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Indigenous Peoples

Guatemala is Hungry for Justice

By: Grassroots International | September 15, 2009

Earlier this week, the BBC produced a shocking article: “Eyewitness: Guatemala food crisis.” The piece exposes the sad reality that haunts families throughout the country, particularly those in indigenous and peasant communities. I also encountered this dire situation -- children dying of starvation and many others suffering from hunger-related diseases -- during my visit to Guatemala last April, when I heard from our local partners that many peasant communities were showing signs of a food shortage.
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Indigenous Peoples

[Cassava] Bread and Roses: Brazilian Farmers Seek a Dignified Life

By: Carol Schachet | July 29, 2009

During our visit to Brazil earlier this month, Saulo Araujo and I met with Grassroots International’s partners and the communities in which they work. I had prepared myself to talk about a range of issues, from Creole seeds to water scarcity to land occupation. I hadn’t expected to hear so much about the importance of a dignified life.
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Indigenous Peoples

Honduras: Crisis of Democracy & Human Rights

By: Nikhil Aziz | July 2, 2009

Last April my colleague Saulo Araujo (Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica) and I visited Honduras. What impressed us the most was the strength and vibrancy of social movements, like our partners the Via Campesina (Central America) and COCOCH (the Honduran Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations), and our allies like COPINH (Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras) and OFRANEH (Honduran Black Fraternal Organization). And especially the strong and resilient women in the forefront of struggle. Afro-Hondurans like Leoncia and Wendy, Lencas like Pasqualita, and Mestizo women like Analina and Berta

At a candidates forum convened by the Via every single presidential candidate attended.
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Indigenous Peoples

Violence Sparked by US-Peru FTA Highlights the Need for Stronger Communal Resource Rights

By: Dory Dinoto with Saulo Araujo | July 1, 2009

The US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA), created in 2005 by the Bush and Garcia administrations, came into effect on February 1st, 2009. Since this time, several protests have been held within the country by indigenous groups, peasants and their supporters. At the heart of the protests are several laws, which have been enacted, and since revoked, by the Garcia administration under the FTA.
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Indigenous Peoples

Help Protect Democracy and Human Rights in Honduras

By: Carol Schachet | June 30, 2009

Social movement leaders in Honduras, including members of Grassroots International's partner, La Via Campesina, fear for their lives, as tens of thousands have gathered to protest Sunday's coup d'etat against President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya Rosales.

Please call on the Honduran Embassy to demand that the congress and military respect and guarantee the human rights of all Hondurans and reinstate the democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya.
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Indigenous Peoples

Grassroots International Grantee Honored

By: Carol Schachet | June 18, 2009

Ravi Rebbapragada Receives National leadership Award

Ravi Rebbapragada, coordinator of Mines, Minerals & Peoples-India (MM&P), received the National leadership Award - 2008 for Community Service and Social Upliftment. MM&P is a growing alliance of communities, individuals and institutions who are concerned and affected by mining, and a grant recipient of Grassroots International through the Global Activist Fund.

Below is a press release from MM&P describing the honor:

June 12, 2009
Visakhapatnam

Ravi Rebbapragada Receives National leadership Award for Social Service from Vice President Shri Hamid Ansari
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Indigenous Peoples

Building Indigenous Women’s Leadership – One, two, five women at a time

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 11, 2009

My colleague Saulo Araujo and I were recently in Guatemala visiting our partner CONIC (National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples & Campesinos). CONIC's staff took us to visit a local community they have been working with in the village of Cocorval, in the Department of Chimaltenango, over an hour's drive from Guatemala City on a "chicken bus."
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Indigenous Peoples

Food Security and Fair Trade Coffee

By: Lilian Autler | April 9, 2009

The Oaxaca State Coffee Producers Network (CEPCO), one of Grassroots International's partners in Mexico, works with largely indigenous coffee-growing families to fortify their economic wellbeing. CEPCO has been instrumental in strengthening organic coffee production among members and in diversifying the local economic base in an effort to ensure that local indigenous communities can stay on their traditional collectively owned land.
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Indigenous Peoples

Via Campesina calls for Peasant Rights

By: Grassroots International | March 2, 2009

On February 23, Grassroots International partner, the Via Campesina met with representatives of the United Nations in New York City to discuss ways to address the chronic problems faced by peasant communities around the globe.

The growing violation of resources rights of peasants by development policies - especially mega-projects whose main goal is to speed up the extraction and export of resources for corporate profits - is an issue that demands immediate attention.
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Indigenous Peoples

Climate Justice Now!

By: Nikhil Aziz | February 12, 2009

Climate Change is big business. Literally! Many corporations, including some of the worst polluters, are salivating at the prospects of potentially vast sums of money that could very well come their way in the name of saving the planet. Climate justice activists, including indigenous peoples, are rightly worried that in the rush to "save the planet" governments and international institutions (including the World Bank, for example) will once again put profits before people.

Photo courtesy of Sandra Yu, Detroiters for Environmental Justice
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Indigenous Peoples

“Nobody, No, Nobody is Gonna Rain on My Parade!”

By: Nikhil Aziz | February 5, 2009

"I simply gotta march, my heart's a drummer; nobody, no, nobody is gonna rain on my parade!"

