An illustration of the Great Lakes region, through which Enbridge Energy’s Lines 3 and 5 carrying tar sands oil flows / credit: Bill Krupinski
Editor’s Note: Members of Toward Freedom‘s Board of Directors are involved in struggles while they serve on TF‘s working board. Board President Rebecca Kemble spent the summer in central Minnesota, where a struggle against pipelines carrying oil derived from Canadian tar sands has taken place. Enbridge Energy is a Canadian multinational corporation running tar sands pipelines through the United States for export because it has not been able to get permission to build them in Canada. However, all of the land through which Enbridge’s Pipeline 3, known as “Line 3,” passes either is 1854 or 1855 Treaty Territory. The Obijwe people ceded the territory to the U.S. government in exchange for the rights to hunt, fish and gather on those lands in perpetuity. Line 3 also plows through hundreds of wild-rice beds. Northern and central Minnesota, as well as northern Wisconsin, are the only places where wild rice grows. The plant is sacred to the Anishinaabe peoples (made up of the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Pottowotami nations) of the Great Lakes region. The U.S. government initiated the 1854 and 1855 treaties to avoid costly military campaigns for land conquest. Since they were written, these treaties have been broken multiple times. In the last several decades, the Ojibwe people have been successfully asserting their treaty rights in federal courts. The White Earth Band of Ojibwe recently sued Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources for permitting Line 3 and, in so doing, failing to protect the state’s fresh water. Manoomin (wild rice) is named as a plaintiff in that case. (In Ecuador and New Zealand, rivers have been named plaintiffs.) At least 6 active and autonomous “No Line 3” camps have occupied central Minnesota over the past summer. Some have been established as direct-action camps, while others are cultural and educational camps.
Monday, October 12, marked Indigenous People’s Day, which kicked off a series of daily protest actions in Washington, D.C. While U.S. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation Monday affirming Indigenous sovereignty, the federal government continues to allow violations of Indigenous sovereignty, such as in the form of pipeline projects.
For the first time since the 1970s, Indigenous people occupied the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs this week in Washington. A group called People vs. Fossil Fuels stated in a press release 130 people were arrested.
Restoration of 110 million acres (450,000 km2) of land taken away from Native Nations
Bring Home Our Children Buried At Your Residential Schools
Restoration of treaty-making (ended by Congress in 1871)
Establishment of a treaty commission to make new treaties (with sovereign Native Nations)
Land Back
Water Back
Honor the Treaties
No new leases for oil and gas or extractive industry on public lands
Free, Prior, and Informed Consent
Reclaim and affirm health, housing, employment, economic development, and education for all Indigenous people
Restoration of terminated rights
Repeal of state jurisdiction on Native Nations
Federal protection for offenses against Indians
Below is a series of photos Rebecca Kemble captured over the summer.
Sunset on the Shell River in 1855 Treaty Territory, now within the U.S. state of Minnesota. The treaty created the Leech Lake and Mille Lacs reservations in northern Minnesota, while ceding territory to the U.S. government but retaining rights to hunt, fish and gather food. The river is home to many plant, mollusk, fish, insect, bird and animal species, including the endangered Higgins’ Eye Pearlymussel and many beds of wild rice. The historic drought of the summer of 2021 reduced the water flow to between 10 percent and 25 percent of its normal rate. As a consequence, it was possible to walk down many miles of the river bed. Enbridge Energy drilled under the river in five locations using Horizontal Directional Drilling methods. Throughout the summer of 2021, Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led nonprofit that has provided grants to more than 200 Indigenous organizations, sponsored an Anishinaabe culture and education camp at the Shell City Campground on the shores of the Shell River. The Anishinaabe people are indigenous to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario. Over the course of the summer, thousands of people visited the camp, participating in river monitoring and cultural activities, and learning about Anishinaabe culture, history and the 1855 Treaty between the Upper Mississippi Ojibwe and the U.S. government.
Visitors arriving at Shell City Campground learned about 1855 Treaty Territory and their responsibilities under those treaties. Treaties are not just about Indigenous people—they are agreements between sovereign nations and must be upheld on both sides. The U.S. Constitution calls treaties “the supreme law of the land” and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the rights of Indigenous people to hunt, fish and gather in territories where treaties have reserved those rights, including 1855 Treaty Territory in central Minnesota. What good is a right to hunt, fish or gather if there is no game, fish or plant food to harvest? This is the basis for opposing extractive industries in Tribal territories: It destroys the basis for practicing Indigenous ways of living.
