profit Save Record Ridge Action Society ( #SRRAC ).

    At one point, WHY Resources sought to remove up to 200,000 tonnes of ore a year, but later reduced that to 63,500 tonnes per year — below the 70,000-tonne limit that often triggers an environmental assessment.

    In a May 2025 letter to the province, the #Ktunaxa Nation Council argued alongside SRRAC that the mine footprint only dropped by 5.7 per cent, despite a 68 per cent cut in proposed production.

    The stated lower production capacity “masks and understates its true capacity” and environmental footprint, added the nation, arguing it’s designed to avoid initial regulatory hurdles and be scaled up later.

    SRRAC requested that Ottawa carry out an environmental review of the Record Ridge mine project.

    A report issued last month from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada rejected that request. It found the mine project did not require federal designation, and that existing laws were enough to manage the potential impacts on fish, migratory birds and Indigenous rights.

    timescolonist.com/islander/cri

    #BCpoli #CDNpoli #StopEcocide #Environmental #Climate #EcoJustice #UNDRIP #IndigenousRights #ProtectTheWild #biodiversity #EcologicalHealth #OneEarth #BritishColumbia #AbolishCorporateLobbyists #StopCorporateWelfare #NoSubsidiesForMining

  7. "I #Masai di #Loliondo, brutalmente sfrattati dalle loro terre per fare spazio a una riserva di caccia, vedono la loro battaglia legale naufragare dopo il verdetto della Corte Suprema tanzaniana."
    Lotte simili in #Kenia.

    #Tanzania #IndigenousRights #22ottobre

    pressenza.com/it/2025/10/la-ba

  8. “Weapons of Health Destruction...” How Colonialism Created the Modern Native American Diet

    The Impact of Systematic Oppression on Indigenous Cuisine in the United States

    #Frybread, sometimes called “#DieBread” or a “weapon of health destruction,” has multiple origin stories, and they all involve oppression and perseverance.

    by Andrea Freeman, July 24, 2024

    Excerpt: "On the hit television show #ReservationDogs, the only series ever to feature all #Indigenous writers, directors, and main cast members, the Indian Health Center invites rapper Punkin’ Lusty, played by real-life #Mvskoke rapper #StenJoddi, to perform his hit song '#GreasyFrybread.' [A song Dr. Lowry played during today's broadcast.] The occasion is #Diabetes Awareness Month. Lusty raps,

    Baby girl looking deadly (Yeah!)
    Why she acting all Rezzy (Yeah!)
    Hotter than a pan of frybread grease!
    Have a Native hittin’ Powwow Beats!
    Gotcha Auntie in the kitchen
    Like no he didn’t
    Got her Gramama’s skillet
    Like she ’bout to kill it!

    The song solidly locates frybread within Indigenous culture.

    Sofkee [a corn drink or soup] on the burner
    Hokte Hokte [woman] head turner
    Water baking powder
    Choppin’ up that white stuff
    All purpose flour
    Gotta mix it right up
    Hit the Rez with the Shits
    They eats it right up! Watch the grease pop
    Watch her waist drop
    She got that blue bird bag [Blue Bird flour comes in a twenty-pound cloth bag and claims to be “The Native American Frybread Secret”]
    In her tank top
    he got that white powder
    All over everything
    She gettin’ to bussin’ man
    But we ain’t cousins man!
    We from the same tribe
    But a different clan
    She my Rez Bunny
    And I’m her Red Man
    She love my Tattoos
    And my two braids
    Frybread money at the Creek Fest get paid! On that!”

    Foregrounding this song in the Health Center’s battle against diabetes underscores the other side of frybread’s legacy, also emblazoned on a T-shirt that announces 'Frybread: Creating #Obesity Since 1860.' #Cheyenne and #HudulgeeMuscogee #IndigenousRights activist #SuzanShownHarjo, who vowed to give up frybread as a New Year’s resolution, explains, 'Frybread is emblematic of the #LongTrails from home and freedom to confinement and #rations. It’s the connecting dot between healthy children and obesity, #hypertension, diabetes, #dialysis, #blindness, #amputations and #SlowDeath.' Reflecting on stereotypes that dehumanized Indigenous people to justify #colonization, such as the worn-out trope of Indians drinking 'firewater,' Harjo asserts that frybread love is another way to portray them as 'simple-minded people who salute the little grease bread and get misty-eyed about it.'

