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.
United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) Force Commander commends readiness of Rwandan peacekeepers in Bangui in the Central African Republic on September 7 / credit: Rwanda Defense Force/Flickr
On July 9, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by French energy company TotalEnergies SE and U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.
Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.
Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.
Billions Stuck Underwater
Al-Shabaab fighters first made their appearance in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. For three years, the group played a cat-and-mouse game with Mozambique’s army before taking control of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020. At no point did it seem possible for Mozambique’s army to thwart al-Shabaab and allow TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil to restart operations in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Mozambique, where a massive natural gas field was discovered in February 2010.
The Mozambican Ministry of Interior had hired a range of mercenaries such as Dyck Advisory Group (South Africa), Frontier Services Group (Hong Kong), and the Wagner Group (Russia). In late August 2020, TotalEnergies SE and the government of Mozambique signed an agreement to create a joint security force to defend the company’s investments against al-Shabaab. None of these armed groups succeeded. The investments were stuck underwater.
At this point, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi indicated, as I was told by a source in Maputo, that TotalEnergies SE might ask the French government to send a detachment to assist in securing the area. This discussion went on into 2021. On January 18, 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and her counterpart in Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, talked on the phone, during which—it is suggested in Maputo—they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. On that day, TotalEnergies SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné met with President Nyusi and his ministers of defense (Jaime Bessa Neto) and interior (Amade Miquidade) to discuss the joint “action plan to strengthen security of the area.” Nothing came of it. The French government was not interested in a direct intervention.
A senior official in Maputo told me that it is strongly believed in Mozambique that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the Rwandan force, rather than French forces, be deployed to secure Cabo Delgado. Indeed, Rwanda’s armies—highly trained, well-armed by the Western countries, and given impunity to act outside the bounds of international law—have proved their mettle in the interventions carried out in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
What Kagame Got for the Intervention
Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda since 1994, first as vice president and minister of defense and then since 2000 as the president. Under Kagame, democratic norms have been flouted within Rwanda, while Rwandan troops have operated ruthlessly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2010 UN Mapping Project report on serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showed that the Rwandan troops killed “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of Congolese civilians and Rwandan refugees between 1993 and 2003. Kagame rejected the UN report, suggesting that this “double genocide” theory denied the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He has wanted the French to accept responsibility for the genocide of 1994 and has hoped that the international community will ignore the massacres in the eastern Congo.
On March 26, 2021, historian Vincent Duclert submitted a 992-page report on France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. The report makes it clear that France should accept—as Médecins Sans Frontières put it—“overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide. But the report does not say that the French state was complicit in the violence. Duclert traveled to Kigali on April 9 to deliver the report in person to Kagame, who said that the report’s publication “marks an important step toward a common understanding of what took place.”
On April 19, the Rwandan government released a report that it had commissioned from the U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse. This report’s title says it all: “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The French did not deny the strong words in this document, which argues that France armed the génocidaires and then hastened to protect them from international scrutiny. Macron, who has been loath to accept France’s brutality in the Algerian liberation war, did not dispute Kagame’s version of history. This was a price he was willing to pay.
What France Wants
On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.
On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.
A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.
Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.
Dilio Muelas Morales, 62, a traditional doctor of the Misak Indigenous community in Colombia, inside the ‘Michaya,’ where he receives patients / credit: Antonio Cascio
BOGOTÁ, Colombia—The center of this South American capital city filled out on August 6 with Indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and peasants dressed in traditional attire to carry out the spiritual inauguration of recently elected President Gustavo Petro. The event took place a day before the official inauguration and was accompanied by rituals, songs and speeches.
For the first time in decades, fear does not reign among the vulnerable and historically abandoned sections of society. Representatives of these groups saluted the president during the inauguration.
“Certainly, the only possible path to real transformation in the country will be achieved with articulated and respectful work between governmental bodies and our own forms of government,” said human-rights defender Marcela Londoño, while reading the popular mandate the collective handed to Petro.
The Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that campaigned in favor of center-left former militant Petro and the first Afro-Colombian woman vice-president, Francia Márquez, helped the pair win up to 99 percent of votes in some regions. Now, these oppressed communities see Petro’s proposal to reform healthcare—among other aspects of Colombian society—as aligning with their culture as well as their spiritual understanding.
“[Under the current system], health is seen as a business that does not value life,” said Mama Luz Dary Aranda, governor of the Guambia reservation in the Cauca department, in an interview with this reporter. “The proposal presented by Petro is the opposite.”
Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (right) announced in March Afro-Colombian activist Francia Márquez as his vice-presidential running mate on the Pacto Histórico ticket / credit: Twitter / Francia Márquez
‘Health for Life and Not for Business’
Petro’s campaign promoted the slogan, “health for life and not for business,” advocating a reformed healthcare system based on the principles of prevention, participation, decentralization and an intercultural approach. Part of the proposed solution would involve creating a National Health Council, with the participation of civil society including, academics, healthcare workers, patients, peasants, and Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples. Other proposals include ending EPSs (Empresas Prestadoras de Servicios or intermediary health providers); improving scientific investigation and technological development; investing in education; and fighting climate change, among others.
