"Up to 2.5 billion women and men worldwide depend on indigenous and community lands to survive. These lands, which are held, used or managed collectively, cover more than 50% of the world’s surface."
“Communities around the world rely on their customary lands to feed their families. But their lands also feed the world.” OXFAM; … Joan Carling, Advisory Board member of Land Rights Now.
"Yet, Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have protected these lands for centuries, legally own just one-fifth."
"This gap represents at least 5 billion hectares of unprotected lands vulnerable to land grabs by governments and corporations. In Africa, 90% of rural lands are not documented."
"There is growing evidence of how vital the role played by full legal ownership of land by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities is in preserving cultural diversity and in combating poverty and hunger. The failure to recognize community land rights not only undermines the human rights of local people. It also threatens humanity’s ability to achieve food security and fight climate change."
"70% of the world’s food is produced by small-scale producers, many of whom rely on natural resources that are held in common. Securing land rights help communities to manage their land more sustainably, to access credit, diversify activities and invest. It can boost farmers’ productivity by 60 percent and more than double family income. This is a key strategy to increase global food production as the population continues to grow."
"The collective natural resources governed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities are biodiversity hotspots that maintain the ecological balance of our planet and help regulate the climate that enables global food production. Research shows that their lands store massive amounts of carbon – at least 300 billion megatons – and that secure rights lead to lower rates of deforestation."
"Women’s land rights are particularly important given their crucial role in ensuring local food security and managing community resources. The FAO estimates that if we close the gender gap in agriculture, production could increase by 20-30%. Research shows that women’s land rights are also associated with better health and nutrition outcomes."
"Small-scale food producers not only produce most of the world’s food, but they also protect and sustain diverse food cultures and landscapes. Secure land rights are foundational to preserving diverse local food systems where consumption is less commodified, and traditional knowledge and practices around food are valued."
https://www.landrightsnow.org/
Historically, most rural lands were owned and governed by Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples under customary tenure systems. Over time, however, large areas of these lands have also been claimed by states under statutory law.
https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalBaseline_web.pdf
65% of the world’s land area is sustainably stewarded by communities under customary tenure.
Hundreds of millions of hectares of land are being advertised to foreign investors by national investment agencies for natural resource exploitation, including industrial agriculture, commercial forestry, cattle ranching, and mining.
Indigenous Rights, Amnesty International:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr56/6841/2023/en/
(Extract)
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment stated that “[f]fortress conservation measures are formidable threats to Indigenous peoples and other rural rights holders’ human rights, including their nature governance practices and traditional livelihoods, food security, educational opportunities, health, and access to traditional medicines, safe drinking water and culturally and spiritually significant sites.” The World Bank has found that “engaging [Indigenous peoples’] more effectively in biodiversity conservation represents a win-win situation” and that “Indigenous peoples are carriers of ancestral knowledge and wisdom about this biodiversity. Their effective participation in biodiversity conservation programmes as experts in protecting and managing biodiversity and natural resources would result in more comprehensive and cost-effective conservation and management of biodiversity worldwide.”
Wildlife conservation must therefore be a win-win solution where those who live close to wildlife can be involved in protecting it, while continuing to gain from the conservation themselves through their livelihoods such as the use of grazing land for the Maasai. Any tourism initiatives on Indigenous peoples’ lands must only proceed with their free, prior, and informed consent, and with benefit-sharing from revenues that the state gains from them.
The Tanzanian government is also obliged to protect its people from human rights abuses, including abuses committed by private companies. All companies must be regulated to prevent the pursuit of profit at the expense of human rights. Companies, on the other hand, have a responsibility to respect all human rights wherever they operate.
This responsibility is laid out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UN Guiding Principles), an internationally endorsed standard of expected conduct.
The responsibility of companies to respect human rights is independent of a state’s own human rights responsibilities and exists over and above compliance with national laws and regulations protecting human rights. This responsibility requires companies to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses through their own business activities and to address impacts with which they are involved, including by remediating any actual impacts. Tanzanian authorities must therefore conduct impartial, independent, and transparent investigations into the role of corporate complicity in the forced evictions in Loliondo with a view to holding any perpetrators fully accountable, in accordance with domestic and international standards of due process.
