09 Aug 2021
Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.
The leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.
But Nenquimo, a 2020 United Nations Champion of the Earth, isn't only hoping to save the Waoroni. By protecting the Amazon, an important store of greenhouse gases, she’s hoping to save the planet.
“If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change,” says Nenquimo. “The struggle we do is for all humanity.”
On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, experts say governments must learn from the environmental examples set by indigenous communities, some of which have lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years. Otherwise, we risk accelerating the triple planetary crisis the world faces of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
"Biodiversity loss and climate change, in combination with the unsustainable management of resources, are pushing natural spaces around the world, from forests to rivers to savannahs, to the breaking point,” says Siham Drissi, Biodiversity and Land Management Programme Officer with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We absolutely need to protect, preserve and promote the traditional knowledge, customary sustainable use and expertise of indigenous communities if we want to halt the damage we’re doing – and ultimately save ourselves.”
If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change.
Nenquimo Nenquimo, leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people.
An ailing Earth
The planet is home to more than 476 million indigenous people living in 90 countries. Together, they own, manage or occupy about one-quarter of the world’s land. It is territory that has fared far better than most of the rest of the Earth.
A landmark 2019 report from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that the natural world is declining at a pace unprecedented in human history. Some three-quarters of the planet’s dry land has been “significantly altered” by human actions, which has imperiled crucial ecosystems, including forests, savannahs and oceans while pushing 1 million species towards extinction.
While environmental decline is accelerating in many indigenous communities, it has been “less severe” than in other parts of the world, the report found.
Experts say that is due in part to centuries of traditional knowledge and, in many communities, a prevailing view that nature is sacred. This knowledge, “encompasses practical ways to ensure the balance of the environment in which we live, so it may continue to provide essential services such as water, fertile soil, food, shelter and medicines,” says Drissi.
Conservation leaders
In many parts of the world, indigenous communities are at the forefront of conservation, according to a recent report supported in part by UNEP. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bambuti-Babuluko community is helping to protect one of Central Africa’s last remaining tracts of primary tropical forest. In Iran, the semi-nomadic Chahdegal Balouch oversee 580,000 hectares of fragile scrubland and desert. And in Canada’s far north, Inuit leaders are working to restore caribou herds, whose numbers had been in steep decline.
Including indigenous peoples and local communities in environmental governance and drawing from their knowledge enhances their quality of life. It also improves conservation, restoration, and the sustainable use of nature, which benefits society at large.
STORY
Indigenous peoples and the nature they protect
STORY
States have these 13 duties when it comes to biodiversity and human rights
Indigenous groups are often better placed than scientists to provide information on local biodiversity and environmental change, and are important contributors to the governance of biodiversity at local and global levels, the IPBES report noted.
Despite that, indigenous groups often see their land exploited and dispossessed and struggle to have a say in what happens in their territories.
“Governments need to recognize that cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities significantly contribute to conservation and can enhance national and global action on climate change,” says Drissi.
A key part of that process, she added, is recognizing indigenous land claims and embracing traditional ways of managing land.
Mounting threats
Because their lives are often intimately tied to the land, indigenous communities have been among the first to face the fallout from climate change. From the Kalahari Desert to the Himalaya Mountains to the Amazon Rainforest, droughts, floods and fires have beset communities already struggling with poverty and incursions onto their land. That makes it all the more imperative for the outside world to acknowledge the rights and practices of indigenous communities, said Nenquimo.
“The extractivists, the capitalists, the government – they say indigenous people are ignorant,” she says. “We, the indigenous people, know why climate change is happening… [humanity is] damaging and destroying our planet. As indigenous people, we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us.”
The International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is celebrated globally on 9 August. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires that free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples be obtained in matters of fundamental importance for their rights, survival, dignity, and well-being. Marking the start of the UN Decade for Ecosystems Restoration (2021-2030), UNEP is working with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to publish work on traditional knowledge for ecosystems restoration and resilience. UNEP has also established a policy to promote the protection of environmental defenders, and engages religious leaders and communities to work with the indigenous peoples to advocate for sound forest policies and the protection of the rights of its guardians through the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative.
