IEN and WMAN 2012 Grassroots Communities Mining Mini-Grant Program

From the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and the Western Mining Action Network (WMAN):

The goal of the Mining Mini-grants Program is to support and enhance the capacity building efforts of mining-impacted communities in the U.S. and Canada to assure that mining projects do not adversely affect human, cultural, and the ecological health of communities.

 

Applications accepted are accepted three times a year: February 1, June 1, and October 1. Applicants will be notified of the funding decision within 3 weeks of the application deadline.

 

There will be an “emergency” fund for extremely time-sensitive projects that fall between grant cycles (i.e., needs that could not have been anticipated at the time of the last cycle and cannot wait to be addressed until the next cycle). These grants will be very limited and awarded on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the Mini-Grant Review Committee.

 

WMAN/IEN Grassroots Communities Mining Mini-grants program criteria:

1.     Grassroots community-based organizations, and Tribes or Tribal programs in the U.S. and Canada with any budget level may apply. However, if there are more applicants than funds available, priority will be given to organizations with an organizational or mining-specific project budget under $75,000 U.S.. Priority will also be given to community-based grassrootsgroups affected by mining.

2.     We prefer to make grants to organizations with a nonprofit 501(c)3 tax designation, or those working with a fiscal sponsor that has a 501(c)3, however this is not a requirement. We do not, however, write grant checks to individuals.

3.     Requests must be project-specific for an immediate need such as legal assistance, organizing and outreach, development of campaign materials, media development, reports, travel, mailings, interns and consultants, etc. to be fulfilled within the next six months on a specific mining campaign. Funds cannot be used for an organization’s general operating funds, staff salaries, rent or telephone bills.

4.     Priority will be given to projects that build bridges and community across socio-economic and cultural lines.

5.     Applicants may receive one grant per twelve month cycle. However, this limit does not apply to emergency grants.

6.     Each grant issued will not exceed $3,000 U.S.

7.     Funding recipients must submit a brief report detailing how funds were spent within 6 months of having received funding. Recipients will not be eligible for additional funding until the project has been completed and a project report, or an extension request, is received and accepted by WMAN and IEN.

Any questions? We are happy to help. Please contact either Aimee Boulanger, WMAN Network Coordinator at (360) 969-2028 ~ aboulanger@whidbey.com or Simone Senogles, Indigenous Environmental Network, (218) 751-4967 ~ simone@ienearth.org.

 

The application (link below) can be emailed to either Aimee Boulanger or to Simone Senogles, or it can be sent by regular mail, postmarked by June 1, 2011, October 1, 2011 or February 1, 2012 respectively, to: IEN attn: Mining Mini-grants, PO Box 485, Bemidji, MN 56619. If you are mailing the application, please call Simone or Aimee to let us know to expect it. Thank you

 

DOWNLOAD: Application (MS Word)

 

Learn more about the communities and projects funded by these mini-grants.

FPW Grant Leads to Kenya Denounced by German Tourism

First People’s Worldwide’s grant to the Loiborkineji Self Help Welfare Group in Kenya made this campaign possible:

 

SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

January 25, 2012

German travel industry warns Samburu eviction could harm Kenya tourism

The German travel industry has called on Kenya to find a solution to the recent evictions of the Samburu tribe, and warned its position as a tourist destination could be damaged. Germans currently spend more money abroad than any other nation.
In a letter to President Mwai Kibaki, the head of theGerman Travel Association (known by its German initials DRV) expressed his ‘great concern’ at the current situation in Kenya’s Laikipia district.

Read the letter to Kenya’s President (pdf, 442 KB)

A series of violent evictions by Kenya’s police have forced thousands of Samburu from the area known as Eland Downs. Houses were burnt, people assaulted and livestock stolen.

The evictions follow the purchase of the land by two conservation charities - The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF).

They have promoted the 17,100 hectares as a chance for Kenya to create its ‘newest national park’, and ‘stimulate tourism’.

DRV’s President Jürgen Büchy said its members considered Kenya ‘an important destination’, but that it was crucial tourism was carried out sustainably.

He said, ‘tourism development at the expense of human rights and local communities…does not find the support of the German travel industry’.

The DRV represents 80 percent of Germany’s tour operators and travel agents. In 2010 Germans spent over 60 billion euros on foreign trips, more than any other nation.

Büchy called on Kenya’s government to allow the ‘Samburu to reinstall in the Eland Downs and to give them a part in the preservation of the wildlife in Laikipia.’