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Eliminate Deforestation From Your Diet
Buy Responsibly Source Product
Choose Products That Give Back
Support Indigenous Communities
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Email Your Preferred News Outlet - Encourage your peferred media outlet to cover rainforest, (or other similar organization) news by emailing the editor
Inform Yourself and Others
Get Political
Volunteer Your Time
Host a Fundraiser
For more detail, see https://rainforestfoundation.org/engage/10-things-you-can-do/-
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The beef industry produces up to 10 times more emissions than chicken and over 50 times more emissions than beans. ECOWATCH
Eating a plant-based diet: WEBMD
Sustainable Tourism ECHOWATCH
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Sorting out 30X30, Protected Areas, Justice & Land Rights
30X30 can be an excellent way to save indigenous land
According to Grist media: “Scientists, politicians, and conservationists are championing the protected-areas model, developed in the U.S. and perfected in Africa. In late 2022, at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, nearly 200 countries signed an international pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and waters by 2030, an effort known as 30×30 that would amount to the greatest expansion of protected areas in history.”
This is not quite true.
“Protected Areas” is a model that started with John Muir and Theodore Rosevelt in the past. And before that, colonialism began in the U.S in 1607 - before it became a country - bringing displacement and death to Native Americans.
. . . . continued here .....
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Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania
Abstract
This paper seeks to answer the question: how does land become grabbable and local people relocatable? It focuses on the historical and current conditions of land tenure that enable land grabbing. While recognizing the important contributions thus far made by the critical literature on land grabbing, this paper moves forward towards understanding specific processes that befall before land is grabbed and its original users relocated. Based on an empirical analysis of policy and practices of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, the paper proposes that land grabbing, particularly in the context of conservation in rural Africa, is not an instantaneous phenomenon and does not happen in a vacuum. It is a result of long-term structural marginalisation of rural land users that produces scarcity and the deterioration of life conditions, which make people relocatable and land grabbing justifiable. Local people either relocate themselves because they could not make a living due to systematic disinvestments on basic social services or life is made unbearable through restrictions imposed on their production practices to make “voluntary” relocation possible. The paper highlights the need to focus on the stealthy dispossessions in addition to major events of grabbing as starting points of analysis. Insight from this study can be useful in analysing other cases of land grabbing where large swathes of ostensibly empty land are made available for investment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2514848621105286
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- - NEWS - -
The Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa (pronounced Tar-a-haht pah-hava) Conservancy is a Tongva-led org created to steward lands in Tovaangar, the traditional Tongva region, encompassing the greater Los Angeles basin. The Conservancy has received land back, is creating community for and housing Native people, practicing traditional ceremony, creating a Native archive, and rematriating the land.
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Stop the Oppression in Tanzania
11/09/2023 - Last week, members of the European Delegation were prevented from visiting Ngorongoro. On 25th August, they also prevented a UNESCO delegation from visiting the area. Tundu Lissu, opposition leader, and champion of the Maasai, was briefly jailed for trying to rally in Ngorogoro.
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After Decades of Oil Drilling, Indigenous Waoroni Group Fights New Industry
Their efforts follow a historic vote to end drilling in parts of Yasuni National Park, but uncontacted families and other Indigenous groups remain at risk from oil exploration.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30082023/ecuador-votes-oil-ban-on-indigenous-land/
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I was just held hostage for speaking out to save the Amazon -- but I will not be silent. Not now. Presidents from eight Amazonian countries are gathering for a historic summit -- and it’s a once-in-a-generation chance to win key protections and avoid ecological collapse. That’s why Avaaz is organizing the largest-ever campaign to defend the rainforest. Will you join me in signing the People’s Declaration to Save the Amazon? With your help, I can deliver our call directly to the negotiations:
California Consumnes Half of Oil From Amazon Rainforest
The Carrizo ComeCrudo tribe of Texas are harmed by LNG Terminals on their sacred lands, with no say in the matter. Indigenous people protect 80% of the worlds biodiversity .
Sign a petition to President Biden to stop transporting LNG at gulfwithoutlng.org
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American bison reintroduced to northern Mexico helping to fight climate change
The largest land mammal in America is rehabilitating a vast grassland in Coahuila, benefiting hundreds of species in a reserve that can theoretically store 6.3 million tons of carbon in its soil
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‘This water needs to be protected’: California tribe calls for preservation of Tulare Lake - Los Angeles Times
The water that has streamed in from the rain and snow this year has for the first time allowed many Tachi people to see the ancestral lake they consider sacred — the center of their creation story, a natural wonder that was obliterated long ago to become lucrative farmland in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Sisco and other Indigenous leaders say they believe Tulare Lake should be allowed to remain rather than being drained once again to reestablish agriculture. They say allowing it to stay would improve life in the valley by providing water storage and allowing the area’s original ecosystem to take root again.