As International Day of Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, Canada continues to fall short on treaties, social contracts
Mon., August 9, 2021
The International Day of Indigenous Peoples, celebrated on Aug. 9, was established in 1994 by the United Nations General Assembly. This year it has as its theme, “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”
As far as Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe is concerned, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action is a social contract in Canada, and stronger yet are the treaties, he says.
“The contracts themselves already exist in terms of treaties and other obligations the governments are technically supposed to have, but we're not seeing the benefit of that at the current time in my opinion,” said Niganobe.
Six days before the world marked the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, Curve Lake and Hiawatha First Nations, members of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario, observed Aug. 3 as a Day of Mourning.
That date was the 215th day of the year and honoured the 215 unmarked graves uncovered by Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc Nation on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
Only weeks after Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc unveiled its numbers, leadership of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan said ground penetrating radar on the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School indicated 751 probable burials.
Niganobe is hoping that the physical findings of unmarked graves are an awakening for the country.
“I think it's unfortunate that it takes events like this to kind of come forward before a lot of that movement takes place,” he said.
Niganobe points out that the TRC report on the legacy of the residential school system included a volume on lost children and unmarked graves in the report it released in 2015.
“You look at those reports and you do have all those potential avenues to take. It’s a matter of just addressing them,” he said.
“We do have existing agreements which some people call contracts (and) we call them treaties,” said International Chief Wilton Littlechild of Maskwacis in Alberta.
Littlechild says Canada does not need a “new social contract.” He points to existing agreements, which include treaties; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), with the federal government recently passing a bill for its implementation; the 94 Calls to Action delivered by the TRC in 2015; and the 231 Calls for Justice that came in 2019 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
“You've got four at least in Canada; solutions calling out for implementation. And if that's done, I'm not sure we need a new social contract or social agreement,” said Littlechild.
He was one of three commissioners with the TRC and has been active for decades at the international and national levels working for the rights of Indigenous peoples, including holding key roles for the UN on human rights and Indigenous rights.
“Those are solutions that are there that all need just to be implemented. I shouldn't say ‘just’ because it's not that easy. Had they been implemented already I think we'd be farther ahead than where we are today,” he said.
But nothing short of political will and individual commitments will make these social contracts happen, he says.
And the implementation of Calls to Action 53 through 56, which directs the creation of a National Council for Reconciliation (NCR).
“The purpose of that was … to be an independent oversight body to check on what exactly is going on across Canada. So where there's good practices we can learn from each other. Where there isn't any action, to question why there's no action,” said Littlechild, who was one of three commissioners on the TRC.
He adds that the NCR could also be an independent oversight body for the MMIWG’s Calls for Justice, considering both the TRC and MMIWG national inquiry call for the implementation of UNDRIP.
“Had (the NCR) been in place three to four years ago even, one or two years after our report, we would have been further ahead with respect to reconciliation, with respect to enforcement of treaties, the Calls for Justice, implementation of the declaration. They all seem to merge into one solution and that's implementation… We have the solutions in place. We just need to activate them,” said Littlechild.
As for the delay on the creation of the NCR, Littlechild, who was chair of the interim committee to look at establishing the NCR, knows only that they turned in their report to the government in June 2018.
The Crown-Indigenous Relations’ website reiterates Ottawa’s commitment to establishing the NCR. However, the only details offered are confirmation of the receipt of the report and the 2019 budget announcement of $126.5 million in fiscal year 2020-2021 to establish the NCR.
“My own timeframe is (that it’s) long past,” said Littlechild, but “won’t say the delay has been intentional.”
As for the federal legislation creating the UNDRIP Act, it sets aside two years to create an implementation plan. The legislation obligates the federal government to “take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the declaration.”
