Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The empowerment achieved by indigenous peoples in recent decades has arisen from the synergy created between the knowledge generated in the academy and the movements of resistance and rebellion and their organizations.
Only 5% of net forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon occurs in Indigenous territories and protected areas – even though these areas contain more than half of the region’s forest.
Who now lives fully integrated with a clan, tribe, or other group ‘emplaced’ for many generations in a particular location and fully integrated into the ecology of that place?
It’s been said that the fate of any great movement is to be cannibalized by the mainstream or to die. I’d like to suggest two others paths: zombiehood and courageous re-invention.
I don’t claim to know exactly what’s going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent—much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places, and even as people around the world plan for solidarity actions on Friday, the press has done a poor job of bringing it into focus.
Many indigenous territories have tremendous wind, solar, biomass and geothermal resources, and there are varying opinions as to whether energy-related climate change mitigation activities are having a positive or negative impact on local and indigenous communities.