Rays of the sun seem to pull the canoe forward as a camper returns from an evening paddle.The break in the trees is the Enbridge easement in Wadena County, Minnesota, where Line 3 will cross under the Shell River. The light green vegetation on the water’s edge is a wild-rice bed.The endangered Higgins’ Eye Pearlymussel was found in the Shell River near the Enbridge escarpment. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources refused to send staff to the river to confirm their existence.Higgins’ Eye Pearlymussel found in the Shell River on the Enbridge easement.University of Minnesota students testing water temperatures in the river above the location where Enbridge installed Line 3.Law enforcement arrived on the Enbridge easement as scientists conducted water monitoring experiments. An easement is the point at which a jurisdiction grants an entity permission to cross. Enbridge has reimbursed Minnesota law-enforcement agencies over $2 million for policing its property over the past year, and it has participated in coordinated trainings and intelligence sharing. Enbridge pipes ready to be welded and trenched into the ground in Wadena County, Minnesota.Honor the Earth applied to the City of Park Rapids, Minnesota, to participate in their Fourth of July parade. The application was denied and it was informed it would be forcibly evicted if it tried to join. Water Protectors with signs, banners and life-sized puppets watched the parade from a side street and joined in at the end. They were followed by police and sheriff cars, but they were not evicted.Mavis Mantila, enrolled member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and public-school teacher, stands by a giant sturgeon puppet during the Park Rapids Fourth of July parade.
Honor the Earth delegation joins a Fourth of July parade in Park Rapids, Minnesota, as police and sheriff cars follow.
Honor the Earth Executive Director and White Earth tribal member Winona LaDuke at the end of the Park Rapids Fourth of July parade.After the parade, water protectors marched to local Enbridge offices in Park Rapids.Park Rapids police guarding Enbridge property. Water protectors were ordered off the property.A sign left behind on the Enbridge entrance’s sign reads, “Who Profit$ Who Dies?”Chelsea Fairbank, completing her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Maine, installs an Honoring Water art project at the Shell City Campground in July, 2021. The project is based on her doctoral research that focuses on large-scale fossil-fuel extraction sites, and the peoples impacted in these zones.
Part of the Honoring Water project includes the press release from the 1855 Treaty Authority that announced the White Earth Band of Ojibwe’s formal declaration of the Rights of Manoomin (wild rice) in their territory.Page 2 of the Rights of Manoomin press release.Kiley Knowles (right) of the Obijwe nation and Nova Dakota of Dakota/Tla-o-qui-aht ancestry on a horse named Bud at Shell City Horse Camp.Dakota singer Hoka Wicasa spent the summer teaching songs and ceremonies to Ojibwe youth at the Shell City Horse Camp.Jim Northrup III, a Fond du Lac Ojibwe member, teaching youth how to erect a tipi at the Shell City Horse Camp. Sawyer, 12, tries his hand as a rope runner. Rope running requires walking the rope around tipi poles to secure them together at the top, where the poles meet. This helps create the structure for a tipi, a traditional shelter for Indigenous peoples mainly of the plains and prairies of North America. Sasha Richards leads riders as she carries water through downtown Park Rapids on one leg of the Line 3 Nibi (Water) Walk that began at Lake Superior in Wisconsin and went 359 miles to the Red River in North Dakota. Kiley Knowles carries the staff behind her.Teenagers Kiley, Iris and Sasha ride the Nibi Walk route in Hubbard County, Minnesota.Riders crossing a Line 3 site in Hubbard County, Minnesota.Signs at the camp read, from left to right, “From the Bronx to Shell River: Defend the Sacred,” “Welcome the Lummi Nation” and “Love Water: HonorEarth.org” Banners at Shell City Campground welcoming the House of Tears Carvers from Lummi Nation on their Red Road to DC journey.Honor the Earth Executive Director Winona LaDuke and Board President Oneida tribal member Paul DeMain join House of Tears carver Sit ki kadem and painter Siam’el wit of Lummi Nation on a stop at Shell City Camp. This was part of the Red Road to DC 20th anniversary Totem Pole journey to protect sacred sites.House of Tears Carvers painter Siam’el wit gives Jim Northrup III a blanket at the end of the honoring ceremony at Shell City Camp.Water protectors and Red Road to DC tour denizens at Shell City Camp.White Earth Tribal member and RISE Coalition co-founder Dawn Goodwin (second from right) serves an Enbridge representative with a cease-and-desist order for work on Line 3 under the Mississippi River. The order was from the White Earth Tribal Council. However, Enbridge did not acknowledge it as it wasn’t signed by a U.S. judge. Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson (second from left) flanks the representative while White Earth Tribal Council member Raymond Auginaush, Sr. (center) accompanies Dawn. Dawn and others established Camp Firelight near the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Coffee Pot Landing in Clearwater County, where Enbridge had set up pumping and drilling stations to bore under the river. Pipeline 3 is set to travel under the river, a cause for concern as it violates the sovereignty of Ojibwe people in the 1855 Treaty Territory and could pollute water for 20 million people who live downstream when the pipeline leaks. Pipeline leaks are common in the United States.A confrontation with an Enbridge representative and a county sheriff.Dakota singer Hoka Wicasa sings as youth runners from Standing Rock, Cheyenne River and Lower Brule Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Nations in North and South Dakota approach an Enbridge work site near Camp Firelight. They ran 1,100 miles from Mobridge, South Dakota through North Dakota and along the pipeline route across Minnesota from North Dakota to Wisconsin, stopping at all of the water protector camps across the region. Youth runners count coup on Enbridge at Coffee Pot Landing in Clearwater County, Minnesota. Counting coup is the warrior tradition of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. It involves shaming the enemy, and persuading the enemy to admit defeat without having to kill them. These victories may then be remembered, recorded and recounted as part of the community’s oral, written or pictorial histories.Runners placed a red prayer tie on the barbed wire that surrounds the Enbridge work site. Enbridge workers can be seen in the background.Women of Camp Firelight on the bridge across the Mississippi River awaiting the departure of the youth runners from camp.Pumping station on the shores of the Mississippi River at Coffee Pot Landing in Clearwater County, Minnesota, taking water for Horizontal Directional Drilling activities. The Minnesota DNR permitted Enbridge to withdraw nearly 6 billion gallons of water for pipeline construction and testing activities at the height of a historic drought. They were initially permitted to take 500 million gallons, but later the permit was amended for an additional 5 billion gallons. This was done without consultation with the Tribes. Enbridge easement on the wetland crossing the Mississippi River. Earlier in the summer, thousands of people gathered here and some occupied and held this site for 8 days during the Treaty People Gathering. In the course of the summer, drilling activities produced at least 6 “frac-outs” at this location, which meant drilling fluid spilled into the river and wetlands. Wetlands are a crucial feature of the environment and are home to many species. The photographer’s canine companion, Makwa, and husband, Adam Chern of Madison, Wisconsin, walk on the Mississippi River Bridge near Camp Firelight and Coffee Pot Landing in Clearwater County, Minnesota. The sky is hazy from nearby wildfires caused by record high temperatures and drought. The Camp Firelight kitchen. Many resources were needed to sustain the camp throughout the summer. Much of it was funded by tribal members and camp visitors, as well as from donations.Signs at the camp read, “Honor Treaties” and “Caution: Treaty Rights in Progress.” Enbridge drilling and pumping worksite near Coffee Pot Landing on the Upper Mississippi River.RISE Coalition co-founder Dawn Goodwin sits on the bridge across the Mississippi River awaiting news of the 7 Camp Firelight water protectors who had been arrested while praying on the easement the day before.Seven Camp Firelight arrestees were released from Becker County jail on August 4. RISE Coalition and Camp Firelight co-founder Nancy Beaulieu is second from right. The night before, Clearwater County Sheriff deputies arrested the seven in Clearwater County. They they were transported by a Polk County vehicle, booked into jail in Pennington County system and physically taken to the Becker County jail. More than 900 arrests of water protectors along Line 3 took place in the past year.One of several water meters installed on Park Rapids fire hydrants to serve Enbridge’s water needs. The city of Park Rapids sold 6 million gallons of water to Enbridge for their camp and construction operations. This was done without the knowledge or consent of the Park Rapids City Council or residents. Because of drought conditions, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources ordered them to halt the sales. One of the many frac-out sites outlined with wooden stakes along Line 3.No Line 3 banner on the Enbridge easement by the Welcome Water Protector Camp on the Mississippi River on Aitkin County, Minnesota.Honor the Earth is focused on building a just transition away from fossil fuels through tribal business development. Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm grows hemp and other food, and distributes “pipeline-free” wild rice harvested by Ojibwe people from the region. Akiing 8th Fire Solar is another business started by Honor the Earth as part of its just transition activities. “Black Snake Killer” hand drum resting against a tree at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the end of the Treaty People Walk for Water. Dozens of walkers departed from Camp Firelight on August 7 and walked 259 miles to St. Paul, arriving on August 25. Walkers were joined by others at the recreation center for the final mile-and-a-half walk to the State Capitol. They marched in silence in honor of the thousands of children’s remains found in residential boarding schools over the summer, and for all missing and murdered Indigenous relatives. Crane puppets flowing silently through the streets of St. Paul.Crane puppets flowing silently through the streets of St. Paul.Hoka Wicasa holds feathers, sage and a hand drum depicting a jaguar eating the heart of a priest in front of a hearse and the Cathedral of Saint Paul at the end of the Treaty People Walk for the Water on August 25. Kaylee Moody and Joe Morales (Yaqui), organizers