Littlechild says he is concerned about what will happen in moving forward with UNDRIP should the federal government call an election soon, which is strongly anticipated.
“Ever since I was a Member of Parliament myself I've always felt and argued that our issues should be non-partisan,” said Littlechild, who was the first treaty First Nations person to serve as an MP, a position he held for the Progressive Conservatives in the Wetaskiwin-Rimbey riding from 1988 to 1993.
“I think that we have a relationship with the Crown. It's not a political party. So I think it should be non-partisan. Indigenous issues should be a challenge to all parties to work together with us on solutions. When we become a debating point then nothing happens.”
Niganobe agrees, saying all the reports that have been undertaken deal with “non-partisan issues.”
He also says that Indigenous issues need to be “incredibly high” on party platforms, in both the upcoming federal election and the upcoming Ontario election.
“If you can address a lot of these issues, the social contract—the economic benefits for all, the social benefits for all—you can create a lot more certainty within Canada in terms of inclusion and in terms of investment and business, just contributions from Aboriginal people in general. That inclusion could lead to bigger things for Canada,” said Niganobe.
“To me, those contracts already exist. It's just an obligation on their part to start fulfilling them.”
On its website, the UN points to apologies, truth and reconciliation efforts, and legislative and constitutional reforms that have been undertaken over the years by countries to address how Indigenous people have been marginalized and excluded from political and economic activities. Despite these actions, inequalities still exist.
“Therefore, the building and redesigning of a new social contract as an expression of cooperation for social interest and common good for humanity and nature, is needed,” says the UN.
“The new social contract must be based on genuine participation and partnership that fosters equal opportunities and respects the rights, dignity and freedoms of all. Indigenous peoples’ right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and States,” reads the UN site.
August 9 marks the day of the first meeting in 1982 of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
The annual day was proclaimed in 1993 at the end of the Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Since then, two International Decades of the World’s Indigenous Peoples were declared (1995-2004 and 2005-2014). Next year will begin the Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Windspeaker.com
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com
Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.
The leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.
But Nenquimo, a 2020 United Nations Champion of the Earth, isn't only hoping to save the Waoroni. By protecting the Amazon, an important store of greenhouse gases, she’s hoping to save the planet.
“If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change,” says Nenquimo. “The struggle we do is for all humanity.”
On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, experts say governments must learn from the environmental examples set by indigenous communities, some of which have lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years. Otherwise, we risk accelerating the triple planetary crisis the world faces of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
"Biodiversity loss and climate change, in combination with the unsustainable management of resources, are pushing natural spaces around the world, from forests to rivers to savannahs, to the breaking point,” says Siham Drissi, Biodiversity and Land Management Programme Officer with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We absolutely need to protect, preserve and promote the traditional knowledge, customary sustainable use and expertise of indigenous communities if we want to halt the damage we’re doing – and ultimately save ourselves.”
If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change.
Nenquimo Nenquimo, leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people.
An ailing Earth
The planet is home to more than 476 million indigenous people living in 90 countries. Together, they own, manage or occupy about one-quarter of the world’s land. It is territory that has fared far better than most of the rest of the Earth.
A landmark 2019 report from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that the natural world is declining at a pace unprecedented in human history. Some three-quarters of the planet’s dry land has been “significantly altered” by human actions, which has imperiled crucial ecosystems, including forests, savannahs and oceans while pushing 1 million species towards extinction.
While environmental decline is accelerating in many indigenous communities, it has been “less severe” than in other parts of the world, the report found.
Experts say that is due in part to centuries of traditional knowledge and, in many communities, a prevailing view that nature is sacred. This knowledge, “encompasses practical ways to ensure the balance of the environment in which we live, so it may continue to provide essential services such as water, fertile soil, food, shelter and medicines,” says Drissi.
