Indigenous forest guardian and defender of isolated peoples Beto Marubo sends a powerful message to elite academic community during recent conference at Yale University. Shown here with journalist Scott Wallace and yrs truly.
Today In Labor History May 1, 1946: The three-year Pilbara strike began in Australia. In this strike, indigenous Australian pastoral workers demanded recognition of their human rights. They were also fighting for better wages and working conditions. The bosses often treated indigenous workers like slaves. Many didn’t even pay them in cash. Rather, they paid them in tobacco and food. And if indigenous workers tried to quit or leave, the police forced them back. Sometimes they massacred entire families. The strike was one of the longest in Australian history. And it was a major event in the struggle for indigenous rights.
‘Property poetry’?
"Real estate is another way to say Australia."
"Kate Holden connects Turnbull’s persistence in illegally clearing vast tracts of koala habitat, and his murder of Turner, to British Enlightenment theories of property. The English philosopher John Locke, she observes, “placed emphasis on labour to morally justify the owning of property. The more work put into the land, the more settled a man was upon it. Holden traces associations between Locke’s ideas, the history of terra nullius and the “strange, morbid fixation in Australian myth of just how hard a person has to work on this land.”
"[b]y the time of Australia’s settling, the ineluctable mark of a British citizen was land ownership. It enfranchised him, gave him rights […] Land – elemental, foundational – was the desperately prized asset in a new colony. Without it, man was only an object."
🌍 La crisis climática afecta de forma desproporcionada a las mujeres en todo el mundo. Desde la agricultura hasta las catástrofes climáticas, las mujeres se llevan la peor parte de la degradación medioambiental. Es hora de reconocer esta injusticia y amplificar sus voces. (1/8)
🌺 Las mujeres indígenas son defensoras de tierra, preservan conocimientos tradicionales y prácticas sostenibles. Sin embargo, se enfrentan a las industrias extractivistas. Su papel en la conservación debe ser reconocido y protegido.
Today in Labor History March 1, 1954: The U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. It caused the worst radioactive contamination ever by the U.S. However, this occurred after years of nuclear testing and contamination of the islands and waters around them. The U.S. detonated 23 nuclear devices on the islands from 1946 to 1958. They blew up the bombs on the reef, in the sea, in the air and underwater. They relocated islanders several times, each time to supposedly safe islands. But they neglected to provide sufficient food and water, causing starvation. When the islanders tried to catch fish to eat, or grow their own crops, they were so contaminated from radioactive fallout, that it poisoned all who ate it. Women started having miscarriages and giving birth to babies with abnormalities.
Today in Labor History February 14, 1779: Indigenous Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook near Kealakekua, on the Big Island of Hawaii after Cook attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief (aliʻi nui) of the island of Hawaii.. The site is near the modern town of Captain Cook.
Narcos, shamans, clean water and the awakening of the Matsigenka Nation: "In Search of Yomibato" is an in-depth report by Martin Ibarrola about the new indigenous realities in Manu National Park in Peru, with support from the Pulitzer Center (and some cameo anthropologizing by yrs truly!)