Suriname: "New" Species Already Endangered

From the Associated Press, June 5 2007, an article on the "discovery" (one can be sure that the species are not new to the indigenous peoples of the area) of previously undocumented species of frog and insects in eastern Suriname. Having just been found by surveyors, they are almost immediately at risk, especially as the survey was done for mining companies, one of which, BHP is an Australian transnational corporation, with a woeful record of environmental destruction. Amerindians and Maroons of Suriname's interior, as the article notes, already suffer from poisonous contamination from mining, so the prospects for this "new" frog do not look too good.

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PARAMARIBO Suriname - A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.

The expedition was sponsored by two mining companies hoping to excavate the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and it was unknown how the findings would affect their plans.

Scientists discovered the species during a 2005 expedition led by the U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International in rainforests and swamps about 80 miles southeast of Paramaribo, the capital of the South American country, organization spokesman Tom Cohen said.

Among the species found were the atelopus frog, which has distinctive purple markings; six types of fish; 12 dung beetles, and one ant species, he said.

The scientists called for better conservation management in the unprotected, state-owned areas, where hunting and small-scale illegal mining is common.

The study was financed by Suriname Aluminum Company LLC and BHP Billiton Maatschappij Suriname. Suriname Aluminum, which has a government concession to explore gold in the area, will include the data in its environmental assessment study, said Haydi Berrenstein, a Conservation International official in Suriname, which borders Brazil, Guyana and French Guiana.

About 80 percent of Suriname is covered with dense rainforest. Thousands of Brazilians and Surinamese are believed to work in illegal gold mining, creating mercury pollution that has threatened the health of Amerindians and Maroons in Suriname's interior.

Good Company

Thank you for the warm welcome and the invitation to join the CAC Review. I am grateful for your work. I thank all our ancestors for guiding us to each other.

I almost am not sure where to begin. But I guess as good a place to start as any is in my own back yard. I live on the island known as The Land of the Hummingbird. And there are many hummingbirds indeed. My island is beautiful but unfortunately much of its beauty remains undiscovered by many of the people who live here. For some the forest remains a place of mystery and danger, while it has been a place of reawakening for others.

Discovery. Now there’s a word that has caused trouble for us all. But perhaps the bigger problem lies in the question of who discovered what. And when.

On this Land of the Hummingbird, while the frogs and crickets sing a warm welcome to the rain and praises to the full moon, we are re-finding, redefining and refining our space. My people of the Santa Rosa Carib community who grew together as one tribe, have just about lost their young. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers, a few grandfathers, are the only ones bothered to come to gatherings.

My own great aunt is the Carib Queen. I decided against writing "reigning" there. I could not write it because it feels like she has no power at all. Her people sometimes don’t bother turning up. Sometimes her people have other appointments. Sometimes her people are surviving.

More in the days to come on survival.

The CAC Welcomes a New Editor!

On behalf of the editorial board of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink, I wish to an extend an especially warm welcome to our newest editorial member, Tracy Assing from Arima, Trinidad. All of the current editors were unanimous in supporting her joining us. I am also very happy to have corresponded and met with Tracy in Trinidad and I look forward to hearing/reading more from her. What follows is a personal introduction written by Tracy.


I was raised in the Carib Santa Rosa community of Arima. All four of my grandparents come from various First Nations people and much of their knowledge has been passed on to us. I am especially concerned about the historical inaccuracies still being taught in our country's schools, about the trespass of our ancestral hunting and fishing grounds and significant archaeological sites, about the cosmetic recognition we receive from political parties, about the level of control exercised by the Catholic church over our elders.

I have questions about what has been accepted and propagated in the past. My great aunt (sister of my father's father) is the current "Carib Queen" Valentina Medina.

The community raised under the "Carib Santa Rosa" umbrella is waking to itself.

I am an Assistant Editor at Caribbean Beat magazine and have a multi-media work history with stints in radio, television, magazine/journal and newspaper publishing over the last 12 years.

Who Is An Indian? Race, Blood, DNA, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas

Thanks to support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and University of Toronto Press, an international seminar will be hosted in Montreal this August, for a project titled: Who Is An Indian? Race, Blood, DNA, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas.

The aim of the project is as follows:

The contributors seek to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding and explaining racial approaches to indigenous identity at the intersections of colonialism, state governance, and indigenous political resurgence, by way of a cross-cultural and comparative analysis of indigenous cases from across the Americas. Secondly, they explore the theoretical and conceptual bases for conceiving a unified problematic—the bio-politics of indigeneity—which has at least three manifestations: “race” at the broadest level but also involving culturally specific valuations of particular phenotypical traits in accordance with local norms of racialization; blood quantum measurements and the calculus of identity; and, DNA testing. Their third goal is to examine the social possibilities and cultural contours for an indigeneity that exceeds or transcends the criteria of bodily markers, and for disciplinary reformulations.

Participants include:

JOSÉ BARREIRO
SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
ALICE BARTELS
DENNIS BARTELS
SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE, MUN
PHIL BELLFY
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JULIA COATES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
MAXIMILIAN FORTE
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
MARÍA ELENA GARCÍA
TUFTS UNIVERSITY
EVA MARIE GARROUTTE
BOSTON COLLEGE
BONITA LAWRENCE
YORK UNIVERSITY
JOSÉ ANTONIO LUCERO
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
DONNA PATRICK
CARLETON UNIVERSITY
KAREN STOCKER
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, BAKERSFIELD
KIMBERLY TALLBEAR
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
JONATHAN WARREN
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE

The seminar is organized and hosted by CAC editor, Maximilian Forte. For more information, please see:

http://www.centrelink.org/seminar/index.htm

News from Australia

The last few weeks have seen a spate of articles in the Australian print media revolving around the 40th anniversary of Australia's decision to formally grant citizenship to its Aboriginal population, who had previously been controlled by various state legislative acts that classed them with the country's flora and fauna.

