Frontline Activists from Around the World Escalate Pressure on BlackRock

HOMENEWS & MULTIMEDIA2021

Over 80 renowned Indigenous and frontline activists organized to demand accountability from the world’s largest investors driving climate chaos

• APRIL 6, 2021
• PENDLE MARSHALL-HALLMARK

Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, April 7 at noon PT / 3pm ET
to learn how our grassroots pressure can have an outsized impact on moving big corporations to protect human rights and to decarbonize meaningfully and rapidly.

Amazon Watch and partners have seen big changes in the world of climate finance over the past few months in direct response to our coalition pressure campaigns. The communities most impacted by BlackRock’s insufficient action on climate are continuing to escalate their demands.

Days after BlackRock’s recent March announcements, over 80 renowned Indigenous and frontline activists from all over the world – including several recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award – issued a public letter criticizing BlackRock’s role in the ongoing violation of their land and human rights. The letter outlines the urgent need for action, stating: “While BlackRock makes pledges to ask portfolio companies to cut emissions in the future, our forests are being razed, our land is being stolen, and our people are being killed, today.”

Eloy Terena, Legal Coordinator of the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB), and one of the letter’s signers said: “BlackRock’s investments have an impact on our lives and our communities, and the company’s leadership, therefore, has a responsibility for our future. If the Amazon is destroyed, the future of the entire planet is at risk.” 

Activists are pushing BlackRock to shift its thinking from a sole focus on the risks climate change poses to its investments, to a more holistic understanding of, and accountability for, how its investments are causing and accelerating climate change. 

Sonia Guajajara, Executive Coordinator of APIB, said, “Despite its latest announcement on ‘natural capital,’ BlackRock does not have a concrete policy in place to handle investments that impact Indigenous peoples and our territories. BlackRock has not pledged to pressure companies to end deforestation in the Amazon. Our challenge to BlackRock is clear: safeguard Indigenous peoples’ rights and eliminate deforestation and human rights violations from its portfolios.”

This new letter by over 80 Earth defenders follows months of pressure to get BlackRock to act on human rights. In January,  Eloy Terena, sent a public letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. Amazon Watch amplified the letter’s calls that the company meet with Indigenous leaders to learn about how its investments are damaging frontline communities and develop a comprehensive policy to protect forests and Indigenous rights. 

The letter from APIB came just before Larry Fink released his much-anticipated annual letter to CEOs and clients, in which he pledged that BlackRock would transition its investment portfolio to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner. In the letter, Fink said that BlackRock would move to incorporate climate risk into its long-term investment analysis, and noted that most of the brunt of climate change is experienced by developing nations and vulnerable communities that can “least afford the economic shocks of a poorly implemented transition.”

Despite this rhetoric, Fink failed to articulate exactly how BlackRock will reach net zero. What’s more, the very concept of “net-zero” leaves the door open for companies to continue engaging in false solutions to mitigate climate change, such as buying carbon offsets instead of reducing their emissions.

In March, BlackRock released a memo on “natural capital”, a memo on human rights impacts, and updated engagement priorities. Notably, BlackRock encouraged the companies it invests in to adopt no-deforestation policies, to account for biodiversity in their operations, and to obtain the Free, Prior, and Informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous peoples “for initiatives that affect their rights.” 

These recent announcements are promising, but BlackRock has a lot to do before it can live up to them. As detailed in reports on financial links to environmental destruction from Amazon Watch, APIB, and Friends of the Earth, BlackRock remains one of the largest investors in the fossil fuel, agribusiness, and mining industries driving climate chaos in the Amazon and around the world. The company has also actively worked against shareholder efforts to address these problems.

The demands from frontline leaders are clear. Going forward, the finance team and our allies will be watching BlackRock’s performance in the 2021 Annual General Meeting (AGM) season to see how it uses its power as a leading shareholder to vote on climate-related resolutions, and whether it responds to demands from Indigenous and frontline leaders to create and implement a binding policy on deforestation and Indigenous rights. BlackRock’s new announcements recognizing the need to reach near-zero-emissions are a step in the right direction that comes after years of campaigning by Indigenous leaders and civil society organizations, but without clear accountability measures, they remain empty promises.