of the Treaty People Walk for Water, on the final stretch of the 259-mile walk.Ojibwe women Winona LaDuke and Tania Aubid on the Treaty People Walk for Water. Last winter, Winona and Tania established a prayer lodge and the Welcome Water Protector Camp on the shores of the Mississippi River in Aitken County, Minnesota. They have been arrested numerous times protecting the water from Enbridge’s construction activities over the past year. In their defense, they argue their treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather in their territories supercede a foreign oil company’s right to destroy the land and water upon which those rights depend.Dozens of tipis were erected on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds during the week of August 23.In anticipation of Indigenous people arriving on his doorstep, Governor Tim Walz shut down the Minnesota State Capitol for a week and installed concrete barricades and fencing. Hundreds of law enforcement officers patrolled the grounds for that week.Walkers were honored with songs at the Minnesota State Capitol at the conclusion of the Treaty People Walk for Water.Water walkers and other Indigenous elders were honored with blankets at the Minnesota State Capitol at the end of the Treaty People Walk for Water on August 25.Treaty People Walk for Water organizer Joe Morales (Yaqui) embraces fellow water protectors at the conclusion of the 259-mile walk.Medicine Wheel banner depicting Ojibwe sacred foods—wild rice, strawberries and blueberries—at the Minnesota State Capitol after the Treaty People Walk for Water on August 25.
The practice of “thengapalli” has helped one forest in India.
Groups of 4 or 5 women have taken turns carrying wooden sticks to guard their community forest against theft and poaching. This practice has helped the once-devastated forest in the state of Odisha to regenerate.
“Nature is the source of identity, culture, language, tradition and livelihood for an Indigenous community and, thus, they have been protecting it,” said Archana Soreng, an Indigenous activist and researcher from Odisha. “Unlike how the contemporary development framework sees nature as a commercial entity.”
A new report more than 20 Asian Indigenous organizations have authored warns Western conservation models governments and organizations worldwide have adopted threaten the rights of Indigenous communities and local people.
Posang Dolma Sherpa said such spatial targets are simplistic and do not translate into actual progress.
“For many of the Indigenous peoples and local communities already safeguarding the planet’s natural resources and biodiversity without outside help, the catchphrase ‘30 by 30’ belies the many complex considerations required to ensure truly sustainable conservation,” said Sherpa, executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples and Research and Development (CIPRED), based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
As an example, she explained that in Nepal, generations of Indigenous customary institutions and self-governance systems that contributed to sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem were ignored. Instead, new land and forest management processes were superimposed, causing injustices and marginalization that exacerbated the issues that were meant to be rectified.
“When countries gather in Kunming in April to finalize the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, it is imperative that the draft targets are modified to explicitly recognize human rights-based approaches to conservation on a global scale,” she added.
Sherpa said this can be done by:
Changing Target 2 in the framework to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC);
changing Target 3 to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities, the equitable governance of these territories and resources, and their appropriate legal recognition within the target;
including the “devolution of authority and broad-based alliances with Indigenous peoples and local communities” within the GBF’s enabling conditions, paragraph 17; and
ensuring a due diligence mechanism and an accountability process.
A view in Rachakonda in the Indian state of Telangana / credit: Sravan Kumar on Unsplash
Living In Constant Fear of Evictions
A huge gap exists in the recognition and legal status of tenure rights. Between 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion Indigenous peoples and local communities live in important biodiversity conservation areas globally, but legally own only 10 percent of the lands they customarily manage.
Sherpa said for the GBF to achieve its goals for a better and harmonious future, it must support and initiate drastic transformations that facilitate environmental and social justice. “Failing to uphold international standards of human rights or erect due diligence mechanisms to ensure human rights are being implemented will only enable the continuation of the same processes that are destroying the environment and causing human rights violations at the same time.”
A 2020 map of Indian states and neighboring countries, including Nepal / credit: Maps of India
Already, several communities have lost access to local, ecological and cultural resources, and have undergone trauma due to eviction. In many areas, their rights are still not recognized. Even when legal rights are afforded, such as India’s 2006 Forest Rights Act, many of these rights are subverted. During the 2020 lockdown, land belonging to tribes in the states of Telangana and Odisha were reportedly grabbed under the pretext of afforestation.
