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Rights of Mother Earth Haskell continues efforts of President Evo Morales

Marlon Santi, Ecuador, President CONAI, speaker at the
Rights of Mother Earth Gathering at Haskell, Kansas
Photo Stephen Leahy

Rights of Mother Earth Gathering Haskell continues effortsof President Evo Morales

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News
Indigenous Peoples from the Americas gathered at the Rightsof Mother Earth conference, April 4 –6, at Haskell Indian Nations University inLawrence, Kansas, continuing the effort began by Bolivian President Evo Moralesat the World Peoples Conference on Rights of Mother Earth and Climate Change inCochabamba, Bolivia.

Children of the jaguar

Marlon Santi, President of the Confederation of IndigenousNationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE,) described the difficult struggle to forceoil companies out of his homeland in Ecuador.

“This struggle is not easy, it is difficult. We have had tosuffer personally,” Marlon said, adding that now voices have joinedtogether from the north and south.

“We do not want this generation to be enslaved again,” Santisaid, pointing out that an Indigenous Nation without land can not exist. IndigenousPeoples that lose their language, lose their history. He said his peoples’architecture and science have been described as “ruins” by scientists, andstill his people have overcome these oppressors.

“If we remain silent, we will be obliterated,” Santi said,pointing out that the unity of Indigenous Peoples will overcome the lies,hypocrisy and violations of the rights of the people and Mother Earth.

Santi said Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador have joined marches from theAmazon, and as far away as the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, against miningon Indigenous lands. They have marched against the current “green” scam ofREDD, (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.)

Oil industry trucks responsible for children deaths in NorthDakota

Native Americans at the Haskell gathering, struggling to protect their people, and theland, air and water from destruction in the United States, included KandiMossett, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara from North Dakota.

Mossett said semi-trucks of the oil and gas industry haveresulted in the deaths of seven children and youths in the past the threeyears, including two children who were three and five years old. Still, electedtribal politicians and the Interior Department are pushing for more drilling ontribal lands, and less regulation of fracking. The land, air and water arealready devastated, poisoned with widespread pollution and degradation at FortBerthold, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.

North Dakota is among the windiest states, still the oil and gas industrycontinues to be the focus. “It is all about oil. People are dying where I comefrom, literally being killed by semi-trucks,” said Mossett, staff member of theIndigenous Environmental Network.

By recognizing rights of nature in its constitution, Ecuadorand a growing number of           communities in the United States are basing their environmentalprotection systems on the premise that nature has inalienable rights, just ashumans do. This premise is a radical but natural departure from the assumptionthat nature is property under the law, conference organizers said.

Native Voices: The power of place, spirit and memory

Anishinaabe Renee Gurneaushared how a dream led her to better understand the Creation Story and the realityof being part of the Earth and feeling its pain. Gurneau is the formerpresident of Red Lake Nation College in Red Lake, Minn.

Gurneau described how today is the time of the Seventh Fire,urging the people to rely on the strength from millenniums of ancestors carriedin their DNA.

Haskell professor Dr. Daniel Wildcat encouraged a newdialogue, based on spirit, power and place, and a renewal of the ancestral waysof life.

“Our power resides in the landscapes and seascapes that we call home,”Wildcat said, Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma.

Rueben George, Sundance Chief and Member of theTsleil-Waututh First Nation in northern Vancouver, BC, is the grandson of ChiefDan George. George began with thanks to the stewards of this land andcaretakers of this land.

George honored the caretakers of this land with a song of his grandfather ChiefDan George. His nature song is “Honor Mother Earth.”

Rueben said his grandfather shared with him how to be a human being. Hisgrandfather said, “We are the last of the human beings to follow this way oflife.”

Mona Polacca, Havasupai/Hopi, spoke about the foundation oflife. From the first water inside the mother’s womb, to the prayer upon whichlife depends, Polacca spoke of the spirituality of life.

Polacca, one of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers,began by remembering the words of Thomas Banyacya, “We are all related.”

Dine’ Robert Yazzie of the Dine’ Policy Institute, former Navajo Supreme Courtjudge, shares a Declaration of the Dine’ elders, the Roots of Dine’ Law. Yazzieshares the power of prayer, and the power of names and language, at the Rightsof Mother Earth Gathering in the Dine’ and English languages.

“There are still Holy People around. We still see the Holy People speakingto us through water, and through fire,” Yazzie said. Yazzie urges thoselistening to concentrate on the language and use your own indigenous thinking.The Declaration is in Title 1 of Navajo Nation Code adopted on Nov 8, 2002.

The Roots of Dine’ Law describes how the Holy People sang songs and offeredprayers and the earth and universe came into being, along with water, sacredmountains, air and plants. Fire, light and sacred stones came into being withresilience.

“This is the foremost, fundamental law set in place for us.”

Theft of Navajo and Hopi water rights underway by Arizona Congressmen
As Indigenous Peoples met in Kansas, Navajos and Hopis protested Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl in Tuba City, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation, and their scheme to steal Navajo and Hopi water rights to the Little Colorado River.

Supai/Hopi Mona Polacca pointed out in Haskell that the senators scheme to steal Navajo and Hopi water rights was created to benefit the Salt River Project which operates the Navajo Generating Station on the Navajo Nation. It is one of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the US and a major cause of greenhouse gases.

The senators are also seeking water for other polluting industries downstream in Phoenix and Tucson, where residents continue to live lavish lifestyles, with golf courses in the desert. The US House is now fast tracking this water theft scheme, HR 4067, sponsored by Rep. Ben Quayle.

At Haskell, conference organizers said the earliest rights of nature laws recognized the right forecosystems to exist and flourish, organizers said.

Others, including theEcuadorian constitutional provisions adopted in 2008, recognize the right fornature to exist, persist, evolve, and regenerate. Those laws also recognize the right of any person ororganization to defend, protect, and enforce those rights; and for payment ofrecovered damages to government to provide for the restoration of thoseecosystems, said organizers, the Indigenous Environmental Network, PachamamaAlliance, and Haskell professor Dr. Dan Wildcat.

Read more, and watch these video presentations at CensoredNews, recorded by Earthcycles: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
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Jodi Rave Spotted Bear

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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