Kenya’s government has not yet responded to The German Travel Association.

To read this story online: http://survival-international.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b14580b05b832fb959c4ee444&id=f38ee077e3&e=49296e2007

Philanthropy for the People

Dan P. Morrison – Philanthropy For the People :

Posted: 01/23/2012 10:48 am

Dan Morrison, Founder and CEO of Citizen Effect

A century ago, the term “citizen philanthropist” was an oxymoron. Any young kid aspiring to save the world had his or her work cut out for them. To be a philanthropist, in the historical sense of the word, they had to generate an amazing amount of wealth selling oil, laying railroad track or making cars. Then they could start a foundation and give large amounts of money, tax-free, to a cause close to their heart. Without going into the social history of the United States, this career path was only available to old, rich, white dudes.

But that doesn’t make any sense. Think about all the people you know that volunteer at the local soup kitchen, the community leaders at your church who are always helping people in the congregation, and the kid down the street that sells lemonade to end HIV/AIDS in Africa. The idea that we have to make a ton of cash before we help others in and beyond our community is ludicrous.

I founded Citizen Effect with the goal of providing anyone who has the passion to impact others, the tools and support to do just that. For the past three years we’ve connected hundreds of people across the country directly with critical projects that have impacted tens of thousands of lives around the world. What’s special is that these people aren’t Rockefellers. They work directly with the us to choose a project, design a unique fundraising approach, and engage their network in giving to a cause they’re passionate about. They are citizen philanthropists.

Since announcing Detroit4Detroit the number one question people ask me is, “Why Detroit?” Understandably, Detroiters want to make sure Detroit4Detroit is not another well-intentioned, yet misguided outsider coming to “save” their city. The answer is simple, it’s the people. Whether they know it or not, the “can do” attitude of Detroiters is the essence of what it means to be a citizen philanthropist.

In 2012, Detroit4Detroit will take the first steps to starting a movement of citizen philanthropy in Detroit by connecting 150 passionate citizens with 150 community projects throughout the city.
To do this, we’ve established partnerships with non-profits and local community leaders that are on the front-lines of impact in Detroit. Together, we’ve identified individual projects based on tried and tested programs that will make the most of people’s efforts.

The once held meaning of “philanthropist” no longer applies to only a few. Anyone can be a citizen philanthropist with Detroit4Detroit. Young professionals, retirees, high school students, small businesses, the list goes on and on. The power to impact the lives of others sits with the everyday people who make this incredible city what it is.

Grahame Russell to Speak on U.S., Central America, and The Global Economy

 

The U.S., Central America and The Global Economy

Thursday, Jan. 26, 7 – 9pm

Wheaton Library, 11701Georgia Ave., Wheaton

 

TheU.S.has played a major role inCentral America’s economy and politics for over 100 years, both overtly through military intervention and less obviously through political and economic manipulation.  The people ofCentralAmericahave resisted this interference, often at great cost. Come learn more about the current political and economic situation of our neighbors to the south, the role of theU.S., and what we can do.

 

Speaker: International expert and activist Grahame Russell

 

Moderators: Lindolfo Carballo of CASA de Maryland and Tim Willard of Peace Action Montgomery

 

Bio of Grahame Russell: Advocate and activist for Central America and Mexico. Engaged in development, environmental and human rights solidarity work in Guatemala, Honduras, Chiapas, Oaxaca, El Salvador and Haiti since 1984.  Speaks and publishes regularly on Central America, including the book Code Z59.5: There is Only One People Here (2010).  Director of Rights Action, a Central America advocacy group based on a “just development” model.  Check it out: http://www.rightsaction.org/

 

This event co-sponsored by Peace Action Montgomery  http://peaceactionmc.org/ and CASA de Maryland http://www.casademaryland.org/

Participation in the UN Conference on Sustainable Development

Dear colleagues,

Please find below some important participation regarding the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 20 to 22 June 2012. The conference will be preceded by the third Preparatory Committee meeting of the Conference, from 13 to 15 June 2012. In accordance with General Assembly resolution A/C.2/66/L.53, the accreditation and preregistration for participation in the preparatory meeting and in the Conference by relevant NGOs and other major groups is now open.

Preregistration is open to NGOs and major groups that are currently in consultative status to ECOSOC and to NGOs and major groups that were accredited to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Registration will close on 20 May 2012.

NGOs and other Major groups’ organisations that are NOT yet accredited to the United Nations and wish to participate in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20) will be offered a one time opportunity to become accredited to Rio+20. The deadline for new accreditation is 20 February 2012.

