Tag: Mining

Apache Sue To Protect Religious Freedom

Apache Stronghold, on behalf of traditional Apache religious and cultural leaders, sued the Trump administration today in U.S. District Court in Phoenix to stop the transfer of Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Bildagoteel, to British-Australian corporate mining giant Rio Tinto and its subsidiary, Resolution Copper.

The lawsuit seeks to stop the U.S. Forest Service’s publication on January 15, 2021, of a final environmental impact statement that will trigger the transfer of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper.

The Forest Service is rushing publication to help Rio Tinto take possession of Oak Flat before the end of the Trump administration, despite opposition by Apache Stronghold, San Carlos Apache Tribe, White Mountain Apache Tribe and hundreds of other Native American tribes.

No Holiday For Honduran Anti-Mining Activists

For the families of eight water protectors in Honduras, there will be no holiday season this year. They will continue to fight for the freedom of their loved ones who have each been jailed for up to two years for participating in a struggle to keep iron ore mining out of the headwaters of the rivers they depend on.

“It is the start of a new stage of struggle, a stage of unity and we are not going to stay at home,” said Juana Zúniga, the wife of one of the eight imprisoned water protectors, during a December 21 press conference, “The joy of spending Christmas with family has been taken away from us, but we will nonetheless continue fighting. We will continue struggling for the freedom of our compañeros.”

Activism Honduras Mining

Statement On The Defense Of Chi’chil Bildagoteel, Oak Flat

The Alliance for Global Justice stands in solidarity with Apache Clans and over 300 Native Nations who seek to protect the Oak Flat site of south-eastern Arizona from devastating copper mining extraction. For over ten years, the San Carlos Apache and neighboring tribes have mobilized to prevent the destruction of this sacred land, which for centuries has been revered as a holy site by the Apache. Oak Flat holds the history, lives and prayers of at least eight Apache Clans and two Apache Western Bands, is home to a wealth of medicinal and edible plants, burial grounds and water sources rising from the Apache Leap Tuff aquifer.

Indigenous Sovereignty Mining Oak Flat Sacred sites

Trump Administration Is Rushing To Mine Sacred Tribal Land

In yet another attack on the environment before leaving office, the Trump administration is seeking to transfer ownership of San Carlos Apache holy ground in Oak Flat, Arizona, to a copper mining company.

The administration pushed to finish the environmental review process, a necessary step to transfer ownership to copper mining company Resolution Copper, and its two parent companies Rio Tinto and BHP, to December 2020, almost a full year ahead of the planned completion.

“The Trump administration is cutting corners and doing a rushed job just to take care of Rio Tinto…”

Arizona Indigenous Sovereignty Mining Trump Administration

Indigenous Peoples Are Using Ancestral Organizing Practices

As the effects of Covid-19 continue to be felt unequally around the globe, Indigenous peoples, such as the Xinka in Guatemala, are finding ways to organize and care for each other, while firmly rooting their response in ancestral practices that have sustained them throughout time.

The Xinka people mostly live in southeastern Guatemala, in the municipalities of Santa Rosa, Jalapa, Jutiapa, and Escuintla. Since the time of Spanish colonization, the Xinka have fought to protect their land and culture. Today, they continue asserting their rights to self-determination, to fight for recognition from the Guatemalan government, and to resist transnational mining companies set on extracting large amounts of silver from their territory, which hosts one of the largest-known deposits in the world.

COVID-19 Guatemala Indigenous Resistance Mining

On Contact: Paying The Land

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to comics journalist Joe Sacco about his new book, ‘Paying the Land’. In the book Sacco travels to the frozen Canadian Northwest Territories to reveal the Dene people in conflict over the costs and benefits of the resource extraction industry and development.

The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around, and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being.

Canada Indigenous Rights Land Rights Mining

Latin Americans Fighting Mining Companies During COVID19

Over the years, the mining industry has taken advantage of dictatorship, disasters, and a variety of distractions to expand operations in Latin America. In the time of Covid-19, with entire populations under lockdown and economies falling apart, mining companies have also hopped on the pandemic profiteering bandwagon.

In Latin America, the areas of interest to mining companies whether they are exploring or digging for gold, silver, copper, iron ore, and other minerals can extend to vast areas of entire countries. Their activities also affect important ecosystems. These include high-altitude wetlands and glacier systems in the Andes, which are crucial sources of water for millions of people. Mining companies also have their sights set on the Amazon basin, the health and integrity of which is crucial to the future of all. The principle obstacle standing in their way to unfettered extraction has been local communities and Indigenous peoples unwilling to accept the destruction of their land, water, and ways of life.