Neither the forest departments of the Indian government nor the Odisha state responded to this reporter, as of press time. The Indian Ministry of Tribal Affairs also did not reply.
Prudhviraj Rupavath, researcher with New Delhi-based data research agency Land Conflict Watch, who contributed to the report, said many Indian states have neglected to implement the Forest Rights Act. “Awaiting legal titles for their cultivating land, indigenous people are constantly living with the fear of evictions.” He added that though Indigenous communities help protect and restore forests, Indian state governments are prioritizing displacing people rather than securing tenure rights.
Aside from being an Indigenous activist and researcher, Soreng is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. She said when an Indigenous community is displaced, they lose their identity, culture, language, and traditional knowledge and practices of forest conservation. That makes not only the humans, but the ecosystem, vulnerable to the climate crisis.
Soreng added Indigenous communities have been using twigs to brush teeth, and building dining plates, mats, chairs, and small tables using leaves.
A mountain in Deomali, Barakutni, in the Indian state of Odisha / credit: Mohan Vamsi on Unsplash
Moving Toward Collective Ownership
The increasing focus on commodity-driven development threatens one-quarter of Indigenous peoples’ land, according to the report.
“Due to a systemic lack of formal legal recognition, the lands customarily occupied and owned by Indigenous peoples and local communities are seen as ‘available’ or property of the government,” said Thomas Worsdell, editor of the report.
In India, several large areas are classified as wastelands although they customarily belong to tribal communities. This opens them to environmentally destructive industries and human rights abuses, he said.
“Examples are the coal sector in India and the fossil fuel industry, more broadly, agricultural expansion (e.g., palm oil), mining, renewable energy (hydroelectric dams and wind turbines) and even the carbon offsets market,” Worsdell told Toward Freedom. “These industries are expanding into the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities who do not have collective ownership.”
These threats on territories are often encouraged and even enabled by the state, he added. In Indonesia, the recent Omnibus bill was enacted to attract business investments, but weakened both environmental and human rights protections.
To prevent these threats, the report states governments should embrace human rights-based strategies, and recognize the land, forest, water, and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Worsdell said supporting Indigenous and local movements is key to creating legal transformations at the national level that support capacity and funds. Capacity in this instance can include trainings, workshops, supporting knowledge sharing, participatory mapping, among other steps to ensure the human rights of Indigenous and local peoples are upheld.
Indigenous and local community organizations are already providing solutions for human rights-based approaches. They have proposed laws and amendments, created the frameworks for nationally recognized Indigenous institutions and agencies, and are conducting research that proves the environmental benefits of human rights-based conservation.
For example, the Tsumba and Nubriba Indigenous groups in Nepal renewed in 2012 the practice of a Shagya (non-violence) customary institution to protect nature, biodiversity and their cultures. This practice involves the establishment of a committee made up of representatives from 10 villages to ensure no killing, hunting, harvesting of wild honey, forest fires, flesh trading, trapping and sale of animals, and trading of domestic animals take place during various timeframes.
Worsdell said, however, this practice lacks legal recognition, which is often the case in many Asian countries, where the legal climate does not favor human rights-based approaches to conservation.
“Governments must first recognize Indigenous identities, bring an immediate end to criminalizing and killing of Indigenous peoples and local communities defending their lands, and put in place a national accountability and reparation mechanism for past and present human rights violations,” Worsdell explained.
He said Indigenous peoples must have a seat at the decision-making table as leaders instead of as symbolic representations. He added governments must endorse and commit to the ‘Land Rights Standard,’ a set of emerging best practices for recognizing Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land and resource rights in landscape restoration, management, conservation, climate action, and development projects.
A song created by groups of Indigenous people aptly captures the essence of the report:
“…Nature was taken from Indigenous people again and again, betrayed, they lost their forest wealth. We had knowledge of the forest then, why have we lost the knowledge now. Indigenous people lived with freedom in the forests, today we are oppressed by the ruling class. We used to have everything, Now, why have we lost what was ours…”
Deepa Padmanaban is a Bangalore, India-based freelance journalist, who writes about the environment, conservation and climate change. She can be followed on Twitter at @deepa_padma.
Indigenous cereals and pulses grown by Shakila and Gulab Mullani. Top row from left: Udid (black gram), tur (pigeon pea). Bottom row from left: Kala pavtha (black beans), chavali (black-eyed pea), and kar jondhala (indigenous sorghum) / credit: Sanket Jain
Eighty-eight-year-old Sakharam Gaikwad never anticipated that farming sugarcane would become a bittersweet endeavor.
