Conservation-&Amp;-Preserves

By Jacqueline Keeler / I ndian Country Today Media Network On Monday, February 29, nearly two months after armed militants took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the Burns Paiute Tribe was finally allowed to visit it. The refuge is their ancient wintering grounds and filled with culturally-sensitive sites and even burial grounds of their ancestors. On Thursday, 14 more militia members were arrested, including two more members of the Bundy family who led the armed standoffs in Oregon and Nevada against federal authorities. ...

Lierre Keith, Deep Green Resistance co-founder, recently wrote one of the most powerful articles that we have read in a long, long time. Her piece, titled The Girls and the Grasses, is like poetry. We invite you to read it here: Link: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015/08/25/lierre-keith-the-girls-and-the-grasses/ – Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International writes about the colonial and racist origins of the “conservation” movement. His organization helps push an alternate perspective. ...

The Sengwer People of the Embobut Forest in Kenya, one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer peoples in East Africa, are being forcibly evicted from their lands by guards from The Kenya Forest Service, with support from the Kenya police. Despite a court injunction forbidding the eviction, thousands of Sengwer People now face an all too familiar loss of homes, food stores and belongings. Rolling slopes in Kenya’s western highlands, the Sengwer have lived in and cared for the Cherangany Hills for centuries. However, since 2007, when the World Bank began disbursing funds to the Kenya Forest Service for a Natural Resource Management Project (NRMP) the Sengwer’s legacy has been threatened. ...

The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, or CTGR (the name “Goshute” derives from the native word Ku’tsip or Gu’tsip, people of ashes, desert, or dry earth), [17] “reside in an isolated oasis in the foothills of the majestic Deep Creek Mountains on what is now the Utah/ Nevada state line,” according to their web page Protect Goshute Water. There are 539 enrolled tribal members, and about 200 of them live in Deep Creek Valley. “Our reservation lies in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the United States, and it has always been our home. Resulting from this isolation, we have benefited by retaining strong cultural ties to Goshute land, our traditions, and a resolute determination to protect our ways. ...