    "In The #HeartbeatOfWoundedKnee, scholar #DavidTreuer introduces health educator #ChelseyLuger, who is #Ojibwe and #Lakota. Chelsey talks to Indigenous communities about the perils of frybread as part of her efforts to steer their diets in new directions, even in the face of limited food options. 'Sometimes people get defensive, but we are able to make the conversation positive. We say we grew up with it and like it and we say frybread is not power. We say frybread kills our people. It’s that serious. It causes diabetes and heart disease. We have to look at those colonial foods as a kind of enemy.' "

    Read more:
    lithub.com/weapons-of-health-d

    #colonization #Colonialism #Decolonize #NativeAmericans #TraditionalFoods #FoodInsecurity #FoodSovereignty #IndigenousFoodSovereignty #Comods #CommodityBoxes #CulturalErasure

  9. A Vancouver Island First Nation whose people were the first to greet European explorers in the region almost 250 years ago is taking British Columbia to court, seeking title to their traditional territories and financial compensation.

    Chief Mike Maquinna, a descendent of #ChiefMaquinna who met British explorer Capt. James Cook in 1776, says the claim in #BCSupremeCourt seeks to return decision-making, resource and ecological stewardship to the #Mowachaht / #Muchalalaht First Nation.

    He says the province has been acting as the sole decision-making authority in the #GoldRiver / #Tahsis areas of northern #VancouverIsland especially with regards to the forest resource, without the consent of his nation.

    Hereditary Chief Jerry Jack says the claim filed today seeks title to about 66,000 hectares of land from #FriendlyCove to Tahsis in the north and #ButtleLake in the east, and an undisclosed amount of financial compensation.

    cheknews.ca/vancouver-island-f

    #BCpoli #CDNpoli #IndigenousBC #BCFirstNations #NativeCanada #BCNDP #IndigenousCanada #IndigenousRights #HumanRights #GovernmentOfCanada #NoConsent #Landback #FirstNations #TruthBeforeReconciliation #Reparations #Decolonization #Colonialism #IndigenousJustice #UNDRIP #Legal #BCLaw #CanadianLaw #Lawsuit #Justice

  10. #RecommendedReading for #Decolonial #Education. #Free #OpenAccess report.

    About Murder by Decree

    Murder by Decree is an #uncensored #record of the planned #extermination of #IndigenousChildren in #Canada’s murderous Indian #ResidentialSchools. It is issued as a corrective #CounterReport to the miscarriage of #justice by Church and State known as the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” #TRC. Based on eyewitness #testimonies and #archival #documentation deliberately suppressed or ignored by the TRC, Murder by Decree proves that the #genocide of #IndigenousPeople began as a religion-led campaign and continues to be a deliberate governmental policy in Canada. This Counter Report reveals these startling facts: – Over half of Indian residential school children began dying the very first year these church-run facilities were opened – This huge mortality rate continued unabated for over a half century because of deliberate practices of germ warfare according to a prescribed monthly “death quota” – Evidence of these crimes and their intentional nature has been continually destroyed by the RCMP and the #Catholic, #Anglican and #UnitedChurch since at least 1960 – The same genocide continues today, is aimed at indigenous women and children, and is driven by foreign corporate interests hungry for #NativeLands and resources Murder by Decree is issued by The International Tribunal for the Disappeared of Canada (ITDC), an international #coalition of #jurists and #HumanRights groups. The ITDC was formed in December, 2015 to investigate the disappearance of people in Canada, prosecute those responsible and prevent a further #whitewash by Canada of its #CrimesAgainstHumanity. This report is an answer to these #crimes and an urgent summons to the world and to all #Canadians to live no longer under #genocidal #regimes.

