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	Indigenous Rights approach a solution to Climate Change Crisis by Friday Phiri IPS, IPMG, Rights and Resources Initiative, agencies   June 2019 (IPS)   The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) was held in Bonn, Germany to rally behind a new approach to achieving a future that is more inclusive and sustainable than the present, through the establishment of secure and proper rights for all.   Experts, political leaders, NGOs and indigenous peoples and communities gathered to deliberate on a methodology that emphasises rights for indigenous peoples and local communities in the management and perseveration of landscapes. The forum took place alongside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Bonn Climate Change Conference.   The forum focused giving land rights the visibility needed to showcase that a rights approach is a solution to the climate change crisis, and to develop a higher standard for rights.   Indigenous peoples, local communities, women and youth, are believed to be the world's most important environmental stewards but they are also among the most threatened and criminalised groups with little access to rights.   'We're defending the world, for every single one of us', said Geovaldis Gonzalez Jimenez, an indigenous peasant leader from Montes de Maria, Colombia.   But industries such as fossil fuels, large-scale agriculture, mining and others are not only endangering landscapes but also the lives of the people therein.   Already this year, said Gonzalez, his region witnessed 135 murders, adding that the day before the start of the Forum a local leader was killed in front of a 9-year-old boy.   According to the United Nations, the land belonging to the 350 million indigenous peoples across the globe is one of the most powerful shields against climate change as it holds 80 percent of the world's biodiversity and sequesters nearly 300 billion metric tons of carbon.   It is for this reason that amid the urgency to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under pressure from the climate threat, dialogues about the global future have begun to wake up to the fact that indigenous peoples relationships with the natural world are not only crucial to preserve for their own sakes, but for everyone.   The drafting of the document of rights was led by Indigenous Peoples Major Group (IPMG) for Sustainable Development and the Rights and Resources Initiative in the months leading up to the GLF.   Wider discussions and workshops over the two days served as a consultation on the draft (which is expected to be finalised by the end of the year) as a concrete guide for organisations, institutions, governments and the private sector on how to apply different principles of rights. This includes the rights to free, prior and informed consent; gender equality; respect to cultural heritage; and education.   U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Vicky Tauli-Corpuz said lands managed by indigenous peoples with secure rights have lower deforestation rates, higher biodiversity levels and higher carbon storage than lands in government-protected areas.   But Diel Mochire Mwenge, who leads the Initiative Programme for the Development of the Pygme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the largest indigenous forest communities in Central Africa, said he has witnessed more than one million people being evicted from the national parkland where they have long lived. He explained that they had not been given benefits from the ecotourism industries brought in to replace them and were left struggling to find new income sources.   'Our identity is being threatened, and we need to avoid being completely eradicated', said Mwenge.   In Jharkhand, India, activist Gladson Dungdung, whose parents were murdered in 1990 for attending a court case over a local land dispute, said an amendment to India's Forest Rights Act currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court could see 7.5 million indigenous peoples evicted from their native forest landscapes. The act can impact a further 90 million people who depend on these forests resources for their survival, he said.   The amendment, Dungdung said, would also give absolute power to the national forest guard; if a guard were to see someone using the forest for hunting or timber collection, they could legally shoot the person on-sight.   'Indigenous peoples are right on the frontline of the very real and dangerous fight for the world's forests', said actor and indigenous rights activist Alec Baldwin in a video address.   'Granted that indigenous peoples are the superheroes of the environmental movement', Jennifer Morris, president of Conservation International wondered why they are not heard until they become victims. 'Why do we not hear about these leaders until they've become martyrs for this cause?'   The examples of intimidation, criminalisation, eviction and hardship shared throughout the first day clearly showcased what indigenous peoples and local communities go through to preserve the forests or 'lungs of the earth'.   The rights approach, according to conveners of the GLF, aims to strengthen respect, recognition and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities as stewards and bearers of solutions to landscape restoration, conservation, and sustainable use. It also aims to end persecution of land and environment defenders; build partnerships to enhance engagement and support for rights-based approaches to sustainable landscapes across scales and sectors; and, scale up efforts to legally recognise and secure collective land and resource rights across landscapes.   'By implementing a higher standard, we can both uphold and protect human rights and develop conservation, restoration and sustainable development initiatives that embrace the key role Indigenous peoples and local communities are already playing to protect our planet', said Joan Carling, co-convener of IPMG.   IPMG recognises that indigenous and local communities are bearers of rights and solutions to common challenges.   'This will enable the partnership that we need to pave the way for a more sustainable, equitable and just future', added Carling.   And the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Director General, Robert Nasi, said when rights of local communities and indigenous peoples are recognised, there are significant benefits for the fight against climate change and environmental degradation.   'Whoever controls the rights over these landscapes has a very important part to play in fighting climate change', he said.   In the climate and development arenas, the most current alarm being sounded is for rights - securing the land rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples, local communities and the marginalised members therein.   How can these custodians of a quarter of the world's terrestrial surface be expected to care for their traditional lands if the lands don't, in fact, belong to them? Or, worse, if they're criminalised and endangered for doing so?   The basic principles of a 'higher standard' already exist, such as free, prior and informed consent, according to Alain Frechette of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). What has been lacking, he said, is the application of principles.   http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/indigenous-rights-approach-solution-climate-change-crisis/ http://www.globallandscapesforum.org/ http://indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/ http://rightsandresources.org/en/blog/ Visit the related web page
