fPcN interCultural:

friends of Peoples close to Nature

The Indigenous Portal is an outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS . WSIS was a two-phase series, United Nations (UN) sponsored summit about information and communication. The Geneva Summit in December 2003 laid the foundations with a Declaration of Principles and a plan of action. The Tunis Summit aimed to monitor and evaluate progress on the action plan and devise an agenda that will target goals for achievement by 2015. From these events came the WSIS Declaration and Plan of Action, as well as the Declaration and Plan of Action of the Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples and the Information Society.

ress Release: for immediate release & circulation
INTERNATIONAL PARLIAMENTARIANS FOR WEST PAPUA

At the Houses of Commons, London on 15th October 2008 at 3pm, will be the launch event for a historical international gathering of Parliamentarians, in support of self determination for the native people of West Papua.

Exiled West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda will be joined by Melanesians & Parliamentarians from across the world for the launch of 'International Parliamentarians for West Papua'.

Please assemble in Parliament Square for 2pm.

The Guarani Indians of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul suffered a setback last week when FUNAI, the government's Indian affairs department, suddenly suspended studies being carried out to identify their territories.

FUNAI’s president Mercio Meira arrived in the state capital to be greeted by a demonstration of farmers opposed to Guarani land rights.
After a tense meeting with the state governor and rural producers' associations, Meira temporarily suspended the studies. Survival has just received reports that they have been resumed.

A month-long blockade of logging roads by indigenous people in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia set to protest illegal logging on their communal lands is about to be broken up by police.

More than 100 indigenous Kenyah people gathered at the blockade site on the upper Moh River on the island of Borneo claim that the blockade is their only way of calling on representatives of the Samling Timber Company and government authorities to have a consultation and meet with them to listen to their problems and demands.

Indonesian Military & Police’s alcohol business kills Papuans

* Illegal alcohol business run by Indonesian Military & Police
* Alcohol smuggled in on Indonesian military transports
* Hundreds of Papuans are victims of alcohol poisoning
* Regent’s wife is one of main illegal alcohol traders

(Tanah Merah [red earth], Boven Digoel is in the south of West Papua, near the PNG border)

http://maroke.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/bisnis-miras-tni-polri-di-boven-d...

This is the story of the Dani, capturing a glimpse of their daily lives. Content with their basic life in the mountains, strong western influences are now severely changing the way they live. The film is made by Clara Collins, new member of fPcN South Africa.

Report by the Environmental Investigation Agency & Telepak

Extract: Official complicity

For the full report, see:
http://www.eia-international.org/files/reports93-1. pdf

Companies involved in timber theft from Papua are aided every step of the way by officials from the military, police and forestry department, as long as the requisite bribe is paid.

Tue, 10/16/2007 - 12:18 — A German narrated film, about the Hadza, from the Rift valley, titled - "No need for development" this documentary from fPcN Germany describes the situation of the last hunter and gatherer in Tanzania, the Hadzabe, back in the late 1990s.

Hadzabe - Kein Bedarf nach Entwicklung ist eine Filmdokumentation von Freunde der Naturvölker e.V. und beschreibt die Situation des letzten Jäger- und Sammlervolkes in Tansania, die Hadzabe.

Mon, 07/30/2007 - Indigenous peoples living in the tropical rainforests of Central Africa are widely dispersed and identify their groups by a variety of names. Numbering a total of 300,000 to 500,000 people, those members of communities from several ethnic groups characterized by their small stature are identified under the generic name of “pygmies” (see WRM Bulletin Nº 119).

The end of the Batak had come and gone. Their culture was already gone. The language was all that remained. Do you doom yourself and your children to lives of abject poverty, ridden with disease and living with hunger on a daily basis just to preserve a language?