AMAZON WATCH » Frontline Activists from Around the World Escalate Pressure on BlackRock

Open letter calls for urgent action to address over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

TwitterFacebookLinkedIn26 AUG 2020  EBONY STANSFIELD

It’s time to stop investing in punitive criminal justice responses that trap Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in cycles of imprisonment and disadvantage, states open letter.

The open letter – which has been delivered to the Commonwealth Attorney-General, Christian Porter, and all State and Territory Attorneys-General – contains a five-point call to action.

More than 300 criminologists, lawyers and other academics from across Australia have signed an open letter calling on all Australian governments to take urgent action to address the over-criminalisation and over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The letter was initiated by members of the Centre for Crime, Law and Justice (CCLJ) at UNSW Sydney as a way of supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have been campaigning for justice on these issues for decades.

Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, there have been 438 known deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in police or corrective services custody.

“There has been a chronic lack of accountability for these deaths,” the open letter says.

It calls for a move away from punitive criminal justice responses, in favour of addressing the social and economic needs of communities – which is not a radical or fringe suggestion, CCLJ co-director, Professor Luke McNamara says.

“This is a shift that is entirely consistent with the recommendations of the ALRC’s Pathways to Justice report.”

The open letter catalogues the disturbing and overwhelming evidence of massive over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prisons, and as targets of police surveillance, enforcement and violence – including the failure of Australian governments to act on recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Pathways to Justice report (tabled in March 2018).

“One of the major recommendations from the ALRC is governments should commit to ‘justice reinvestment’ as an approach to crime prevention and safety that builds, rather than damages, communities,” Prof McNamara says.

The open letter – which has been delivered to the Commonwealth Attorney-General, Christian Porter, and all State and Territory Attorneys-General – contains a five-point call to action:

1. Investment in effective diversion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people caught in criminal justice cycles;
2. Raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years of age;
3. An end to ever-increasing police and corrections budgets;
4. Investment in community services and structural initiatives led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people;
5. Real government support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ calls for self-determination, control and voice, and for significant social and economic investment in their communities.

Eddie Synot, Centre Manager of the Indigenous Law Centre, says revamped Closing the Gap targets are not enough to address the overcriminalisation and overincarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

“Despite decades of reports and inquiries and evidence from the front-line of our communities that the current approach does not work and causes harm — we continue to be lashed with retrograde decisions that unnecessarily condemn further generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to prison,” he continues.

My Synot says The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was clear, as was the Australian Law Reform Commission’s most recent report Pathways to Justice.

“Nothing short of substantive structural reform that empowers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is enough to address the problems of racism, overcriminalisation and overincarceration that our communities face.”

Mr Synot says there are enough evidence-based solutions available to make a real difference in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

“We need decision makers to listen and to make better decisions; we need structural reform – the likes of which the Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for – not revamped justice targets that will fail our people for generations to come,” he says.

The open letter and full list of signatories is available here.TwitterFacebookLinkedIn

Open letter calls for urgent action to address over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people | UNSW Newsroom

Pediatrician used violence on children in indian reservation (TV-Docu in German, in English with German translation)

CHILDREN IN SHADOW ::: CHILDREN IN WAR “I COULD NOT SEE THE SUN FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS” – A LITTLE BOY IN PRISON/SOLITARY TOLD” WISH THAT NO CHILD HAS TO LIVE IN SHADOW! Photo pebbles foto – Bing images

I´ll search for an address of the originalproducer of this report, that you could be able to watch it – if not here on German TV)

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Missbrauch im Indianerreservat – ein Kinderarzt vor Gericht (TV-Docu in Germany, in English with German translation, I hope you´ll find it in US)

https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/missbrauch-im-indianerreservat-ein-kinderarzt-vor-gericht-102.html
Missbrauch im Indianerreservat – Ein Kinderarzt vor Gericht https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/missbrauch-im-indianerreservat-ein-kinderarzt-vor-gericht-102.html#xtor=CS5-21