In 1972, a drought hit the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Considered one of the most devastating disasters of the last century, it affected 20 million people (57 percent of the state’s rural population) and 5.6 million—or 40 percent of—cattle.
The disaster prompted Gaikwad to move in the direction of his fellow villagers toward sugarcane cultivation. At the time, the young farmer had been growing indigenous rice varieties, and a wide collection of nutritious millets, including sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet, and little millet.
Starting in the late 1960s, he began using chemical fertilizers to cultivate hybrid sugarcane and sorghum varieties. Seeing bumper harvests in shorter periods of time, he said, “Farmers abandoned the traditional millets and moved rapidly toward sugarcane.” Year after year—during the 1970s—farmers began cultivating sugarcane in his village of Jambhali until an overwhelming majority were involved with the fast-growing plant.
Everything went well for Gaikwad until climate change disasters started destroying his crops. For instance, a 200 percent increase in rainfall in one week in October destroyed the majority of his sugarcane. In 1.5 acres, he managed to harvest 70 tons. He has noticed a drop over the last five years by almost 50 tons, costing him $1,830 per year.
However, stories like those of Gaikwad are increasing across India, with most farmers moving either toward commercial crops, like soybean and sugarcane, or hybrid varieties of indigenous crops. Last year, India reported producing 500 million metric tons of sugarcane worth 1.18 trillion Indian Rupees ($14.26 billion).
Meanwhile, in 2019, India cultivated 80 percent of traditional and hybrid millet in Asia and 20 percent of the world’s production. Grains like traditional millets that can withstand rapidly changing weather are on the decline in India. With India now having convinced the United Nations to declare 2023 the International Year of Millets, what does it mean for Indian farmers?
Farmer Vasant Kore from Sangli district’s Dongarsoni village said his family has been cultivating kar jondhala for over 120 years / credit: Sanket Jain
Farmers Say UN Designation Isn’t Enough
“Just announcing that this year is dedicated to millets doesn’t change things for the farmers,” said Amol Naik, a farmer, activist, lawyer and a member of the All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He and farmer Narayan Gaikwad, the younger brother of Sakharam Gaikwad, suggested a series of reforms to ensure fair prices to farmers.
“In several villages, we can’t even find the seeds of traditional millet varieties,” said Narayan Gaikwad, a 77-year-old activist and a farmer from Jambhali. “The government should conduct awareness sessions in villages and help farmers by ensuring a better price for millet and making traditional seeds more accessible to farmers.”
Gaikwad added that traditional seeds have become so rare that many farmers need help understanding the difference between a traditional variety and a hybrid variety.
“Just declaring a year dedicated to millets is not going to help.”
A 4-month-old kar jondhala panicle. A panicle is a loose branching cluster of flowers / credit: Sanket Jain
Why Millet Cultivation Declined
Traditional millet once was a staple food in India, helping people remain healthy. India, the sixth-highest sorghum-producing country globally, produced 4.2 million metric tons of sorghum last year, almost a 40 percent decline since 2010. Some reasons for the decline include fluctuating local climatic patterns, changing eating habits, rising heat waves, and a shift to non-native remunerative commercial and food crops.
Starting at age 17, the first crop 76-year-old Vasant Kore learned to cultivate was kar jondhala (indigenous sorghum). However, retaining the heirloom seeds wasn’t lucrative enough for many farmers. “The hybrid sorghum varieties yield double the produce as compared to traditional ones in almost half the time, whereas kar jondhala takes five months to grow,” explained Kore, who recalled hybrid sorghum varieties were introduced in his region in the 1970s.
Farmer Sambhaji Shingade, 61, from Sangli’s Garjewadi village, recounted the start of the commercialization of farming. “Many multinational corporations bought seeds from poor farmers at a meager price, developed hybrid varieties, and started selling them to the same farmers at much costlier prices. We were robbed of our traditional wealthier seeds.”
Farmer Sakharam Gaikwad, who once cultivated millets, spoke of how farming was systematically destroyed over several decades under the guise of development / credit: Sanket Jain
The rapid commercialization didn’t happen in a day. “Every government has systematically destroyed farming,” Gaikwad said. “Farming now relies on multinational companies who make these hybrid seeds and fertilizers.”
Despite the benefits of growing traditional varieties, farmers have been forced to move toward commercial crops.
“Farmers are encouraged to grow sugarcane and are rewarded by assuring them that the sugar mills will buy it,” Gaikwad said. “On the other hand, farmers are rarely given subsidies for cultivating traditional varieties that keep everyone fit, and there’s no market for such crops, forcing farmers to move toward sugarcane.”