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Link . “The Yurok Tribe initiated this unique partnership in an effort to develop cooperative, mutually beneficial solutions that help the Scott River’s salmon runs recover,” said Yurok Tribal Council Member Ryan Ray. “We believe that strong fish runs and resilient ranching operations can coexist in the Scott River Valley. This agreement establishes the necessary framework to make it happen.”
The primary objectives of the partnership are to restore salmon habitat and improve on-farm water use efficiency. According to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the unconventional group of stakeholders agreed to pursue collaborative projects “that provide landscape-scale benefits for fish and wildlife and farms.” On June 15, representatives from the Yurok Tribe, CalTrout and Farmers Ditch Company convened at the Scott River Ranch to sign the MOU and share a celebratory meal of salmon and organic beef raised in the Scott Valley.
NY Times: I Pledged $1 Million to Plant New Trees. My Money Could Have Been Better Spent (paywall)
The U.S. Forest Service manages its lands for multiple uses, including timber harvesting, and has allowed the cutting of carbon-rich, old-growth forests whose destruction contributes to global warming.
He asked the Forest Service to guarantee that the saplings planted using his money would not grow up only to be logged later by the timber companies
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I remain on the sacred grounds at Peehee Mu’huh, where the resistance to protect Thacker Pass from a massive lithium mine suffered a major blow last week. On Wednesday, police raided the two prayer camps set up by our Paiute and Shoshone relatives, extinguishing the sacred fire lit since May 11 when the grandmother-led action began, destroying the two ceremonial tipi lodges, mishandling and confiscating ceremonial instruments, and arresting an Indigenous land protector. Ox Sam Camp shared a video they captured with us
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The Yurok Tribe received a contract from U.S. Geological Survey - 3D Elevation Program to collect and process 320,000 acres of lidar data on biologically diverse forests and salmon-bearing streams in Yurok ancestral territory.
“This project will benefit the Tribe in many different ways. In addition to strengthening our sovereignty, the data we collected will enhance ongoing efforts to holistically manage our landscape, mitigate for climate change and create a prosperous tribal nation,” said Yurok Vice-Chairman Frankie Myers. “I would like to thank USGS, North Coast Resource Partnership and the California Natural Resources Agency for partnering with us on this project.”
The Yurok Tribes Fisheries Department and the Condor Aviation Enterprise Program captured the data via a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with high resolution remote sensing technology. The 500-square-mile project encompasses the Yurok Reservation and top half of Yurok ancestral territory in far Northern California. (see project map) This ecologically unique landscape includes the lower 44 miles of the Klamath River, the Yurok Tribe’s 15,000-acre Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary and one of the few remaining old-growth redwood stands on earth. The processed lidar data will aid in the design of fish habitat restoration projects on the Klamath River, which is the lifeline of the Yurok people and one of the last wild salmon strongholds on the West Coast. Additionally, the Tribe will integrate the precise geospatial information into the planning of much-needed housing, road and utility infrastructure projects on the reservation.
The Northern California Airborne Lidar Project aims to establish the foundational data required to prioritize critical investments in the following areas: community health and safety, natural resource management, environmental restoration, forest fuel load reduction, water quality and quantity, climate change resiliency and more.
Across Northern California, tribal, federal and state land managers are implementing a series of interventions, such as prescribed burning and fish habitat construction projects, to rebuild salmon runs as well as make forests more resilient to climate change and less prone to catastrophic wildfire.
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Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has reintroduced the Native American Child Protection Act (NACPA). This legislation reauthorizes and increases the level for funding and revises language to include cultural programs and services to be included in grant programs for Native children on tribal lands and in urban areas. Tribes and Native communities will finally have additional tools to treat, prevent, investigate, and prosecute instances of family violence, child abuse, and child neglect involving Native children and families.
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A PODCAST ABOUT THE CRIMES OF NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS
Amidst an unprecedented federal investigation into hundreds of Native Boarding Schools and the 100,000+ children these institutions forcibly removed, one school has become the epicenter of controversy in America’s attempt to reckon with its dark history: Red Cloud Indian School. While today some see the school as a positive presence in the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Tribe, others cite it as a perpetrator of generational trauma.
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European Parliament: Forced Eviction of Maasai in Tanzania
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See Masai Eviction Journal for more on the Maasai of Tanzania
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Colonial conservation benefits wealthy interests while destroying the ways of life of the most self-sufficient people. Please donate to/share this crowdfunder to help support Maasai families displaced by last year's evictions. https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-displaced-maasai-families-of-loliondo
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Lakota People's Law Project
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ACT NOW!