During the first healthcare meeting between Indigenous peoples and the Ministry of Health that took place on September 7, Minister Carolina Corcho ratified the compromise of working with the communities to develop the healthcare reform and announced future visits to continue the dialogue.
“The political will by the government of Gustavo Petro—and today more specifically by the Ministry—is very important for this [Indigenous health] system to become a reality,” said Polivio Rosales, senator of the Indigenous Authorities Movement political party.
Floresmiro Calambas, 53, head of the laboratory at the Sierra Morena natural medicine center, controls one of the machines that distills plants / credit: Antonio Cascio
Incorporating Indigenous Practices
Petro’s program could contribute to complying with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) recommendation that health policies and programs should recognize and include traditional practices, such as medicine, to ensure the participation of the populations involved, as well as take into account respect for human rights, an intercultural approach, and gender equality.
After modernizing medicinal production and engaging government officials—among other actions—the Indigenous and Intercultural Health System (IIHS) was founded in 2014. Yet, such advances have been unequally implemented.
“Within the state’s policies, the Indigenous wisdom of health automatically becomes only an ancestral practice or a belief,” said Mama Ximena Hurtado, director of the Mama Dominga Hospital and health program coordinator on the Indigenous reservation of Guambia in the Cauca department. The title, “Mama,” is given to a woman who holds or has held a position within the Misak government. “Those words minimize our own science, and create a disadvantage and a barrier.”
In the days before and after Petro’s inauguration, he and a delegation of ministers held regional summits. The administration has prioritized historically abandoned regions, such as the Pacific, the Amazon and the island of San Andrés in the Caribbean Sea, where inequality as well as poor access to healthcare and education reign. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples have participated in these summits.
The Sierra Morena center is not only based on maintaining and reviving Misak ancestral knowledge of natural medicine. One of the structures located in the center, the so-called “Casa Payan” or Payan House (which appears on the right in this photo), preserves the history and worldview of the Misak Indigenous people. The paintings that fill the walls of the three levels of the Payan House and the sacred objects that are preserved inside provide a pedagogical, didactic and historical memory function on Misak thought / credit: Antonio Cascio
Misak People Develop a Healthcare Model
Most Misak—around 21,000 people or 1.5 percent of the Colombian population—live on the Guambia reservation. It is located in the steep southwestern mountains of the Cauca region, a rich ecosystem characterized by moors, or high-altitude grasslands. This community has been leading nationally in developing a healthcare model, as well as in the recovery of traditional practices.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Misak community began taking back ancestral territories through occupation and, later, by negotiating with the government. Within this land, they have set up the House of Medicine Sierra Morena and the Mama Dominga Hospital. The Payan House of Memory, a three-story building constructed according to Misak traditional architectural practices, preserves their history and knowledge.
“This generation has had the opportunity to receive both types of knowledge: The Western and the one taught here by the ‘shures’ and the ‘shuras’ (traditional doctors), which are transmitted from generation to generation and based on the knowledge about plants,” explained Floresmiro Calambas, in charge of the laboratory in the House of Medicine Sierra Morena.
Within the House of Medicine, the community has set up a medicinal garden with more than 200 species of plants that are processed in the laboratory to be distributed in the community. Misak people affiliated with the healthcare system can acquire natural medicines free of charge. Other services include midwifery, physiotherapy and care from a traditional doctor.
The Misak community also manages Mama Dominga Hospital, where locals can access basic health services.
“Many of our Indigenous people do not like to leave the territory for fear of how they will be treated or because they do not speak the language,” Mama Ximena said.
The availability of a healthcare model within the Misak territory guarantees wider coverage in the community, closing the healthcare gap other rural Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples have experienced.
Aranda argues respecting traditional knowledge while deploying Western practices, when necessary, is essential.
“Sometimes the national healthcare system wants to impose their institutional practices on us,” she said.
The Sierra Morena pharmacy sells products the Misak make in the natural medicine center / credit: Antonio Cascio
‘The Transition Will Be Difficult and We Understand It’
“As Indigenous Peoples, we see health as a whole,” said Alberto Mendoza, delegate of the Wayuu people, after the September 7 meeting. “For that reason, the lack of water or the consumption of low-quality water, as well as the absence of sustainability, impact the health of individuals, families and communities.”
During the Pacific region summit, Petro announced Márquez will facilitate regional equality. He committed to designating the first social expenditure to this region as it is the most unequal. Multidimensional poverty in the Pacific region—which takes into account access to health, education and employment—increased from 26 percent to 31 percent between 2019 and 2020.
Petro recognized during his inauguration speech that the government needs to secure resources to implement social reforms.