For more information, please consult the following links:

Preregistration and accreditation procedures: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=90.

Preliminary information on the agenda and the conference Rio+20: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/content/documents/350information%20note%2012%20December.pdf.

Best regards,

UN-NGLS

 

[via DoCip: www.docip.org}

AfricaNews.com: Kenya – Minority Group Decries Forceful Eviction

1. Find the full article here: Kenya: Minority Group Decries Forceful Evictions

    

   Posted on Tuesday 17 January 2012 – 14:00
   Evans Wafula and Portus Chege AfricaNews reporters in Nairobi, Kenya Nairobi, Kenya

   A community is accusing the African world life Foundation, The Nature conservancy, Kenya Wildlife Service and others for continuously trampling on their rights and scheming to illegally evict the Samburu people from their land(kisargei/Elan downs in Laikipia East District.

   

   The Community has appealed on the Centre for International Human Rights Law and Advocacy CIHRA to pursue any legal means necessary to hold those accountable for the current unlawful actions against this poor and marginalized Samburu community.

   Through a letter written and copied to the Attorney General Githu Muigai, Forestry and Wildlife minister Noah Wekesa and the Kituo Cha Sheria, the bone of contention is the decision by the wildlife body with the assistance of AWF and NTC to purchase 17,000 acres of land in Laikipia to convert into a national park.

   Last week the community held peaceful demonstrations to protests continuous harassment by police, who so far have killed two persons, destroyed their Manyattas and displaced them resulting to one child who got disorientated from a makeshift manyatta and eaten by a lion

   “The police have been harassing us, we don’t sleep, they are even raping women, slaughtering our goats by force and beating as like children,” said Ms Nalotuang Tepeshe

   They accused KWS of purchasing 17,000 acres of land from former President Moi which it intends to turn into a nature conservancy called Laikipia National Park.

   The community through their spokesman Mr Joseph Lekamario said KWS purchase of the land was illegal because the Samburu have acquired rights to this land under the Kenyan Constitution and international law by residing on the land continuously for over 90 years.

   Mr Lekamario argued that, the said land, is currently the subject of a lawsuit before Justice Joseph Sergon at the High Court in Nyeri reference number L.R. No. 10068.Since KWS and the police entered the land over 50 elephants have been killed and no action is being taken by the relevant authorities.

   The suit was filed by the Samburu against the African Wildlife Foundation and the former President Moi to prevent illegal forcible evictions from their land.

   According to the community KWS purchase of the land as well as actions taken before the purchase is indirect violation of the court ordered injunction. To formalise continuous police presence in the suit land, last year the provincial administration rushed to gazette the suit land as a police post.

   “KWS represents to the world that it is purchasing the land in the name of conservation, but neglects to disclose that in the process it will illegally remove whole communities of women, children, and elderly Samburu from the land leaving them homeless and without any place to go,” said Mr Lekamario.

   Last year CIHRA wrote a letter AG, Forestry and wildlife ministry and accused KWS for failing to disclose its true purpose which is to make millions of dollars in revenue from tourist visits to the conservancy.

   “The Centre, the Samburu Community, and the international community are well aware of the true intentions and consequences of KWS’ recent purchase of the land and we will do everything within our means to continue to protect the Samburu people,” Read the letter in part.

   The Human rights body through Mr Travis LaSalle said in the letter the Centre is carefully documenting all actions taken by KWS and will pursue any legal means necessary in alliance to hold KWS accountable for its current unlawful actions. The actions include filing to hold KWS in contempt of court.

   “Since May of 2009, various groups have been trying to forcibly and illegally evict the Samburu people from this land you just purchased,” the letter says in part. It is signed by Lasalle of the Centre

   The Centre has also vowed to report these actions to a variety of international human rights groups and governmental organizations.

Brazil: MARANGMOTXÍNGMO MÏRANG, From The Ikpeng Children To The World – Video

Video on indigenous Ikpeng children of the Upper Xingu River in Brazil and their village and culture

via Brazil: MARANGMOTXÍNGMO MÏRANG, From The Ikpeng Children To The World – Video.

 

MARANGMOTXÍNGMO MÏRANG, From the Ikpeng children to the world from videonasaldeias on Vimeo.

