Indigenous peoples around the globe are making themselves heard in international arenas and at the national level. But many challenges remain in the fight for full recognition of all their rights.
Are Alaska’s Energy Riches Blowing in the Wind?
Barbara Maynard*
ST. LOUIS – Eight hundred km west of Anchorage, on the coast of Kangirlvar Bay off the Bering Sea, sits the Yup’ik community of Toksook Bay. Its 110 homes, a school and an airstrip are clustered in this coastal village. Residents make their living by commercial fishing, working for the school and local government, and subsistence hunting.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39955
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Q&A: ‘We Need Partners, Not Masters’
Interview with Evo Morales, President of Bolivia
ROME – Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Italy recently to receive a special award for his government’s commitment to social and health issues. He has made these issues a “political priority.”
(Watch an online video of President Morales dancing the cueca “Viva mi patria, Bolivia” with a Cochabambinean “cholita”.)
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39915
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‘Biofuels Can Hurt the Poor’
David Cronin
BRUSSELS – A body tasked with shaping European Union policy on biofuels is dominated by companies with a vested interest in promoting this source of energy, environmentalists say.
Oxfam has also expressed unease about how poor farmers are being driven from the land to make way for biofuel plantations. In a recent report, it cited UN estimates that 60 million indigenous people are at risk of being uprooted.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39945
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Australian Government Consistent in Opposing Indigenous Rights
Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE – Australia?s opposition to the United Nations General Assembly declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, passed in September, is in step with the government?s approach to domestic policies under Prime Minister John Howard.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39895
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PERU: Disappointing Talks on Mining Miss the Point
Milagros Salazar
LIMA – Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo signed a memorandum of understanding with mayors and governors opposed to the Majaz mining company?s Río Blanco project, which the people of the Piura highlands in northern Peru have been opposing for five years.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39874
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SRI LANKA: Civil War Brutality Hits New Lows
IPS Correspondents
COLOMBO – While Sri Lanka’s minister for human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe has denied allegations by a top United Nations official that torture is ‘routine’ in the country, there is little doubt that the renewed civil war has resulted in brutality hitting new lows.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39879
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GUATEMALA: Mayan Manuscript Returned (In Replica)
Inés Benítez
GUATEMALA CITY – A Mayan manuscript known as the Dresden Codex was acquired by the Royal Library of the court of Saxony in 1739. As of this week, an exact replica of the precious manuscript is on display in Guatemala, donated by the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany, which holds the original.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39823
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Q&A: “If You Are Poor, You Are Out”
Interview with Miloon Kothari, international housing advocate
VANCOUVER – Miloon Kothari, the U.N. special rapporteur for housing, recently visited Canada on a fact-finding mission to look at homelessness, aboriginal and women’s housing issues, and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39808
You’ll find more IPS indigenous news and links at: ipsnews.net/new_focus/indigenous_peoples/
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