COVID-19 Environment Latin America Mining

The White Lobby: When The U.S. Was Sanctions-Buster Extraordinaire

The bullet holes were what stuck with me. I visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during the summer of 2016, at the head of the West Point civil rights history staff ride – a two week trip across the American South for select cadets in my classes. It had only been a year since the young white supremacist Dylan Roof had murdered nine people at the famed historically black church. So it was eery to attend the very same evening prayer session that he’d shot up and glimpse the persistent pocked marked evidence on the walls. Much was later made of Roof’s web posts, particularly his ubiquitous photos with Confederate iconography. These set off a welcome national debate on the display of the secessionist battle flag and other southern civil war symbols.

Corporatism Mining Sanctions White Supremacy Zimbabwe

Colombian Farmers Continue Push Against Mining, For Peace

“What we have has cost us a lot of sweat,” said Ariel Velásquez, as an iridescent green hummingbird flitted between the flowers outside his home in search of nectar. “We don’t want mining in our territory.” A 36-year-old farmer, Velásquez lives at the very edge of Vereda La Soledad, a coffee and plantain farming community in the municipality of Jericó, in southwestern Antioquia, Colombia.

Colombia Farming Mining

‘Against Colonial Violence And Land Theft,’ Indigenous Activists And Allies Target Mining Industry Convention In Toronto

Hundreds of people led by Indigenous land defenders and a coalition of environmental groups worked to shut down a large mining industry convention in downtown Toronto on Sunday, blockading the entrances to the building where the meeting was taking place as they protested against “the extractive industry’s violence, ongoing colonization, and complete disregard for the future of life on this planet.”

Canada Environment Indigenous Peoples Mining

In Amarillo, Copper Workers’ Strike Enters Fourth Month With No End In Sight

It’s a February evening in the Texas Panhandle, and it’s cold as hell. Five men stand on the shoulder of Highway 136 northeast of Amarillo, huddled around a fire in a 55-gallon oil drum. Patches of snow linger from a morning flurry, and barren fields cut none of the whipping wind. In the distance, a power plant and a copper refinery dot the sparse horizon.

Class Struggle Mining Strikes Texas

Wet’suwet’en Strong: Unceded And Unwavering + Mining The Deep Ocean

Trans rights are human rights – because human rights are only valid if they include every person in their entirety. Next, mining on land is so 20th century – the new frontier of mining is just as deep and dark as it is terrifying and catastrophic. And finally, we hear from the Wet’suwet’en on their ongoing battle to preserve their ancestral homelands.

http://unistoten.camp/

greenwashing LGBTQ Rights Mining Wetsuweten

Tribal Leaders Call Bears Ears Opening An ‘Unlawful Action’

Trump administration opens southern Utah national monument lands to development including grazing, mining, and oil and gas development

Thursday the Trump administration announced it was opening two national monuments to development. The culturally and geologically significant Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante monuments will be available for cattle grazing, mining, and oil and gas development.

Five tribes had formed a coalition in 2015 to promote protection of the Bears Ears region; dozens more tribes have expressed support for their effort.

In a prepared statement, Shaun Chapoose, Ute, co-chair of the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition and representative of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee, said the coalition is united in opposition to the administration’s management plan for the two monuments.

Indigenous culture Mining Sacred sites Trump

Indigenous Leaders Call On Minister Wilkinson To Reject The Teck Frontier Mine

January 20, 2020, Vancouver, BC, Coast Salish Territories – Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) gathered Indigenous leaders and land defenders outside Minister Wilkinson’s office in North Vancouver to raise alarm about the impacts of the Teck Frontier Mine proposal – the largest proposed open-pit tar sands mine. Members from the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), Tiny House Warriors, Smith’s Landing First Nation, and Wet’suwet’en Solidarity Network came together to assert inherent Indigenous rights and put the Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change…

Canada Climate Change Environment Indigenous Peoples Mining

Eight Days Of Protest Force Reversal Of Cyanide Law In Argentina

For over a week, residents of the Argentine province of Mendoza mobilized, in marches, candlelight vigils, and enormous protests against the provincial government’s decision to overturn Law 7722, which prohibited the use of hazardous chemicals in mining activities. The law, originally passed in 2007, was the result of years of organizing by neighborhood assemblies, community organizations, and groups of agricultural producers in defense of water as a key element of life, and attempting to establish an alternative to the extractivist economic model.

Argentina Mining Protests Reform

Daily movement news and resources