    Published by the #ITDC Central Offices in #Brussels and #Toronto. For more information write to [email protected] .

    murderbydecree.com/

    #CDNpoli #IndigenousRights #ColonialViolence #CoverUp #KKKanada #FirstNations #NativeCanada #IndigenousCanada #Decolonization #DecolonizeYourMind #NativeRights #UNDRIP #Injustices #ColonialCrimes #TruthBeforeReconciliation

  11. Leading the fish farms out of BC waters flotilla:
    #Laichwiltach hereditary Chief Tsahaukuse (George Quocksister Jr.).
    nationalobserver.com/podcast/s

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laich-

    Chiefs who came to support:
    #Homalco Hereditary & Council Chief Darren Blaney (Married to MP Rachel Blaney).
    homalco.com/

    cbc.ca/news/canada/british-col

    Bill Wilson(Kwak'wala name, Puglaas) hereditary Chief of the #Musgamgw #Tsawataineuk & part of Laich-kwil-tach, which are part of the #Kwagiulth & #Kwakwakawakw First Peoples. Married to 2nd wife, Bev Sellars, a Chief of the #Xatsull First Nation. Father of Jody Wilson-Raybould, lawyer & former MP. Bill was the first Indigenous BC Chief to travel to Ottawa to meet Prime Minister Trudeau (Pierre) to negotiate & draft 1st & only amendment to Canada's constitution in 1982(Section 35).
    He helped found BC First Nations Congress, which led to creation of BC Treaty Commission (signed by Wilson, Harcourt & Mulroney).

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwa

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsawat

    cbc.ca/news/canada/british-col

    #VancouverIsland #BCIndigenousChiefs #NativeChiefs #IndigenousLeaders #BCFirstNations #NativeBC #IndigenousBC #NativeLeaders #IndigenousSovereignty #BCpoli #CDNpoli #BCTreatyCommission #BrokenPromises #BrokenTreaties #IndigenousRights #DemandMPAs

  12. Unfortunately, the #ShundahaiNetwork's website is no longer maintained by the group. #CorbinHarney founded the group years ago. I managed to find it on the #InternetArchive. Here's a snapshot from 2002. I had a link to their website from the now-defunct What? Magazine Online back when I first heard about Shundahai back in 1998/1999.

    "Shundahai Network was formed at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1994, by a council of long-term nuclear disarmament activists, at the request of #CorbinHarney, a #WesternShoshone Spiritual Leader. We have evolved into an international network of activists and organizations bridging the gap between the environmental, peace and justice and indigenous land rights communities.

    "Shundahai Network opposes all nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production. We actively seek to close down the Nevada Test Site to all nuclear weapons programs except for radioactive contamination containment and cleanup. Shundahai Network also opposes all nuclear waste dumping on indigenous peoples lands. We are fighting to halt the proposed high-level nuclear waste dumps at #YuccaMountain and #SkullValleyReservation. We work to educate about the dangers of #RadioactiveWaste transportation and promote a safe and sane energy policy based on conservation and #renewable resources. To this end, Shundahai Network organizes and participates in nonviolent direct actions, demonstrations, workshops and conferences.

    "Shundahai Network Mission Statement

    "Shundahai Network, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to breaking the nuclear chain by building alliances with #indigenous communities and #environmental, #peace and #HumanRights movements. We seek to abolish all #NuclearWeapons and an end to #NuclearTesting. We advocate phasing out #NuclearEnergy and ending the transportation and dumping of #NuclearWaste. We promote the principles of #EnvironmentalJustice and strive to insure that indigenous voices are heard in the movement to influence U.S. Nuclear and environmental policies. All of our campaigns and events incorporate the values of community building, education, spiritual ceremonies and nonviolent #DirectAction.

    "Our staff and volunteers work on a wide range of community outreach, education and public action campaigns. Through our events and campaigns, Shundahai Network helps train activists in community organizing and the use of nonviolent direct action to generate public awareness and apply political pressure on nuclear and #IndigenousRights issues."

    Here's the URL:
    web.archive.org/web/2002112208

  13. #Kayapó #ForestDefenders Urge #UnitedNations to Help Halt Illegal #GoldMining in #Brazil

    By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews
    July 23, 2024

    GENEVA -- "#Indigenous from Brazil urged the United Nations to join them and demand Brazil halt illegal gold mining, and its #mercury #contamination, now destroying the ancestral homelands of #Kayapó, #Yanomami and #Munduruku Peoples, during the U.N. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

    "Doto Takak Ire, Mebêngôkre, said, 'The Kayapó are still warriors and we will always be defenders of the forests.'