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
For 50 years, the Indian Child Welfare Act has protected Native American and Alaska Native children and families while supporting tribes' rights to determine what is best for their youngest citizens. Before Congress passed ICWA, more than one-in-four Indian children was being removed from their families and communities, often without any evidence of harm and without due process. Most of those children were placed with non-Native, non-relative families, even when living with relatives would have been a safe option. ICWA aimed to stop that horrendous practice. The law protects families from unnecessary and traumatic disruption and maintains connections between Indian children and their communities. Right now, these protections for Native children and families are under attack in the U.S. Supreme Court case Haaland v. Brackeen.
NARF is deeply involved in the legal fight to protect ICWA, and strengthen protections for Indian children, families, and tribes. This work recognizes that the future of tribes is inseparable from the health and wellness of their citizen children. We need partners to come together in these efforts.
Erin Dougherty Lynch
Senior Staff Attorney,
Beth Margaret Wright
Pueblo of Laguna
Staff Attorney -
Native American Rights Fund
twitter.com/NDNrights
See https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/states-enact-icwa-type-laws/64018
So far 25 states, Washington, D.C., 180 tribes and 35 Native American organizations have filed amicus briefs, arguing that ICWA is not race-based, but based on agreements between tribal nations and the U.S. government, which follow centuries of oppression.
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The climate crisis is real, it’s serious, and it’s existential — but that’s not a reason for pessimism. In order to win this fight, we must listen to one another, celebrate the good work being done, and tap into our resilience as human beings. We should recognize the victories we’re achieving now and incorporate both science and the understanding Indigenous communities have had for Unci Maka — our grandmother Earth — for thousands of years.
Please tell President Biden to put a moratorium on drilling on public lands and waters!
... Tokata Iron Eyes, Native American
Indigenous Communities on Frontlines of Protecting Rwanda's Largest Rainforest
Amos Ngambeki, a father of four and a Mutwa of Buhoma in Bwindi insists that amid increased intrusion of the outside world into indigenous people's communities and lives, Batwa people would still be guardians of Bwindi.
Their "rich indigenous knowledge of conserving forests," coupled with "government empowerment," the Batwa would have been able to preserve Bwindi Impenetrable Forest up to now and in the years to come.
The weight of the knowledge indigenous people possess is enough to maintain the ecosystems more naturally and sustainably, according to Bakole, who underlines that the Batwa have experience in park management in their traditional ways.
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California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife Invests $17.5 Million in the Klamath Basin
(Yoruk Tribe website)
Tribes, Conservation Groups and Irrigators Collaborate on River Restoration, Water Efficiency Projects
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently provided $17.5 million for the collaborative planning and implementation of three emergency projects that aim to restore critical salmon habitat, improve water management and make the Klamath Basin more resilient to climate change.
“I would like to thank California Governor Gavin Newsom and Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton Bonham for supporting our efforts to rebuild salmon runs on the Klamath River and its tributaries,” said Yurok Vice Chairman Frankie Myers. “I also want to acknowledge the diverse group of stakeholders working on these projects. Together, we are carving out a new path toward restoration in the Klamath Basin.” ..... More
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America the Beautiful - Spotlighting the Work to Restore and Conserve 30 Percent of Lands and Waters by 2030
https://www.doi.gov/priorities/america-the-beautiful
Nature is essential to the health, well-being, and prosperity of every family and every community in America. From the bounty of the Great Plains and vast coastal forests to the high deserts of the Southwest and beyond, our lands and waters define who we are and who we, as a nation, want to be.
President Biden has issued a call to action that we work together to conserve, connect, and restore 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030 for the sake of our economy, our health, and our well-being.
To meet the moment, the Biden-Harris administration has launched America the Beautiful, a decade-long challenge to pursue a locally led and voluntary, nationwide effort to conserve, connect, and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife upon which we all depend. The initial report released in May 2021 outlines the key principles that will guide our conservation efforts, including:
-Pursuing a collaborative and inclusive approach to conservation;
-Conserving America’s lands and waters for the benefit of all people;
-Supporting locally led and locally designed conservation efforts;
-Honoring Tribal sovereignty and supporting the priorities of Tribal Nations;
-Pursuing conservation and restoration approaches that create jobs and support healthy communities;
-Honoring private property rights and supporting the voluntary stewardship efforts of private landowners;
-Using science as a guide; and
-Building on existing tools and strategies with an emphasis on flexibility and adaptive approaches.
Oak Flat (Apache)
Thanks to your advocacy and the leadership of the San Carlos Apache and Apache Stronghold, and our grassroots push with allies, we fought hard and secured more time to protect Oak Flat, a sacred site to the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona.