Missbrauch im Indianerreservat – Ein Kinderarzt vor Gericht
Ein Kinderarzt zieht über Jahrzehnte von Indianerreservat zu Indianerreservat und missbraucht Jungen aus der indigenen US-amerikanischen Bevölkerung. Die Behörden schauen weg.
Beitragslänge:
44 min
Datum:
10.09.2019
Verfügbarkeit:
Video verfügbar bis 02.10.2019
Mehr von ZDFinfo Doku
Im Januar 2019 wurde der 70-jährige Dr. Stanley Weber zu mehr als 18 Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt. Ein weiteres Verfahren läuft. Nach fast 30 Jahren weiß immer noch niemand, wie viele Opfer es wirklich gibt. Und wie viele Personen weggesehen haben, statt ihn zu stoppen.

Does Canada Have Courage To Call What They Did To Indigenous Peoples Genocide?

Residential schools

May 21, 2015 Red Power Media, Staff 3 Comments

The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. ERIC LONG / NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

By Dan Lett

Commission’s report will offer stark evidence

In the elegant confines of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the bias is pretty clear for all to see.

The content in this government-run facility is robustly pro-Indian rights and unabashedly political. Elaborate displays of cultural art and culture are laid alongside shocking and graphic descriptions of seminal legal battles involving, and the atrocities committed against, indigenous peoples in the U.S.

Most striking is the frequent use of a quote from former U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black who, in 1960, argued in a minority opinion on a treaty rights case that “Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.” That is a stark missive to a government from a government-run museum.

What you will not find in this facility is the word “genocide.” It is not completely absent; the museum and its website both reference activists, academics and other supporters who believe American Indians were the victims of a state-sponsored genocide. The U.S. government, however, has declined to officially adopt the label.

That is not, in and of itself, an unusual condition. Nation states often struggle to accept an incident in their history meets the criteria of a genocide. Most acknowledged genocides come as the result of legal decisions, either from a domestic or international court. In the absence of those decisions, voluntary self-labelling is very rare.

Canada, however, could find itself in the rare position of becoming one of only a handful of nations to admit to a historic genocide when the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is tabled June 2.

Struck as part of the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement between the federal government and victims, the commission has spent the last five years collecting evidence on the atrocities committed in residential schools.

It is not within the mandate of the commission to formally attach the term genocide to residential schools. That would come from a court or from Parliament. However, that has not stopped Justice Murray Sinclair, a judge from Manitoba and chairman of the TRC, from reaching his own conclusions.

In interviews and published arguments, Sinclair makes it clear residential schools were part of a process of aggressive colonization of aboriginal people. And that this process is consistent with international legal definitions of genocide.

Sinclair’s argument will be bolstered by new, stark details of just how badly we treated aboriginal children sent to residential schools.

The broader Canadian public has always conceded the schools tried to eradicate aboriginal culture. And that some of the children were victims of sexual and physical abuse so severe, some died. At the outset of the TRC, it was believed about 4,000 of the 150,000 children who went through the residential school system died from mistreatment of one form or another.

However, as the TRC has gone through its work, other, more troubling incidents have been revealed, some by the commission itself and others by academics doing parallel research into Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people.

Deadly tuberculosis outbreaks in overcrowded school dormitories. Medical experiments on malnourished aboriginal children, who were kept in a state of starvation to serve the needs of researchers. Dozens of unexplained, unmarked graves of aboriginal children near a residential school in Brandon.

The total number of aboriginal children who died while in the care of a residential school is expected to rise exponentially when the TRC tables its final report. And that alone should create an opportunity for a national debate about whether it’s time to use the term genocide to describe what went on.

Whether the current Conservative government accepts that opportunity is unclear. In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology to aboriginal people for their treatment in residential schools and offered financial compensation. In addition, Harper launched the TRC to look more deeply into the reality of residential schools.

There will be those who will argue Ottawa has done enough to address this issue and any debate over labelling residential schools a genocide is gratuitous. They will be wrong.

Whether or not the prime minister had this in mind when he created the TRC, the final report will serve as an indictment of Canada’s role in residential schools and provide the evidence necessary to back up a charge of genocide.