Conservation leaders
In many parts of the world, indigenous communities are at the forefront of conservation, according to a recent report supported in part by UNEP. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bambuti-Babuluko community is helping to protect one of Central Africa’s last remaining tracts of primary tropical forest. In Iran, the semi-nomadic Chahdegal Balouch oversee 580,000 hectares of fragile scrubland and desert. And in Canada’s far north, Inuit leaders are working to restore caribou herds, whose numbers had been in steep decline.
Including indigenous peoples and local communities in environmental governance and drawing from their knowledge enhances their quality of life. It also improves conservation, restoration, and the sustainable use of nature, which benefits society at large.
STORY
Indigenous peoples and the nature they protect
STORY
States have these 13 duties when it comes to biodiversity and human rights
Indigenous groups are often better placed than scientists to provide information on local biodiversity and environmental change, and are important contributors to the governance of biodiversity at local and global levels, the IPBES report noted.
Despite that, indigenous groups often see their land exploited and dispossessed and struggle to have a say in what happens in their territories.
“Governments need to recognize that cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities significantly contribute to conservation and can enhance national and global action on climate change,” says Drissi.
A key part of that process, she added, is recognizing indigenous land claims and embracing traditional ways of managing land.
Mounting threats
Because their lives are often intimately tied to the land, indigenous communities have been among the first to face the fallout from climate change. From the Kalahari Desert to the Himalaya Mountains to the Amazon Rainforest, droughts, floods and fires have beset communities already struggling with poverty and incursions onto their land. That makes it all the more imperative for the outside world to acknowledge the rights and practices of indigenous communities, said Nenquimo.
“The extractivists, the capitalists, the government – they say indigenous people are ignorant,” she says. “We, the indigenous people, know why climate change is happening… [humanity is] damaging and destroying our planet. As indigenous people, we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us.”
The International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is celebrated globally on 9 August. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires that free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples be obtained in matters of fundamental importance for their rights, survival, dignity, and well-being. Marking the start of the UN Decade for Ecosystems Restoration (2021-2030), UNEP is working with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to publish work on traditional knowledge for ecosystems restoration and resilience. UNEP has also established a policy to promote the protection of environmental defenders, and engages religious leaders and communities to work with the indigenous peoples to advocate for sound forest policies and the protection of the rights of its guardians through the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative.
Mon., August 9, 2021
The International Day of Indigenous Peoples, celebrated on Aug. 9, was established in 1994 by the United Nations General Assembly. This year it has as its theme, “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”
As far as Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe is concerned, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action is a social contract in Canada, and stronger yet are the treaties, he says.
“The contracts themselves already exist in terms of treaties and other obligations the governments are technically supposed to have, but we're not seeing the benefit of that at the current time in my opinion,” said Niganobe.
Six days before the world marked the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, Curve Lake and Hiawatha First Nations, members of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario, observed Aug. 3 as a Day of Mourning.
That date was the 215th day of the year and honoured the 215 unmarked graves uncovered by Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc Nation on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
Only weeks after Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc unveiled its numbers, leadership of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan said ground penetrating radar on the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School indicated 751 probable burials.
Niganobe is hoping that the physical findings of unmarked graves are an awakening for the country.
“I think it's unfortunate that it takes events like this to kind of come forward before a lot of that movement takes place,” he said.
Niganobe points out that the TRC report on the legacy of the residential school system included a volume on lost children and unmarked graves in the report it released in 2015.
“You look at those reports and you do have all those potential avenues to take. It’s a matter of just addressing them,” he said.
“We do have existing agreements which some people call contracts (and) we call them treaties,” said International Chief Wilton Littlechild of Maskwacis in Alberta.
Littlechild says Canada does not need a “new social contract.” He points to existing agreements, which include treaties; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), with the federal government recently passing a bill for its implementation; the 94 Calls to Action delivered by the TRC in 2015; and the 231 Calls for Justice that came in 2019 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
“You've got four at least in Canada; solutions calling out for implementation. And if that's done, I'm not sure we need a new social contract or social agreement,” said Littlechild.