Despite failing to consult with the San Carlos Apache Nation and the Apache Stronghold, the Biden administration was considering issuing its Final Environmental Impact Survey, which would have triggered a land transfer that included Oak Flat, to a mining company. The corporation has a terrible track record of violating human rights, devastating ecosystems and destroying Indigenous sacred places, and its planned copper mine would have completely destroyed Oak Flat.
So we sent thousands of messages to the Biden administration and Congress, and we were heard. The timeline has been delayed.
Let’s keep up the fight to protect Oak Flat for future generations! We must permanently protect this sacred place by continuing to push Congress to pass Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s Save Oak Flat from Foreign Mining Act.
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Tanzania forces the Maasai from their land to make way for trophy hunters and tourists.
April 2023 by Cédric Gouverneur
‘The government only like us as a tourist asset’
The Maasai have suffered over a century of forced evictions from their ancestral lands in Tanzania in the name of both game hunting and conservation. Has recognition that global biodiversity goals depend on indigenous peoples come too late?
(This is the best account of the present Maasai story that I have seen ...KGP, editor)
https://mondediplo.com/2023/04/08masai?s=09
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US California --
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How Gorillas Stole a Ugandan Forest From Humans, Bloomed It as It Bloomed Them
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In the fast-changing Bering Sea, a small tribe makes a big push to save their island ...Sierra Magazine
After Evictions, Maasai call Human Rights Investigation a Sham - Grist
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The War Against the Maasai of Loliondo and NCAA Continues
It is not a nightmare that you can wake up from. The horror is real. The threat, lobbied for by OBC, that organize hunting for Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, of taking 1,500 km2 of grazing land from the Maasai of Loliondo - squeezing them into land with towns, agricultural areas, forest reserves, and a nasty American land grab – was last year implemented with brutality and lawlessness by the Tanzanian government. The ugly boundary beacons still stand there and the Maasai can only access their own land as thieves, risking terrible extortion by rangers, which is a risk that must be taken, since cows need grass.
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Lake Manyara - If the Maasai are displaced by hunters and hotels, will this beautiful place still exist? Will too many tourists and game hunters vehicles + hotels interfere with the Great migration? Will the ecological system here fail due to climate change?
Succesful 30x30 river restoration project between California Government and the Yurok Tribe in California. Indigenous Yurok people are fishermen in order to sustain their lives. In the process, they protect the environment too.
(Wrangell, AK.) Her lineage also comes from Oregon, Washington, and the BC/Yukon Territories. Currently, she lives on Dena’ina lands in Anchorage, A “Leave a world that can support life and a culture worth living for.”
https://www.wilderness.org/key-issues/wildlands-everyone/imago-initiative
https://mondediplo.com/2023/04/08masai
April 2023 - The government only like us as a tourist asset’
The Maasai have suffered over a century of forced evictions from their ancestral lands in Tanzania in the name of both game hunting and conservation. Has recognition that global biodiversity goals depend on indigenous peoples come too late?
Martin Abel, a Maasai herder. and his extended family welcomed us to their boma – a compound with round huts and a corral with an acacia thorn and nettle fence – in the Loliondo area of Tanzania’s northern Arusha region.
The fence protects their livestock from predators, though nowadays they are less worried about lions (which find easier prey on the savannah) than about the authorities:
‘Please don’t photograph our faces, or anything that could identify this place,’ Abel said.
He had reason to be wary: he and 20 other Maasai had just spent five months in Arusha prison. ‘There were 70 people in a cell meant for 25,’ he said. ‘They’re going after influential people and traditional leaders, anyone who’s educated or in touch with Western organisations [that defend indigenous rights],’ such as Survival International (based in the UK) or the Oakland Institute (US). ‘They’re trying to stop us organising against OBC.’
OBC (Otterlo Business Corporation) is a safari company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that has run trophy hunting tours to Tanzania since 1992. On 6 June last year the Arusha regional administration announced that a 1,500-sq km area within the Loliondo Game Controlled Area (LGCA, north of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and east of Serengeti National Park) would be cleared of its human population and turned over to OBC for its exclusive use. During the next few days, police marked out the area with white posts.
Abel said, ‘The Loliondo district commissioner told us “It’s a presidential order. You must comply, and we’ll discuss the details later.” Of course, we protested. We wanted to hear about these “details” and our future status in this country – whether we’d still be treated as full citizens. Things got heated and we ended up spending the night in police cells.’ Meanwhile, Maasai in boma right across the area that was being marked out were tipping each other off by mobile phone and confronting the police.
In the night of 9-10 June, some of the (...) Continued behind a paywall ....