    "'We do not want any kind of #exploitation of #NaturalResources in our territories. We want the #Amazon protected, so that our children and all the children of the world can grow up healthy.'"

    Read more:
    bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/07

    #NoGoldMining #NoMining #NoMiningWithoutConsent #ProtectTheForest #ProtectTheAmazon #IndigenousPeoples #IndigenousRights #CulturalGenocide #WaterIsLife #Pollution

  14. TY to @PhoenixSerenity for making me aware of this news.

    B.C. hereditary chief gets house arrest for #pipeline blockade

    Chief invoked #Wetsuweten law for protecting land and water against #CoastalGasLink

    by Betsy Trumpener · CBC News
    Posted: Jul 03, 2024 9:23

    "Chief Dtsa'hyl testified that as a leader, he had a duty to protect Wet'suwet'en land, water, burial sites, and historic trails from the degradation of pipeline construction. He said his actions against Coastal GasLink upheld the traditional Wet'suwet'en law of trespass.

    "During the sentencing hearing this week, defence lawyer Rebecca McConchie said the chief's actions needed to be understood in the context of 'the oppression of Wet'suwet'en people in colonial history and the ongoing issues with #UncededLand.'

    "The defence said the criminal contempt case punished the chief 'for upholding #IndigenousLaw because doing so breached a #colonial court order.'

    "The judge acknowledged that questions around the rights and title of unceded #Indigenous territory, as well as how industrial projects consult with #FirstNations, remain unresolved."

    cbc.ca/news/canada/british-col

    #ChiefDtsahyl #CorporateColonialism #NoDAPL #NoPipelines #IndigenousRights #IndigenousSovereignty
    #BCgovernment
    #Injustice #UncededNativeLand
    #StopEcocide #NativeLandDefenders
    #IndigenousLeader #Consent

  15. Please join us! Volunteers & donations are always welcomed 🙌

    #ClayoquotAction is a Tofino-based #conservation society committed to protecting the #biocultural diversity of #ClayoquotSound. Our goals are accomplished through public education, citizen research and monitoring, and advocacy. Clayoquot Action stands for #democratic rights, #IndigenousRights and the #RightsOfMotherEarth.

    The Clayoquot Action vision is simple: to keep Clayoquot Sound clean and green for future generations, to preserve the #biodiversity and integrity of the #ecosystems, and to maintain and develop #community and #cultural richness.

    Learn more & sign up:
    clayoquotaction.org/

    #VancouverIsland #GetInvolved #Environmental #EcoJustice #VanIsle #PacificNorthwest #Cascadia #BritishColumbia #Canada #Nonprofit #PNW #SaveWildSalmon #WildFirst #ProtectNature

  16. ‘Property poetry’?
    "Real estate is another way to say Australia."

    "Kate Holden connects Turnbull’s persistence in illegally clearing vast tracts of koala habitat, and his murder of Turner, to British Enlightenment theories of property. The English philosopher John Locke, she observes, “placed emphasis on labour to morally justify the owning of property. The more work put into the land, the more settled a man was upon it. Holden traces associations between Locke’s ideas, the history of terra nullius and the “strange, morbid fixation in Australian myth of just how hard a person has to work on this land.”

    "[b]y the time of Australia’s settling, the ineluctable mark of a British citizen was land ownership. It enfranchised him, gave him rights […] Land – elemental, foundational – was the desperately prized asset in a new colony. Without it, man was only an object."

    "Yet the contradictions and inequities surrounding the trade in stolen land are rehearsed largely without reflection or analysis across contemporary Australian culture."
    >>
    theconversation.com/property-p

    #SettlerSociety #TruthTelling #dispossession #silence #IndigenousRights #RealEstate #speculation #HomeOwnership #HouseHunting #NationalImaginary #Australia #writing #degradation #koalas #JLocke #books #deforestation #AusCulture

  17. via @arizonamirror

    If #Hobbs is serious about protecting #groundwater, she must work to close the #mining loophole

    by Russ McSpadden
    February 12, 2024

    "In her first State of the State address just over a year ago, Gov. #KatieHobbs was unequivocal about her commitment to tackling one of the state’s greatest challenges: our dwindling #water supply.