On the latter issue, see the Sydney Morning Herald, in an article titled, "When I was fauna: citizen's rallying call":

"LINDA BURNEY remembers her childhood well - those days when she was counted among the nation's wildlife. 'This is not ancient history,' says the state's [New South Wales] first Aboriginal minister. 'I was a child. It still staggers me that for the first 10 years of my life, I existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of NSW.' Then came the 1967 referendum, when Australians voted to extend full citizenship to Aborigines. Now, just days before the 40th anniversary of that vote, Ms Burney has described the referendum as a high tide in both the nation's history and her own - the moment when her status was elevated from fauna to citizen."

See especially: "Aborigines recall when Australia called them wildlife", by Michael Perry, Reuters, Thursday, May 24, 2007.

Other articles focused on the continued misery that dominates many remote and poor Aboriginal communities for whom "citizenship" entails a vague and increasingly irrelevant abstraction. A number of sources point out that in terms of health standards and life expectancy there are two Australias: one, a wealthier and whiter Australia with life expectancy mirroring that of nations of the G8, the second, an Aboriginal Australia with life expectancy rates mirroring those of the poorest nations of the "Third World." See the following article in The Australian: "Aborigines still off the map 40 years on," by Neil Sands, May 25, 2007.

Current Prime Minister John Howard, who has been in office for more than a decade is, according to some polls, leading his ruling coalition to what appears to be a landslide defeat by November of this year. Prime Minister Howard's administration has distinguished itself on numerous fronts, from alluding to Lebanese Australians as a violent community, to treating refugees fleeing the Taliban in pre-911 days as being mere "economic opportunists" (Australia later joined the US in invading Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban), to refusing to issue an apology for clear cases of genocide against Aboriginals in recent Australian history, and finally dismantling the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Commission. Howard is getting his fair share of heckling by Aboriginals at major events--see in the Agence France Presse, Sunday, May 27, 2007, "Australian PM heckled on Aborigines."

As if to further pollute the situation of unsettled Aboriginal land tenure in Australia, despite some historic victories in the highest courts of the country, we also read about plans to turn some Aboriginal territory into a nuclear waste dump...and then to return it to Aboriginals two centuries from now. This resembles the case of Great Britain using parts of South Australia for testing nuclear bombs, with that land also later returned to its traditional ownwers. One can read more in The Australian, "Aboriginal land likely to be nuke waste dump," by Tara Ravens, May 25, 2007.

"Why is it so hard to say sorry?"--a good question, addressed in this article by Ursula Stephens on the Australian Eurekastreet website. Please read some of the commentary that follows the article, at the bottom of the page.

Australia is still grappling with racism and its deep colonial history, an ongoing history, in this settler state that in many parts was settled by Europeans only within the last 170 years. With the amount of negative attention directed towards the U.S., the Iraq war, and the many shortcomings of President Bush, it is very easy to overlook other situations where both the nature and consequences of current political leadership can be even more stark and grim. Canada, like Australia, also evades such critical attention.

A Second Indigenous President in "Latin America"?

From LATIN AMERICA PRESS:

GUATEMALA : President Menchú?
Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist faces challenges from friends and foes.

Louisa Reynolds. May 30, 2007

"Rigoberta Menchú’s decision to run for president is regarded as a milestone in Guatemalan political history and has led to heated debates on both sides of the political spectrum. If elected, she will become the first woman to hold the office and the first indigenous president .

"The activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work in defense of indigenous rights. Menchú drew attention to abuses during the Guatemalan civil war during which her parents were murdered by the Guatemalan army....

"The indigenous activist now represents a coalition of the indigenous party Winaq and the fledgling center-left Encuentro por Guatemala, or EG, party. Congresswoman Nineth Montenegro, who heads EG, is Menchú’s running mate.

"According to political analyst José Carlos Sanabria, one of Menchú’s biggest challenges will be overcoming the racist and sexist prejudices that are still deeply embedded in Guatemalan society. The experiment, he says, will allow Guatemala to assess whether any progress has been made to eradicate racial prejudice since the Peace Accords were signed in 1996."

In a related article by AScribe titled, "Study Says Many Guatemalan Women Don't Vote", the following details seem to place a question mark on the likelihood of an easy victory for Menchú:

"NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 31 (AScribe Newswire) -- A comparative study shows that Guatemalan women tend not to vote. This is especially true of those who lack education and live in rural areas. The study was presented in Guatemala City on May 31, only a few months before the September presidential elections. It offers useful information while Rigoberta Menchú, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the only indigenous women candidate since the Central American independence, is running for president. Guatemala has among the lowest levels of voter turnout in Latin America (56.5 percent), notes a survey conducted by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). The nonparticipation rate among uneducated women is the highest, reaching almost 70 percent in rural areas and almost 64 percent in urban areas. Among the women with some primary education, almost 55 percent do not vote. Even among women with some university education, the abstention rate is higher than among men with a university education. The data shows that, in 2006, only 69.2 percent of Guatemala's indigenous peoples indicated that they were registered to vote, compared to 78.2 percent of ladino (racially mixed) respondents. Moreover, 60.4 percent of the ladino population said they voted, while only 55.8 percent of indigenous respondents did. Almost one fourth (23.6 percent) of all registered respondents said that they lacked the motivation to vote. Regarding Guatemalans' political self-identification, the majority (around 51 percent) consider themselves near the center, about 22 percent left or center-left, and 26 percent right or center-right. A third of all respondents (31 percent) found it difficult to differentiate between the political right and left."