Green Options

Over 1,000 indigenous rights activists formed human banners across a stretch of deforested Amazon rain forest this week at the World Social Forum in Brazil.

“We are the guardians of the forest,” said Marco Apurina, vice-coordinator of Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira. “This is a critical moment for indigenous peoples to unite with non-indigenous, activists, teachers, environmentalists, unions, government. The Amazon rainforest needs everyone to work together now to defend it before it’s too late.”

Occasionally, I come across a rare gem of a children’s book that warms my heart.  It’s not a book that attempts to “dumb down”, simplify, or infuse awkward silliness into an important issue facing the world today, such as global warming.  It’s not a book just for children.

It’s Tribal Alphabet, a multicultural children’s book presenting the ABCs of indigenous people.

Tribal Alphabet is beautifully illustrated and informative.  From Australian Aborigine to Zulu (and all the letters in between), children and parents learn about each tribe following the alphabetic progession.

Nn is for Nukak

Along the Amazon Basin, the Nukak migrate

A tribe never contacted ’til 1988.

The Nukak hunt monkeys, frogs, and peccaries too,

They fish for piranha in the rivers blue.

But now outsiders have sent in expeditions

And some Nukak suffer from disease and malnutrition.

Coca farmers and armies occupied their land

So the Nukak marched out, bow and arrown in hand.

The government of Bolivia announced plans on Tuesday to buy land and distribute it among landless indigenous groups in an effort to improve their lives.

One of these groups are the Guaraní people, who some claim are living in Bolivia in “a situation of servitude analogous to slavery.”

There are others who dispute that claim, including several prominent American ranchers. They claim that President Evo Morales’ government wants to confiscate their land using the bogus slavery accusation and redistribute it so that it can obtain rights to more of Bolivia’s profitable natural gas reserves.

Poachers killed an indigenous man on the remote Indian Andaman Islands after him and other members of his tribe, the Jarawa, requested that the poachers share their fish bounty with the tribe. The Andamans and their surrounding waters are protected but an increasing number of poachers have been fishing in the area.

Peruvian and Brazilian authorities are trading accusations that uncontrolled logging on the Peruvian side of the Amazon Forest is uprooting isolated Indian tribesmen forcing them to flee across the border into Brazil in search of untampered land and food.

Indigenous rights groups and Indian tribes researchers in Brazil now believe the uprooting may be a recipe for renewed inter-tribal conflicts over the resource that may suck governments of both nations into a row over the other’s responsibility in the affair, Reuters reports.

The First Nation community of Beardy’s and Okemasis has agreed with the alternative energy company SkyPower to develop a large wind park. It will be known as the Willow Cree Wind Project. According to the primary source for this article, construction of the park might begin as soon as 2010. The turbines will be built on approximately 12,000 acres of land located near Big Quill, a community near the town of Wynyard, Saskatchewan. The planned wind park will produce 100 megawatts of energy, enough to power 30,000 homes per year.

Chief Rick Gamble elaborated upon the other benefits that the Willow Cree Wind Project will provide. He is quoted as saying,

We chose to partner with SkyPower because of their extensive experience in wind development with First Nations. Moreover, the Willow Cree Wind Project will generate a reliable source of local benefits, including job training programs, employment for the local community, as well as have a positive impact on local tourism. The proposed development will be an important driver of local economic development for years to come.

The tribe’s partner SkyPower is the largest alternative energy company in Canada. One of its more notable projects is in Ontario. SkyPower commenced construction earlier this year on what it claims will be the largest solar park in North America. If all goes as planned, it will be finished late next year.

Just like in Peter Matthiessen’s classic book At Play in the Fields of the Lord, the gut reaction of several tribal members living in a remote area of the Amazon Rainforest was to shoot arrows at what was most likely the first plane they had ever seen passing by. You can see this yourself in one of the amazing photographs taken recently by the Brazilian government’s office of Indian Affairs.