Indigenous Environmental Network

Protecting Mother Earth Conferences

For More Information, scroll down the page and view the videos we've provided for you.

PMEC 2008

Talking about the future of Mother Earth

By Chela Vázquez , TC Daily Planet
August 23, 2008

Minnesota-based Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) held its 15th Protecting Mother Earth conference July 17-20. IEN, a national network of indigenous peoples, officially began its meeting at dawn by igniting the sacred fire with coals from its previous conference held in Leech Lake, Anishinaabe territory in Minnesota. The fire was maintained during the four days of the convening and was extinguished the last day at a ceremony where coals were rescued for the next conference in two years. The meeting was held outdoors under canopy tents and conferees slept in tents, which surrounded the conference grounds. Spiritual cleansing sweat lodges took place early mornings and evenings in which water was poured over burning rocks heated with firewood.

This year’s IEN conference was held in territory of the Western Shoshone Nation in Newe Sogobe, Nevada and hosted by the Western Shoshone Defense Project. Desert temperatures fluctuated more than 40oF between day and night. The sacred fire was a common gathering place during cool nights, where participants continued their conversations on global problems, challenges and solutions. More than 600 attendants, mostly from indigenous nations of the United States and Canada, but also from as far as Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Europe, discussed energy and climate change as it affects indigenous peoples. Stories were told of health damage and ecological destruction brought about by oil refineries, coal power plants, gold mining, and nuclear military activity.

Participants talked of how pipelines take oil from and through indigenous lands and in the process create environmental devastation and sickness. A project to extract oil from the tar sands in Northern Alberta, Canada has cleared old growth boreal forests. This development has devastated the Dene, Cree and Metis people who live largely off subsistence from the land. The companies mining the tar sands have proposed to build tar sand refineries in North and South Dakota, and other states. These refineries would be the first built from the ground up since the 1970s.

A proposed 1,600-mile new pipeline expansion to transport Alberta’s tar sand oil would run diagonally across northern Minnesota along an existing pipeline all the way to Superior, Wisconsin. The “Alberta Clipper” pipeline’s expansion would transport crude oil from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in the Upper Midwest. Opponents say the pipeline would contribute significantly to global warming for the way oil is extracted from the tar sands, which is extremely energy intensive. Tar sand oil extraction requires stripping all the trees and vegetation, scooping up and steaming the sands. Potential oil spills on Minnesota’s wetlands is also a concern. IEN states that very few of these projects are assessed for their social and cultural costs or their cumulative environmental and health impacts, which would cause fragmentation of the boreal forest, disruption to indigenous cultural life-ways and production of greenhouse gases. Read the rest of the article.

• Listen to Conference Presentations on EarthCycles.net
• View Photo Gallerys from the Conference.
• Read an article by Chela Vázquez.
• Read or download "Title" Conference Document 1
• Read or download "Title" Conference Document 2
• Read or download "Title" Conference Document 3

PMEC 2006

Energy genocide, backlash yield new peoples' movement in the Americas

CASS LAKE, Minn. - The longtime exploitation of indigenous peoples' land and water resources in the Americas by governments and corporations has resulted in ''energy genocide'' for indigenous peoples; now, this energy genocide is unleashing an environmental movement, with Native people taking on governments and holding corporations accountable, according to the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Tom Goldtooth, executive director of IEN, said the seizure of land, mineral and water rights, particularly in Central and South America, has resulted in the rape, torture and murder of indigenous peoples.

Goldtooth said globalization, pushed by countries like the United States, has allowed U.S. corporations to come into the territories of indigenous communities of Central and South America in need of minerals, oil, gas, water, trees and the medicinal knowledge of indigenous peoples.

"This market-based system has created privatization of land and competition of natural resources, causing our indigenous brothers and sisters of the Latin American countries to organize and resist. Indigenous peoples are mobilizing against mining companies in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and Panama.

"There are wars fueled by mining companies such as Denver-based Newmont that cause mine workers to fight local communities, of which many are indigenous peoples,'' Goldtooth told Indian Country Today.

Where there is mining within remote rural communities in Latin American countries, he said, there are rapes and abuses of indigenous women.

"Racism is alive and well in many of these countries where tribal people are discriminated."

Goldtooth said the result of this onslaught is indigenous people are mobilizing throughout the Americas and the world.

"Indigenous peoples throughout the world, and especially in the Latin American countries, have been increasingly mobilizing and building solidarity movements to establish their self-determination, control of natural resources and redefining the concepts of development.

"Our indigenous environmental and economic justice movement of the north has built networks with the indigenous struggles of the Latin America countries to mobilize a unified struggle to oppose an economic globalization agenda being pushed by countries like the U.S., Canada and other industrialized countries that are members of the World Trade Organization."

Goldtooth said indigenous summits like the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala held in Quito, Ecuador, in 2004 brought more than 800 indigenous peoples from 64 indigenous tribal nations and 25 countries from Canada to Argentina.

The summit, he said, was an expression of a mounting indigenous movement to consolidate their autonomy to engage in new strategies to fight to defend their rights, access to land, water and self-governance. Read the rest of the article.

FYI Videos :

The following video clips help to illustrate various environmental justice issues. We will be archiving these and adding new ones as time goes on.

Native News Links