“Also, most millets cultivated today are genetically modified hybrid varieties that promise a higher yield, but aren’t climate resistant. So, preserving the traditional varieties becomes even more critical, as they will completely vanish in a few years,” warned Vijay Jawandhiya, an activist and farmers’ leader from Maharashtra.
Gaikwad added chemical fertilizers and pesticides are now a must.
“Over the years, more and more hybrid varieties were developed and as farmers got used to them and fertilizers, the prices [of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers] eventually skyrocketed, making farming unaffordable.”
Shivaji Kamble said his family has been cultivating the traditional finger millet variety for over 160 years / credit: Sanket Jain
Plentiful Water and Fertilizers
When irrigation facilities started reaching Gaikwad’s village in 1964, he said everyone thought their problems had ended. “Little did they know it was the beginning of the troubling times.”
With water becoming readily available, everyone shifted to sugarcane. “Back then, there was not a single sugar mill in the region,” he said. By 2020-21, India had 506 operating sugar mills. Moreover, sugarcane requires tremendous use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The amount used varies based on soil conditions and climatic changes, among other factors. Also, it takes 1,500 to 2,000 liters of water to produce a kilogram of sugar. An Indian government report warns, “Most of the country’s irrigation facilities are utilized by paddy and sugarcane, depleting water availability for other crops. Pressure on water due to sugarcane cultivation in states like Maharashtra has become a serious concern, calling for more efficient and sustainable water use through alternative cropping pattern.”
Despite its problems, farmers say they aren’t left with an option. “Cultivating the traditional variety is unaffordable. It takes a lot of time to grow, and even the production is less,” Gaikwad explained.
Today, Shivaji Kamble and his wife, Draupadi Kamble, remain the handful of farmers who have managed to preserve the traditional maize variety / credit: Sanket Jain
Traditional sorghum varieties don’t require chemical fertilizers and are resistant to extreme climate events like heat waves. In addition, they can grow in drought conditions and water-logged soils, withstand salinity and alkalinity, and they are resistant to pests. Saline soil has excessive amounts of soluble salts, which hamper plants’ ability to absorb water. Meanwhile, alkaline soil contains high levels of sodium, calcium and magnesium.
Most farmers face this dilemma of losing their hybrid crops to climate change disasters or reporting lesser produce with traditional crops.
Dongarsoni farmers found a workaround by growing a lot of grapes, which unfortunately require tremendous use of insecticides, herbicides, and other toxic pesticides. “The farmers here earn a lot of money from grapes by exporting them. So they can retain the traditional crops in their vacant land,” explained farmer Gulab Mullani, 41, who follows the same approach.
However, a significant challenge for farmers like Gaikwad, who long ago abandoned the crops, comes from birds and animals eating produce. “One farmer cannot report sustainable profits if other farmers predominantly cultivate cash crops. This is because the majority of the millet produce remains a feed for birds and wild boars,” Jawandiya explained. “When there are large patches of farmland with the same traditional crop, the loss caused by birds and animals isn’t felt much.”
Another reason for abandoning millet is its lower price and lack of a regulated market, often pushing farmers into losses. “With the rise of cash crops, the labor cost increased, but the prices of traditional grains haven’t increased much. Hence, agricultural laborers aren’t paid enough for harvesting millets, forcing farmers to shift to other crops,” Jawandhiya added.
Farmer Gulab Mullani holding a kar jondhala stalk, which grows up to 15 feet and is nutritious fodder for cattle / credit: Sanket Jain
Building Sustainable Food Systems with Millet
Millets, especially sorghum, were once a staple food in India and Africa. About 500 million people in more than 30 countries depend on sorghum as a staple food, according to the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. The study found that over two-thirds of Indians consume foods deficient in protein and essential micronutrients, such as zinc, iron and vitamin A.
Cultivating indigenous millets has been lifesaving for drought-affected farmers like Kore. They help control blood sugar levels, are rich in iron, fiber, and proteins, and improve heart health, among other benefits, over the hybrid varieties. In addition, their pest-resistant ability, tolerance to higher temperatures, and need for minimal rainfall make them an environment-friendly crop.
Moreover, traditional millet varieties don’t require chemical fertilizers. “Even if you apply chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the crop will still grow in their natural timing only,” Kore said with a laugh, “so there’s no point wasting money.”
Gaikwad uses a simple observation to predict the rising cases of several lifestyle diseases. “Just look at what people eat.”
Earlier, eating flatbreads made of traditional sorghum, finger, and pearl millet was the norm. Finger millet, compared with other millets, remains a rich source of minerals and protein, as well as calcium. In addition, it has been used to raise iron levels in anemia patients.
