By Organización Comuna Amazónica
The aggressive advance of mining extractivism in Ecuador threatens the entire country. In our province, Napo, we are experiencing one of the most serious environmental disasters in our history, caused by the complicity of mining companies, illegal mining operators, and the government, who have formed a network of corruption that is poisoning our water sources and bleeding the jungle, affecting our economy and putting our health at risk.
Content Note: The following includes disturbing information on violence against Indigenous Peoples.
In November 2023, the University of California Network for Human Rights and Digital Fact-finding of the University of California, in partnership with Cultural Survival, published a Story Map on Indigenous land defenders who have been killed in Brazil.
By Bia'ni Madsa' Juárez López (Ayuuk and Binnizá)
The Tehuantepec Isthmus in Oaxaca, Mexico, is a territory shared among the Binnizá, Ikoots, Angpøn, and Ayuuk Peoples that produces 76.8 percent of the country's wind energy. As of January 2020, 1,600 wind turbines had been installed here at 32 wind farms, and thousands more are in construction plans, in an effort to secure "green energy" to combat climate change.
By Reynaldo A. Morales and Diana K. Elhard
In October 2023, Cultural Survival and our partner organization Qhana Pukara Kurmi submitted a joint alternative stakeholder report on the situation of Indigenous rights in Bolivia for the 111th session of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which will take place in Geneva from November 20-December 8, 2023.
By CS Staff
On September 20-24, 2023, overlooking Hoerikwaggoa (Table Mountain) in Cape Town, South Africa, Indigenous people from Africa and abroad gathered to exchange experiences about implementing the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in the context of mineral extraction.
By Dev Kumar Sunuwar (Koĩts-Sunuwar) CS staff
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, concluded his four-day visit to Nepal on November 1, where he highlighted the urgent need for global attention to the climate crisis in the Himalayas. Despite the war in the Middle East, he chose to visit Nepal, perhaps to draw attention to another catastrophe—the climate crisis—a month before UNFCCC COP28 is set to take place in Dubai.
By Tia-Alexi Roberts (Narragansett, CS Staff)
Quienes conformamos Cultural Survival expresamos nuestro profundo dolor por los miles de palestinos e israelíes muertos en las últimas semanas tras el horrible ataque y la toma de rehenes de civiles israelíes inocentes por parte de Hamás el 7 de octubre y el por bombardeo en curso de Gaza por parte del ejército israelí.
After nearly nine years in preventive detention, on September 28, 2023, Herminio Monfil (Mazatec) and Jaime Betanzos (Mazatec), political prisoners from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, were released from prison. In 2014, 40 people from the municipality were criminalized and some of them imprisoned accused of the murder of Manuel Zepeda Lagunas.
Cultural Survival expresses our profound grief for the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis killed in recent weeks after Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack and taking hostage of innocent Israeli civilians and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli military. We repudiate the current and decades-long genocidal violence against the Palestinian people. We add our voices to those of millions of people around the world demanding a safe corridor for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip and demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