    “Our groundwater should be used to support #Arizonans, not foreign business interests,” she said in that speech, referring to the Saudi Arabian conglomerate #Fondomonte. Over the past few years, Fondomonte has been pumping unlimited amounts of groundwater in La Paz County for alfalfa crops that it ships to feed cows on the other side of the earth.

    "Though the Hobbs administration has already canceled one of Fondomonte’s four leases and says it won’t renew the others when they’re up this month, the problem doesn’t end with Saudi agriculture.

    "It’s also mining companies that take advantage of loopholes in the state’s water laws to maximize profit at the expense of Arizonans — including mining giants #RioTinto and# BHP.

    "Because of intense pressure from #lobbyists, when lawmakers adopted the much-heralded #ArizonaGroundwaterManagementAct in 1980 they exempted #mines from groundwater regulation, even when located in #ActiveManagement Areas — state-designated areas where groundwater pumping is controlled. That means that mines can pump unlimited amounts of water without paying the state a dime.

    "This exemption was controversial in 1980. Today it’s existentially dangerous.

    #ResolutionCopper, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto and BHP, is a perfect example. Their proposed mine at #OakFlat — about 70 miles east of #Phoenix in the #TontoNationalForest and within the Phoenix Active Management Area — would pump 250 billion gallons of desert groundwater over the life of the project.

    "That’s 17 million gallons of water every day for four decades.

    "Under current water prices, that equates to $404 million worth of groundwater that Resolution Copper will get for free. Arizona won’t see a cent for it. And it’s more than likely that the copper ore from Oak Flat will be exported to China for smelting, again depriving local communities of economic benefit.

    "This limitless pumping would happen even as the #megadrought that has plagued the #AmericanSouthwest for the past two decades is likely to worsen, straining the #ColoradoRiver and #Gila rivers even more and making us all more reliant on groundwater aquifers.

    "If left intact, the mining loophole will facilitate construction of Resolution’s massive mine. The extreme water pumping from the #EastSaltRiverValley will lead to groundwater depletion and subsidence, threatening to deplete wells and damage infrastructure.

    "The #CenterForBiologicalDiversity, where I work, has been fighting for decades to stop this mine, and Canadian mining company Hudbay’s disastrous plan to mine for copper in the #SantaRita Mountains south of #Tucson (in the Tucson Active Management Area).

    "Both projects would devastate surrounding fragile #ecosystems, pushing endangered species like the #MexicanSpottedOwl closer to the brink of #extinction. They would also destroy sacred #TribalLands and gulp down massive amounts of water when other users are being asked to conserve.

    "Handing mines unlimited access to Arizona’s precious desert groundwater would be an injustice to Arizona’s #Tribes and every resident of this state.

    "Fortunately, Hobbs has the vision and courage to fight for a secure water future for Arizona. It is time for her to work with legislators to close the mining loophole in Arizona water law and subject mines to the same groundwater pumping limits that apply to other entities within the state’s Active Management Areas.

    "We’re hopeful she will work to block #ResolutionCopperMine and other terrible mining projects like #Hudbay’s. At the very least, it’s time for mining giants to pay for the water they use just like the rest of us."

    azmirror.com/2024/02/12/if-hob

    #WaterIsLife #HumanRightsViolations #CulturalGenocide #CopperMining #Mining #CorporateColonialism #EnvironmentalRacism #IndigenousNews #SaveOakFlat #IndigenousRights #Apache

  18. A Last #Wildness

    Riding alongside the reindeer herders of Europe’s northernmost county.

    Global warming and its discontents have brought energy firms, foreign investors, and the Norwegian state into conflict with an #indigenous #pastoral economy.