Call For Contributions to an Edited Volume Entitled Enacting Nature – Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance

Published on Sunday, 08 January 2012 13:21

International: Enacting Nature – Ecocritical Perspectives On Indigenous Performance – Call For Papers

Proposal and Call for Papers:

Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance

To be edited by Prof. Dr. Birgit Däwes and Prof. Dr. Marc Maufort

“Dramaturgies,” P.I.E.-Peter Lang (Brussels)

Ever since the mid-1990s, ecocriticism—or “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment,” in Cheryll Glotfelty’s famous definition—has become an increasingly popular methodological paradigm for literary studies. In Native American and First Nations Studies, however, the coordinates for a fruitful critical investment in environmentalist issues are still being mapped. Common stereotypes, such as the wilderness topos, the “ecological Indian,” or the keeper of a planetary spirituality, have proven tenacious and difficult to overcome. Joni Adamson additionally reminds us that ecocritics often overlook the “connections between social injustices and environmental degradation” (20) and accordingly pleads for both “a more inclusive environmentalism and a more multicultural ecocriticism” (xix). Similarly, Donelle Dreese examines the particular connection between landscape and configurations of the self in contemporary Native American poetry and prose; and in their study on Postcolonial Ecocriticism (2010), Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin call attention to further forms of ecological imperialism (such as biocolonization or environmental racism). Representations of nature and patterns of political power, in short, are inseparably intertwined. For the field of indigenous theater and drama, however (a genre that has itself been widely overlooked), these questions have not yet been systematically addressed.

This volume seeks to explore the relationship between indigenous drama and the “environment” in the widest sense—as place, land, nature, wilderness, social space, “thirdspace” (in both Soja’s or Bhabha’s senses), and “alterNative” space. Our notion of ecocriticism is not limited to environmentalism as a form of creative advocacy, but it acknowledges, in its basic assumption, Robert M. Nelson’s insight that “cultural identities, like individual identities, emerge not from class struggle but rather from the land” (7). We therefore invite more general perspectives on performative representations of place, space, and nature. We are particularly interested in the ways that plays and performances envision space (and especially the relationships between humans and spaces), but also in the concrete engagements with the space of the stage. From the highly experimental approach to uranium mining in Marie Clements’s Burning Vision to the ritual preparation of a dancing circle in James Luna’s Emendatio, from the planetary, cosmopolitan vision of Tomson Highway’s Rose to the metaphorical landscapes of Diane Glancy’s plays, and from Jack Davis’s and Wesley Enoch’s dramatizations of Australian Aboriginal Dreamings to Hone Kouka’s and Briar Grace-Smith’s celebrations of the spiritual bond between Maori people and the land, the spectrum of “staging nature” is as wide as it is powerful. The corpus of the volume would deal primarily with Indigenous works from North America, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Samoa, Fiji, Hawaii), thus offering a broad comparative perspective on the multiple variants of Indigenous writing for the stage.

We invite contributions of roughly 6,000 words (prepared according to the latest version of the MLA stylesheet), to be submitted by December 1, 2012. Questions/topics to be addressed include, but are not limited, to the following:

• the multiple and transversal interconnections between identity, place, and space
• the particular use of the land and landscapes as defining factors of identity
• the significance of spaces and places for particular indigenous dramaturgies
• land and landscape as active “characters” or crucial elements in the development of dramatic plot rather than passive decorum
• the intersections between local and global, tribal and transnational trajectories in indigenous theater and drama
• the conceptualization of new methodologies through ecocritical perspectives and, in turn, the potential of indigenous (re)writings and (re)stagings of place for an expansion of ecocriticism as practice
• studies of how individual playwrights address ecocritical issues.
• Comparative studies of how playwrights from different world regions address these concerns.

Interested contributors are invited to send us an abstract of 250 words and a brief biographical sketch by March 1, 2012:

daewes@uni-mainz.de

mmaufort@ulb.ac.be

Please do not hesitate to contact the editors, should you have any further questions regarding possible topics.

via International: Enacting Nature – Ecocritical Perspectives On Indigenous Performance – Call For Papers., Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources – www.indigenousissues.com.

In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, residents see experiment with autonomy as ‘illusion’

A great article from the Christian Science Monitor on Pakistan-controlled Gilgit-Baltistan:

In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, residents see experiment with autonomy as ‘illusion’.

Mary Simat Chosen as Regional Expert on Violence Against Women

Mary Simat, a Keepers of the Earth grantee and First Peoples Worldwide Board Member, was recently chosen as a regional expert for the International Expert Group Meeting on Combating Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls.

Her paper “Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls In the Name of Traditional and Cultural Practices” is here: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/EGM12_Simat.pdf