	Canada First Nation chiefs ask for reckoning after 751 unmarked graves discovered by Globe & Mail, CBC News, agencies Canada   June 2021   Canada First Nation chiefs ask for reckoning after 751 unmarked graves discovered, by Leyland Cecco in Toronto for Guardian News.   A First Nation in Canada’s Saskatchewan province is treating a now-defunct residential school as a “crime scene” following the discovery of 751 unmarked graves just weeks after a similar discovery in British Columbia prompted a fresh reckoning over the country’s colonial past.   Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation said that the graves were found on the site of the Marieval Indian residential school, also known as Grayson, after a search with ground-penetrating radar was launched on 2 June.   “This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves,” said Delorme at a press conference on Thursday morning, adding that the discovery has “reopened the pain” that many suffered at the school. “The grave site is there. It is real.”   From the 19th century, more than 150,000 First Nations children were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society.   The children were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and thousands died from disease, neglect and suicide.   Cowessess First Nation said that the number of unmarked graves at the site is “the most significantly substantial to date in Canada”.   It is not known how many of the remains belong to children or if any adults were also buried, Delorme said. He added that local residents alleged that the graves’ headstones were illegally removed. “We didn’t remove these headstones. Removing headstones is a crime in this country. And we are treating this like a crime scene.”   Last month the remains of 215 children, some as young as three, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.   The Marieval school operated from 1898 to 1996 about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan. The Cowessess First Nation took over the school’s cemetery from the Catholic church in the 1970s.   News of the discovery prompted a fresh outpouring of grief and frustration from national leaders.   “We are seeing the results of the genocide that Canada committed – genocide on our treaty land,” said chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nation. “Canada will be known as a nation that tried to exterminate the First Nations. Now we have evidence.”   In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission described the schools policy as one of “cultural genocide”. In recent weeks, there have been growing calls for the Catholic church, which operated many of the schools, to release its records on the institutions.   “Our people deserve more than apologies and sympathies, which we are grateful for. Our people deserve justice,” said Cameron.   The Assembly of First Nations national chief, Perry Bellegarde, who comes from Little Black Bear First Nation in the the province of Saskatchewan, tweeted that the latest discovery is “absolutely tragic, but not surprising”.   “I urge all Canadians to stand with First Nations in this extremely difficult and emotional time.”   The grim discovery brings the total of unmarked graves discovered in the past month to about 1,000, with experts predicting more will come as provincial governments announce funding to help Indigenous communities conduct their own searches.   “We will do a search on every Indian residential school site and we will not stop there. We will also search all of the sanatoriums and Indian hospitals and all the sites where people were abused or neglected and murdered,” said Cameron. “We will tell the stories of our children of our people who died, who were killed by the state, by the churches. We won’t stop.”   The Canadian government formally apologized in parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant.   “I always wonder how a person who’s supposed to be a Christian person, a priest, can abuse a seven-year-old girl,” Carol Lavallee, who was taken from her home at age six in a cattle truck to attend Marieval, told a provincial healing gathering in 2007.   Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages; they also lost touch with their parents and customs.   Indigenous leaders have argued that the legacy of abuse and intergenerational trauma persists today as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.   “A lot of the pain that we see in our in our people right now comes from there,” elder Florence Florence Sparvier, a former residential school student, told reporters at the press conference. “They made us believe we didn’t have souls.”   Both Cameron and Delorme said the work was only the beginning in a long process of identifying and properly commemorating those who died.   “We will find more bodies and we will not stop until we find all of our children,” said Cameron.   http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/first-national-day-for-truth-reconciliation-1.6194927 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/24/canada-school-graves-discovery-saskatchewan http://canadians.org/update/july-1st-2021-turning-grief-action http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/canadas-colonial-reckoning-5253/ http://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1093412 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01432-X/fulltext   June 2019   National Inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released. (Globe & Mail, CBC News)   The head of the commission that investigated the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women says testimony from victims' families led her to the inescapable conclusion that a genocide is being perpetrated against Canada's First Peoples.   The federal government, which ordered the inquiry, pledged to act on its recommendations but did not endorse that key finding of the commission's final report.   