The politics of the TRC report is difficult to anticipate. The country is still keenly aware of concerns surrounding missing and murdered aboriginal women and the calls for a national inquiry.

Those calls have already become fodder for campaigning parties. Will the TRC report itself become an election issue this fall?

Regardless of how politicians wade into the issue, we should be confident that for the first time in our history, we will know the full truth about residential schools. What we choose to do with that information will either define us as a courageous nation or a cowardly one.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press story, Do we have courage to call what we did to natives genocide? by Dan Lett, May 21, 2015

LAKOTA PEOPLE´S | LAW PROJECT

Tokata Iron Eyes, Lakota Law <info@lakotalaw.org>Abmelden

An:Annamaria Grabowski

Fr., 13. Jan. um 02:51

Dear Annamaria,

Hello! It is good to be in community with you. My name is Tokata Iron Eyes, and I am the daughter of Chase Iron Eyes — whom you know well by now — and Sara Jumping Eagle. I’m incredibly fortunate to have grown up with such politically informed and radically motivated parents who unabashedly instilled their values and our history within me. And now, I’m joining my father on the Lakota Law team as a spokesperson and field organizer!

I am incredibly excited to see what we’ll do to make a difference for Native and environmental justice together. To learn more about me and my priorities, please read on — and also take a look at this interview I did with actor Angelina Jolie after being selected as a 2021 Seventeen Magazine Voices of the Year honoree.

Let’s make a difference for Native and environmental justice together! Photo of me by Aiden Early.

I grew up on the Standing Rock and Pine Ridge reservations in North and South Dakota, and I’ve been an advocate for Native young people from a very early age. I began confronting injustice when I testified against a uranium mine in the sacred Black Hills at 9 years old. I then gained critical perspective during my involvement with the movement to oppose the Dakota Access pipeline, which threatens Standing Rock’s water and sacred lands to this day. As I continued to grow and educate myself, my interests broadened. In moving toward Indigenous liberation at large, my work as a climate activist and feminist ensued.

You may remember when I wrote to you In 2019 after hosting Greta Thunberg across Indian Country. I led an action to call for land back to Indigenous people and I was featured on the Marvel Hero Project on Disney+, a series shining light on young people who are changing the world. I’m also a singer/songwriter, and I began attending college in 2020. 

As I begin my work with Lakota Law, I look forward to sharing my uncensored perspective on the uncomfortable truths of colonization and capitalism. I know you’ll help me compel the world to listen to Indigenous nations on issues like the NoDAPL movement and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People epidemic across the U.S. Together, we can and will inspire more youth from communities around the world to use their voices and confront injustice.

Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with me for the future!
Tokata Iron Eyes
Spokesperson and Field Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Lakota People’s Law Project
547 South 7th Street #149
Bismarck, ND 58504-5859

The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.

FREE LEONARD PELTIER: I AM TIRED, I WANT TO GO HOME …

Leonard Peltier – paintings https://youtu.be/fqZvCyBXt9U via

@YouTube

#FreeLeonardPeltier

Happy Solstice! Help us celebrate by protecting forests: Deadline Dec 27! — Global Justice Ecology Project

Happy Solstice! Help us celebrate by protecting forests from the risks of GE Trees by Dec 27!  Action Alert! We need you to tell the USDA that releasing dangerous, unproven and unmonitored GE trees into our forests is a Massive, Irreversible Risk Deadline 12/27/22 Comment at: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/APHIS-2020-0030-8291 The wild American Chestnut is Already Rebounding!  We don’t need…

  Happy Solstice! Help us celebrate by protecting forests: Deadline Dec 27! — Global Justice Ecology Project

Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools

Lara Trace Hentz

Soul Wound

The Legacy of Native American Schools

U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.

By Andrea Smith

A little while ago, I was supposed to attend a Halloween party. I decided to dress as a nun because nuns were the scariest things I ever saw,” says Willetta Dolphus, 54, a Cheyenne River Lakota. The source of her fear, still vivid decades later, was her childhood experience at American Indian boarding schools in South Dakota.