Now, they are replaced with hybrid wheat or rice varieties. Today, 3.5 billion people globally are at risk of calcium deficiency, with more than 90 percent of them from Asia and Africa.
Plus, millet stalks remain an excellent cattle feed. “Many farmers have retained the traditional millets only for their cattle,” Gaikwad said. Cattle dung, a much cheaper source of organic fertilizer, keeps the soil nutrient-rich and helps build sustainable farming cycles.
“With millets gone, this entire cycle has collapsed,” Kore said.
Kar Jondhala (indigenous sorghum variety) is now grown only in the drought-prone regions of Maharashtra’s Sangli district / credit: Sanket Jain
Spike In Chemical Fertilizers
While the hybrid varieties promise a higher yield in lesser time, they require maintenance through the application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Kore added he has found it difficult to cultivate crops without using chemical fertilizers on the field where he grows hybrid varieties, commercial crops or grapes. “The soil is now used to chemicals and hybrid varieties. I think it will take several years to reverse this.”
His observation is a stark reality as globally, the consumption of nitrogen fertilizers reached 190.81 million metric tons in 2019, a 312 percent rise since 1965. Also, chemical pesticide usage has surged over 57 percent since 1990, as its consumption has now reached 2.7 million metric tons.
While this helps a crop survive to a certain extent, it has been found to provoke oxidative stress that causes Parkinson’s Disease, respiratory and reproductive tract disorders, Alzheimer’s Disease, different types of cancer, and much more, according to a 2018 study in the journal, Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology.
Looking at the younger generation’s experience with chemical farming, Kore’s brother, Shivaji, 67, of Dongarsoni village, never cultivated the hybrid sorghum. “Of the three acres of land I own, I have reserved an acre only for kar jondhala,” he says.
Farmers Shakila and Gulab Mullani have been preserving the kar jondhala seeds for more than 30 years / credit: Sanket Jain
Preserving a Heritage
While kar jondhala fetches almost double the price of hybrid varieties, it has much less demand. “The younger generation doesn’t know its importance,” Kore said. He recalled the 1970s when traditional sorghum was treated as a currency. “People would exchange it for buying daily items.”
Farmers, like Kore, have now taken it upon themselves to help preserve this crop. In villages like Dongarsoni, farmers still use the traditional barter system to exchange heirloom seeds.
Gaikwad, however, said not all hope is lost. “It’s not that all the traditional varieties have completely disappeared. They are still there, but one will have to travel a lot to find them because very few farmers have preserved them.”
Farmers like Kore and Mullani have now taken it upon themselves to preserve the traditional millets. “I will keep cultivating traditional sorghum until the time I die,” Kore said, smiling as he gestured to his field.
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
Editor’s Note: This podcast was originally published by MintPress News.
The MintPress podcast “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby, and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman fatally shot 22 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Police reportedly refused to confront the killer, locked him in a room full of children, physically prevented parents from getting involved, and even allegedly rescued their own children first.
The massacre has once again brought the United States’ unique obsession with firearms to the fore, with renewed calls to ban assault rifles. But even among gun-control advocates, few realize the connections between the Second Amendment and white supremacy.
Today’s guest is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Originally from Oklahoma, Dunbar-Ortiz is a writer, historian and activist, possibly best known for her 2014 classic book, “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.” She argues that the context behind the Second Amendment is that the newly-independent United States needed “well-regulated militias” of white men to “kill Indians and take their land,” or to form slave patrols that would hunt down Black people fleeing their captivity. It was out of these slave patrols that the first police departments were formed.
Ultimately, she argues, the need for such armed militias arose from the fact that the white colonists were on recently stolen land, surrounded by hostile groups who were trying to get their land back. As she notes, it was a crime to give or sell a gun to a Native American.
An activist for over 50 years, Dunbar-Ortiz has argued that for any progress to be made, Americans must stop worshiping a 234-year-old document written by slaveholders. Today with Lowkey, she also discussed how it was that the National Rifle Association was taken over by reactionary political actors and how it came to be that the United States is a country with 4% of the world’s population but half of the world’s guns.
“The Constitution is so embedded in white supremacy that there is no way to amend it to change that. It is everywhere…This is so obvious if you just face what U.S. history is and not leave so much out,” she told Lowkey.
A revolutionary and a feminist, Dunbar-Ortiz’s life’s work has taken her across the world, including to Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua, where she documented the U.S.-sponsored Contra War against indigenous groups. She is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. Among her other notable books include, “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment”; “The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America”; and “Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.”
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