The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which was tasked with uncovering the systemic causes of the violence, released the 1,200-page document in an emotional ceremony at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau on Monday that included hundreds of family members of women who have been killed or vanished.   Chief Commissioner Marion Buller told the crowd that the Canadian state has deliberately and systemically violated racial, gender, human and Indigenous rights. 'That was designed', Ms. Buller said, 'to displace Indigenous peoples from their lands, social structures and governance, to eradicate their existence as nations and communities, families and individuals, and is the cause of the disappearances, murders and violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls'.   'This is genocide', said Ms. Buller, a Cree and a member of the Mistawasis First Nation in Saskatchewan who was the first Indigenous woman appointed as a Provincial Court judge in British Columbia.   'Based on the evidence that we heard and read', she later told reporters, 'it was an inescapable conclusion'.   Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was handed a copy of the massive report toward the end of the ceremony, promised that his government would not allow the 231 recommendations - which the inquiry terms 'calls to justice' to sit on a shelf.   'We will conduct a thorough review of this report and we will develop and implement a national action plan to address violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people', the Prime Minister said.   'The commission has outlined the way forward', Mr. Trudeau said. 'You have my word that my government will turn the inquiry's calls to justice into real, meaningful, Indigenous-led action'.   Mr. Trudeau did not use the word 'genocide' when speaking in Ottawa, despite being directly asked to do so in a call from the crowd. But late Monday afternoon in Vancouver, he did so at the opening plenary of the international Women Deliver conference.   'Earlier this morning, the national inquiry formally presented their final report, in which they found that the tragic violence that Indigenous women and girls experienced amounts to genocide', the Prime Minister said to applause from the crowd.   The Prime Minister's Office said the government accepted the finding of 'cultural genocide' in the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).   Carolyn Bennett, the federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, and David Lametti, the Justice Minister, would not endorse the finding of genocide after the ceremony.   'We're going to leave the actual use of the term 'genocide' to academics and experts', Mr. Lametti said. 'What we have said today is we have a responsibility to the people - to the survivors, to the families of the women and girls who have gone missing or have been murdered. We have a responsibility for fixing the problem'.   Ms. Buller, on the other hand, said the government's acknowledgment of a genocide is unimportant. 'We don't need to hear the word 'genocide' come out of the Prime Minister's mouth', she said, 'because the families have told us, the survivors have told us, their truths'.   The massive report makes recommendations on such diverse topics as culture, health, human rights, transportation, media and policing. It includes, for instance, a call for a 'guaranteed annual livable income for all Canadians', and for all governments to prevent the apprehension of children based on poverty or cultural bias.   The report's calls for justice are much more expansive than the TRC's 94 calls to action. Commissioner Qajaq Robinson, a non-Indigenous woman from Nunavut, said there is much Mr. Trudeau and his ministers can do in the short term. Specifically, she said, the government could end gender discrimination in the Indian Act, invest in victims services and begin to change its own policies and protocols.   Many family members of victims waited decades for an inquiry, and they were anxious and emotional at the release of its findings. Some broke down in tears on the stage when asked to read one of the calls for justice.   Laurie Odjick, whose teenage daughter Maisy went missing from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation in Quebec in September, 2008, said she hoped the report would 'open the eyes of Canada to finally listen and finally see, the violence that is taking place against Indigenous women and girls'.. 'I know we as families won't let them forget. And we are going to keep fighting for justice'.   Sharon McIvor, a lawyer and activist and member of the Lower Nicola Indian Band in British Columbia, is among those who have been calling for an inquiry for decades. 'To have [the report] released today, and it's actually a reality, is something I didn't think I would see', Ms. McIvor said.   She said she supports the use of the term 'genocide', saying government laws and policies resulted in Indigenous women being treated as lesser human beings. 'If you want to get rid of their people, you have to get rid of their women', she said.   Lorelei Williams, the founder of the dance group Butterflies in Spirit, paid tribute to the women and families who testified before the inquiry. The DNA of her cousin, Tanya Holek, was found on the farm of serial killer Robert Pickton.   'Canadians need to stop being racist and being in denial about the genocide of our people', Ms. Williams said. 'All of the systems are against us, to this day'.   Perry Bellegarde, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said that, between the residential-school system and the history of the Indian Act, there is no question there has been a genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada.   'It takes some time for people to get it, that this is really the truth', Mr. Bellegarde said.   Murray Sinclair, the senator who was the head of the TRC, said the cultural genocide found by his commission is just one aspect of the crime against humanity.   The residential schools, and violence against Indigenous women and girls, 'was all part of that overall approach to eliminating Indigenous people from the land and to take their culture away from them and to drive them away from their communities', Mr. Sinclair said. A dialogue around reconciliation is not possible unless people know what they are reconciling, he said, and genocide is part of what we have to reconcile.   http://tgam.ca/2EQC0uD http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mmiwg-inquiry-deliver-final-report-justice-reforms-1.5158223 http://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ Visit the related web page
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