    DECEMBER 5, 2023
    by Ben Mauk & Carleen Coulter

    "At seven o’clock one September morning, four reindeer herders on dirt bikes and ATVs drive up toward the peninsula whose tip is the northernmost point of mainland Europe. The peninsula is called Čorgašnjárga in Northern #Sámi, the working language of the herders, and Nordkinn in Norwegian. Channels of wind come down the fjords on either side and whip the land clean. Near the coast of Lakesfjorden, the herders find #reindeer gathered on the northern side of a wooden fence several miles long. They open a gate and begin to funnel the animals south toward a brown depression in the landscape, where, inside a labyrinth of pens, corrals, and fence-lined paths, several hundred more reindeer, and a dozen herders, are waiting.

    “In summer 2020, the waning days of the midnight sun, the photographer Carleen Coulter and I traveled across Troms og Finnmark, Europe’s northernmost county, following reindeer herders during calf-marking season. The county is curved like the blade of a knife, tracing the edge of a belt of land that crosses #Norway, #Sweden, and #Finland into #Russia’s #KolaPeninsula. The region — known as Sápmi to the Sámi people who are its most longstanding inhabitants — is sometimes called Europe’s #LastWilderness. It is a rare sanctuary in the northern world, one where a #lynx, #stoat, or #salmon might emerge into being, live out its hungry life, and die without encountering any evidence of humankind.

    “This wildness is now threatened, not only by #ClimateChange but by some of the very forces developed to combat that existential peril. The most visible sign of change is the wind turbine, hundreds of which are proposed for construction in Sápmi as part of Norway’s commitment to a climate-neutral future. Although its total output remains small compared to producers like #Germany and #Spain, Norway is home to one of the fastest-growing #WindIndustries in the world, and tripled its onshore capacity between 2018 and 2020. Much of the growth is taking place in Troms og Finnmark, where #WindFarms have proven to be uncommonly productive. The 15-turbine Raggovidda wind park in East Finnmark, one developer told the Independent Barents Observer, 'is the most efficient in Norway, in all of Europe — perhaps in the whole world.' It is so productive that its output has far outstripped the needs of its host municipality. Its owners sought and received a concession for the installation of extra power cables to export the electricity for profit. Plans for more ambitious wind parks, some with hundreds rather than dozens of turbines, are pending approval.

    “If you have hiked or driven past one, you will know the repetitive strangeness of a field of wind turbines. The effect is only enhanced near the Arctic Circle, where they are perched on treeless plateaus and holy mountains, surrounded by empty sky, each airfoil the size and shape of 747’s wing. Reindeer will not go near them, although the mountains, cool and #lichen-covered, are important summer grazing pastures. As a result, the animals starve, overheat, or become disoriented and are hit by cars.

    “The corral where herders were marking reindeer that September is part of Norway’s second-largest herding district; Lágesduottar encompasses large tracts of public land in eastern Troms og Finnmark. There are nineteen reindeer concessions employing around one hundred people, as one linguist and herder present at the marking, Máret Laila Anti, explained, 'from babies to great-grandmothers.' With few exceptions, only #IndigenousSámi people are permitted to hold concessions in Norway. A concession cannot be bought or sold, only inherited or abandoned.

    “Four wind power projects have been proposed within Lágesduottar district. Given the typical grazing paths of reindeer, the parks would also affect three other herding communities, totaling more than sixty concessions and about three-hundred people. If constructed, they would almost certainly spell the end of herding in the region. The extra work created by the wind parks—the loss of grazing grounds, the additional fences and labor required—would cause some herders to abandon their concessions. This would have a domino effect, Anti believed. Although reindeer themselves are family property, the land they graze is collectively managed, a division shared by #nomadic #pastoral societies around the world. Families gather together to make lighter work of marking and fence repair. 'If two families leave,' Anti said, 'the work on the others increases, and causes more to abandon herding, and the whole community will collapse.'

    “Like reindeer herding, wind energy requires huge reserves of land—between ten and a hundred times the land required by coal-fired electricity, according to one estimate. Because turbines are frequently the target of urban activists who complain that they obstruct views and kill birds, developers find space where they always have: on rural land used and occupied by disenfranchised minority and indigenous groups. In Norway, the rise of mega-farms has punctured reindeer #MigrationPaths and imperiled longstanding strategies of land management. Although herders make up only a small minority of Sámi communities in Norway, their loss is a potent symbol of these changes, resistance to which is often framed around the reindeer’s life cycle.