He was one of three commissioners with the TRC and has been active for decades at the international and national levels working for the rights of Indigenous peoples, including holding key roles for the UN on human rights and Indigenous rights.
“Those are solutions that are there that all need just to be implemented. I shouldn't say ‘just’ because it's not that easy. Had they been implemented already I think we'd be farther ahead than where we are today,” he said.
But nothing short of political will and individual commitments will make these social contracts happen, he says.
And the implementation of Calls to Action 53 through 56, which directs the creation of a National Council for Reconciliation (NCR).
“The purpose of that was … to be an independent oversight body to check on what exactly is going on across Canada. So where there's good practices we can learn from each other. Where there isn't any action, to question why there's no action,” said Littlechild, who was one of three commissioners on the TRC.
He adds that the NCR could also be an independent oversight body for the MMIWG’s Calls for Justice, considering both the TRC and MMIWG national inquiry call for the implementation of UNDRIP.
“Had (the NCR) been in place three to four years ago even, one or two years after our report, we would have been further ahead with respect to reconciliation, with respect to enforcement of treaties, the Calls for Justice, implementation of the declaration. They all seem to merge into one solution and that's implementation… We have the solutions in place. We just need to activate them,” said Littlechild.
As for the delay on the creation of the NCR, Littlechild, who was chair of the interim committee to look at establishing the NCR, knows only that they turned in their report to the government in June 2018.
The Crown-Indigenous Relations’ website reiterates Ottawa’s commitment to establishing the NCR. However, the only details offered are confirmation of the receipt of the report and the 2019 budget announcement of $126.5 million in fiscal year 2020-2021 to establish the NCR.
“My own timeframe is (that it’s) long past,” said Littlechild, but “won’t say the delay has been intentional.”
As for the federal legislation creating the UNDRIP Act, it sets aside two years to create an implementation plan. The legislation obligates the federal government to “take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the declaration.”
Littlechild says he is concerned about what will happen in moving forward with UNDRIP should the federal government call an election soon, which is strongly anticipated.
“Ever since I was a Member of Parliament myself I've always felt and argued that our issues should be non-partisan,” said Littlechild, who was the first treaty First Nations person to serve as an MP, a position he held for the Progressive Conservatives in the Wetaskiwin-Rimbey riding from 1988 to 1993.
“I think that we have a relationship with the Crown. It's not a political party. So I think it should be non-partisan. Indigenous issues should be a challenge to all parties to work together with us on solutions. When we become a debating point then nothing happens.”
Niganobe agrees, saying all the reports that have been undertaken deal with “non-partisan issues.”
He also says that Indigenous issues need to be “incredibly high” on party platforms, in both the upcoming federal election and the upcoming Ontario election.
“If you can address a lot of these issues, the social contract—the economic benefits for all, the social benefits for all—you can create a lot more certainty within Canada in terms of inclusion and in terms of investment and business, just contributions from Aboriginal people in general. That inclusion could lead to bigger things for Canada,” said Niganobe.
“To me, those contracts already exist. It's just an obligation on their part to start fulfilling them.”
On its website, the UN points to apologies, truth and reconciliation efforts, and legislative and constitutional reforms that have been undertaken over the years by countries to address how Indigenous people have been marginalized and excluded from political and economic activities. Despite these actions, inequalities still exist.
“Therefore, the building and redesigning of a new social contract as an expression of cooperation for social interest and common good for humanity and nature, is needed,” says the UN.
“The new social contract must be based on genuine participation and partnership that fosters equal opportunities and respects the rights, dignity and freedoms of all. Indigenous peoples’ right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and States,” reads the UN site.
August 9 marks the day of the first meeting in 1982 of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
The annual day was proclaimed in 1993 at the end of the Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Since then, two International Decades of the World’s Indigenous Peoples were declared (1995-2004 and 2005-2014). Next year will begin the Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Windspeaker.com
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com
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