I remembered the lyrics of this song, first sung by Barbra Streisand I think, as we marched – some 100,000 of us – in a torrential downpour through the streets of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Pará. It was the Opening March of the 2009 World Social Forum. Despite the rain, the enthusiasm of the crowds was contagious.
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Indigenous Peoples

In a World of Crises, Disastrous Governance

By: Grassroots International | January 30, 2009

It has become clear that the numerous crises we face today are a result of disastrous global governance formulas that try to accommodate powerful interests, instead of addressing the real issues.

And these formulas are getting old. Discredited in the public eye, global institutions led by a handful of nations, and dominated by corporate agendas, are losing ground.
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Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous Peoples Call On Us To Heed Their Call To Save The Amazon

By: Maria Aguiar | January 27, 2009

Nikhil Aziz, Grassroots International's Executive Director is in Brazil this week attending the World Social Forum (WSF), which is happening in Belem in the Amazon region of Brazil. For four days before the WSF our partner, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) did a special site visit to show international visitors including members of media the destruction that has been brought about by the agribusiness expansion in the Amazon region. They traveled through the southern part of Para state and saw the impacts of mining, logging and hydroelectric projects on the Amazon and its people.
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Indigenous Peoples

Zapotec Indigenous People in Mexico Demand Transparency from U.S. Scholar

By: Grassroots International | January 22, 2009

The Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) - a longtime partner of Grassroots International based in Mexico - denounced a recently conducted study in the Zapotec region by U.S. geography scholar Peter Herlihy. Prof. Herlihy failed to mention that he received funding from the Foreign Military Studies Office of the U.S. Armed Forces. The failure to obtain full, free and prior informed consent is a violation of the rights of indigenous communities as codified in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the United Nations in 2007. In addition, UNOSJO fears that this in-depth geographical mapping of indigenous communities may be used in some harmful manner by the military.
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Indigenous Peoples

Announcing: A New Popular Education Tool!

By: Carol Schachet | October 16, 2008

Grassroots International and the National Family Farm Coalition announce the release of a new popular education tool that can help you understand and fix the world food crisis: Food for Thought and Action: A Food Sovereignty Curriculum.
It's been said that "you are what you eat." In the face of a global food crisis, it's clear that we've been forced to swallow far more than what's on our plates. Our global food system is broken, with nearly a billion hungry people around the world and millions more forced from their failed farms as industrial agriculture privatizes and despoils our water, soil and biodiversity.
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Indigenous Peoples

Ecuadorians’ New Constitution Guarantees Resource Rights & Makes Food Sovereignty a Right

By: Grassroots International | October 2, 2008

On September 28, 2009, Ecuadorians approved a new constitution that includes an article granting nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." The new constitution recognizes the right of all Ecuadorians to have access to sufficient resources to feed themselves in a sustainable manner with respect to cultural differences between people and communities. A priority is local food production, recognizing implicitly that the right to adequate food represents, among many things, the right of the small food producers, harvesters and fisherpeople to acquire appropriate resources and the right to rely on the laws, measures and programs that assist them in providing food.
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Indigenous Peoples

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Sets Precedent in Ruling on Grassroots Grantee

By: Carol Schachet | September 3, 2008

Recently Grassroots International made a grant to the Indigenous Council of Roraima through Caritas Brasil in support of their struggle to gain legal recognition of the 6,500 square mile Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous territory, in Brazil’s northern Roraima state. In what may set a significant precedent, one of Brazil’s Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of the Indigenous Council.
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Indigenous Peoples

Farmers bringing message to the Food Crisis Summit in Rome expelled

By: Nikhil Aziz | June 4, 2008

Rome, Italy, 3 June 2008
Watch the video of the action in Rome!
Farmer and civil society leaders carrying out a peaceful action today in Rome, Italy at the FAO Summit on the Food Crisis were forcefully removed from the premises. At around 1:30pm farmers and representatives of civil society organisations staged an action at the press room to deliver a message that millions of additional people are joining the ranks of the hungry as the corporations that control the global food system are making record profits.
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Indigenous Peoples

Colombia: Challenging Corporate Power and State Terror

By: Carol Schachet | January 26, 2008

This Saturday, January 26th is the World Social Forum Global Day of Action. Please join Mass Jobs with Justice in solidarity with the mission of the WSF for:

Colombia: Challenging Corporate Power and State Terror

11AM-1PM at the Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, Boston MA.

Join Avi Chomsky, Orlando Acosta, Jeff Crosby and other organizers as they look at events in Colombia, free trade agreements, exploitation of natural resources, suppression of indigenous people, and targeting of workers.

Event to be followed by an action in solidarity with Colombia, marking the Global Day of Action.
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Indigenous Peoples

UN adopts historic Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

By: International Forum on Globalization | September 14, 2007

In an historic session of the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted. This Declaration, which outlines the basic rights and fundamental freedoms of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, has been in the making for nearly 25 years.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, indigenous Igarot activist from the Philippines and Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, stated: “The 13th of September 2007 will be remembered as an international human rights day for the Indigenous Peoples of the world, a day that the United Nations and its Member States, together with Indigenous Peoples, reconciled with past painful histories and decided to march into the future on the path of human rights.”
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