    “Following herders across landscapes filled with wind farms and proposed construction sites, we visited coastal fishing towns, camped along the last #WildSalmon refuge in Europe, and attended a plenary session of the Sámi Parliament, in Karasjok, where we met representatives who felt they had been silenced by #LargeEnergyFirms. One member of parliament, Maja Kristin Jama, came from a herding family who had grazed their reindeer in the Fosen herding district, now home to Europe’s largest onshore wind park. In 2020, Norway’s Supreme Court determined that the park had violated protected #cultural rights, and in 2021 ruled its licenses invalid, but turbines are still operational and there are no plans to dismantle the site. 'We can talk, we can discuss, we can protest, we can ‘have dialogues,' Jama said. 'But in the end, we can’t really affect these plans.'

    thedial.world/issue-11/sami-re

    #CulturalGenocide #IndigenousRights #EnvironmentalRacism #SamiPeople #TraditionalLifestyle #EndangeredSpecies #BigEnergy #RightsViolations

  19. TY to @bojacobs for posting this news story.

    #FirstNations raise alarm over impact of planned #nuclear-waste dump on #Ottawa drinking water

    by Marie Wolf, Published August 9, 2023

    "'This is not just a problem of the #AlgonquinNation but all people on the #OttawaRiver. Why are we trying to put a radioactive mountain adjacent to the drinking water of millions of people that are south of this NSDF site?'

    "Verna McGregor, a Kitigan Zibi #Anishinabeg elder, plans to explain at the CNSC licensing hearing how the #Algonquins were bypassed in the establishment of the original #ChalkRiver nuclear site on their unceded territory in the 1940s, and regard the river as sacred to their culture."

    theglobeandmail.com/politics/a

    #InformedConsent #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife #NuclearWaste #IndigenousNews #IndigenousRights #DrinkingWater

  20. A pattern of government and corporate abuse! Who are they looking out for? Why profit! Don't believe the spin! #Greenwashing is just a PR gimmick!

    Power Grab: #Quebec vs. the #Innu Nation

    Behind the scenes, Quebec has fought for years to weaken Indigenous authority over their own land. Now that battle is spilling out into the public.

    by Christopher Curtis, Mar 13, 2023

    "The Innu territory is a sprawling landmass home to a rapidly declining herd of #caribou, some of the best #salmon fishing in North America and a people who’ve thrived there since time immemorial. It also happens to have vast deposits of rare metals and rivers wide enough to power our cities for generations."

    #IndigenousNews #IndigenousRights #CulturalGenocide #Hydropower #NaturalResourcesCouncilOfMaine #NRCM #Avangrid #CMP #CleanEnergy #Forests #SaveTheForest #SaveMaineForests #Canada #FirstNations #Maine #QuebecHydro

    Read more: rover.substack.com/p/power-gra

  21. From 2020. Don't believe that #QuebecHydro are for preserving nature, or the will of the voters, or respecting #NativeAmerican rights. They are all about making a buck!

    Indigenous group launch $4B lawsuit over huge hydro power project

    by Marc Montgomery, October 7, 2020

    "The #Innu say the project, begun in the late 1960’s and completed in the 1970’s, has flooded a vast area of ancestral lands causing #environmental and #cultural harm to their people.

    "In a statement, Innu Grand Chief Etienne Rich said, 'Over 50 years ago, #HydroQuébec and the provincial utility in #Newfoundland and #Labrador now called #NalcorEnergy, through the Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation, stole our land and flooded it in order to take advantage of the enormous hydro potential of the #ChurchillFalls,' adding, 'This project was undertaken without consulting us and without our consent'.

    "The Innu leaders said the flooded area of over 5,000 sq/km has covered traditional #BurialGrounds, hunting areas, #caribou migration paths and habitat for wildlife they depend on. They also said there was no #environmental assessment of the mega project, the second largest power generation project in #Canada, and among the biggest in the world."

    #IndigenousNews #IndigenousRights #CulturalGenocide #Hydropower #NaturalResourcesCouncilOfMaine #NRCM #Avangrid #CMP #CleanEnergy #Forests #SaveTheForests #SaveMaineForests #Innuit

    rcinet.ca/en/2020/10/07/indige