Boys pray before bedtime with Father Keyes, St. Mary’s Mission School, Omak. © Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture/Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Spokane, WA

Dolphus is one of more than 100,000 Native Americans forced by the U.S. government to attend Christian schools. The system, which…

View original post 2,198 more words

Indigenous Futures and New Zealand’s Constitution — The Constitutional Kōrero: Transforming New Zealand’s Constitution — Turtle Island Panel Today — Turtle Talk

Always fun to get a chance to talk about Anishinaabe law, constitutions, and jurisprudence. Here. Here is the comic book.

Indigenous Futures and New Zealand’s Constitution — The Constitutional Kōrero: Transforming New Zealand’s Constitution — Turtle Island Panel Today — Turtle Talk

Ninth Circuit Reverses Dismissal of San Carlos Apache Health Care Contract Support Costs Suit

Turtle Talk

Here is the opinion in San Carlos Apache Tribe v. Beccera.

An excerpt:

A simplified example clarifies this scheme. Assume that a tribe administers a $3 million healthcare program for its members. It costs the tribe $500,000 in administrative costs to do so. IHS therefore will pay the tribe $3.5 million. Additionally, the tribe recovers $1 million for those procedures from outside insurers. It is statutorily required to spend that $1 million on health care as well.
But there is a hole in this statutory scheme. Who pays the CSC for that additional $1 million in health care that the tribe must provide with its third-party revenue? At the heart of this lawsuit is Plaintiff-Appellant San Carlos Apache Tribe’s (“the Tribe”) contention that IHS must cover those additional CSC.

Briefs here.

This guy’s not Apache but he’s happy for them.

View original post

AMERICAN HISTORY

I am Sophia..

@Wtfagain5

Unless you are INDIGENOUS, you ARE an immigrant…..

ON TWITTER

Spirit Lake Nation sues Benson County North Dakota over its redistricting plan — Turtle Talk

The Spirit Lake Nation and two tribal members sued Benson County North Dakota, alleging that the county’s at-large redistricting plan: (1) discriminates against Native American voters by unlawfully diluting their voting strength in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; and (2) violates a 2000 consent decree in which the county was prohibited […]

Spirit Lake Nation sues Benson County North Dakota over its redistricting plan — Turtle Talk

Indigenous National Strike in Ecuador: Has the Government Run Out of Time?

By: Fernando Casado

• Thousands of people demonstrate against the Government of Guillermo Lasso, in Quito (Ecuador). | Photo: EFE/José Jácome

Last Monday the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) backed by more than 53 social organizations, started a national indefinite strike to force the government to respond to a plea based on ten demands.

The strike occurred a year after Guillermo Lasso took office as the President of Ecuador, who was accused of not fulfilling his electoral campaign promises. In the recent history of Ecuador, the indigenous people only go to strike when their situation is desperate. Therefore, lord have mercy when it happens, it wouldn’t be the first time the indigenous discontent would topple a government.

At the root of the strike lies the continuous increase of poverty and inequality in a country harshly beaten by the pandemic and years of liberal policies implemented by Lasso and his predecessor. While the poverty rate for 2021 was 32,2%, a 10,2% increase from 2015, the extreme poverty rate almost doubled during the same period. Likewise, as a collateral consequence of the social-economic disparity, the homicide rate has undergone a dramatic rise, from 5.6 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants in the year 2016, to 14 in 2021. Consequently, Ecuador has turned from one of the safest countries in the region to a very dangerous one.

‘We don’t need a new king’: Lidia Thorpe calls for Indigenous treaty then a republic | Indigenous Australians | The Guardian — olddogthoughts

Australia’s path to a Republic is less complex than Canada’s or NZs we have no treaties and Indigenous Australians aren’t even named in our Constitution We only admitted Terra Nullis was wrong 25-30 years ago and are trying to remedy our historic failings now. A Republic seems simple as do treaties under an entirely new […]

‘We don’t need a new king’: Lidia Thorpe calls for Indigenous treaty then a republic | Indigenous Australians | The Guardian — olddogthoughts