Congress members like Gustavo Bolivar recently have denounced the poor state of finances left by the previous president, Iván Duque. According to a report presented by the government transition team, the healthcare system has a budget deficit of 6.4 billion pesos (about $1.4 million) for 2022 and 4.6 billion (about $1 million) for 2023.
A tax reform has already been presented in congress that is expected to raise about 25 billion pesos ($5.76 million) over the next year to help execute social programs. The reform includes increasing personal income taxes for the top 2 percent, who earn more than 10 million pesos monthly (around $2,300). Fossil-fuel exports and sugar-based products also will be taxed. The latter tax is designed to reduce health problems associated with sugar consumption.
Aranda recognizes Petro’s proposal will take time.
“The transition will be difficult and we understand it,” she said. “But this is when new proposals will be needed and we believe we will be heard to present our proposals on Indigenous healthcare.”
The Misak, as is customary among Colombian Indigenous communities, gather to carry out work collectively, or in “minga.” The work takes place after members of the Sierra Morena center are free from their tasks. Here, they are packaging, for sale, quinoa flour, which serves as a food supplement for children / credit: Antonio Cascio
‘Food As Healthcare’
Indigenous communities understand health goes beyond the absence of an illness. To them, health is linked to the environment, their territory, agricultural practice and nature in general. A relationship that, according to Mama Ximena, previous governments have not understood.
“For us, for instance, food and food production are part of healthcare and, therefore, should be financed,” she said. “But [the Health Ministry] sees it as a responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture.”
Petro’s health reform proposal, as well as a wide range of policies that address education, drinking water, the environment and climate change, align with the cosmovision (understanding of life) of Indigenous communities.
“It looks at how health can become a right,” Aranda said, “so that we all can live with dignity.”
Natalia Torres Garzongraduated with an M.Sc. in Globalization and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, United Kingdom. She is a freelance journalist who focuses on social and political issues in Latin America, especially in connection to Indigenous communities, women and the environment. With photographer Antonio Cascio, she founded the radio-photography program, Radio Rodando. Her work has been published in the section Planeta Futuro from El País, New Internationalist and Earth Island.
A protest against the Keystone XL pipeline / credit: John Englart, Creative Commons
After more than a decade of grassroots organizing, agitation and tireless opposition by the international climate movement, the final nail was slammed into the Keystone XL’s coffin Wednesday afternoon when the company behind the transnational tar sands pipeline officially pulled the plug on its plans.
Following consultation with Canadian officials and regulators—including “its partner, the Government of Alberta”—TC Energy confirmed its “termination” of the project in a statement citing the revocation of a federal U.S. permit by President Joe Biden on his first day in office on January 20 as the leading reason.
Climate campaigners, however, were immediate in claiming a final victory after years of struggle against the company and its backers both in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa.
“TC Energy just confirmed what we already knew but it’s a thrilling reality all the same—the Keystone XL pipeline is no more and never will be,” said David Turnbull, strategic communications director with Oil Change International (OCI).
OMG! It’s official. We took on a multi-billion dollar corporation and we won!!
— Dallas Goldtooth (@dallasgoldtooth) June 9, 2021
“After more than 10 years of organizing we have finally defeated an oil giant, Keystone XL is dead!” declared the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) in reaction. “We are dancing in our hearts because of this victory! From Dene territories in Northern Alberta to Indigenous lands along the Gulf of Mexico, we stood hand-in-hand to protect the next seven generations of life, the water and our communities from this dirty tar sands pipeline. And that struggle is vindicated.”
IEN said that the win over TC Energy and its supporters was “not the end—but merely the beginning of further victories,” and also reminded the world that there are “still frontline Indigenous water protectors like Oscar High Elk who face charges for standing against the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Calling the news “yet another huge moment in an historic effort,” Turnbull at OCI said that while the Canadian company’s press statement failed to admit it, “this project is finally being abandoned thanks to more than a decade of resistance from Indigenous communities, landowners, farmers, ranchers, and climate activists along its route and around the world.”
Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared the victory in the drawn-out battle—which largely took place under the Democratic administration of former President Barack Obama—”a landmark moment in the fight against the climate crisis.”
“We need to keep moving away from dirty, dangerous pipelines that lock us into an unsustainable future,” added Margolis, who said he now hopes President Joe Biden will take this lesson and apply to other polluting fossil projects. “We’re hopeful that the Biden administration will continue to shift this country in the right direction by opposing fossil fuel projects that threaten our climate, our waters and imperiled wildlife,” he said. “Good riddance to Keystone XL!”
Jamie Henn and Bill McKibben, both co-founders of 350.org and key architects of the decision to make the Keystone XL pipeline a target and symbol of the global climate movement, also heralded the news.
“When this fight began, people thought Big Oil couldn’t be beat,” said McKibben, who was among those arrested outside the White House in 2011 protesting the pipeline.
“Keystone XL is now the most famous fossil fuel project killed by the climate movement, but it won’t be the last,” said Henn. “The same coalition that stopped this pipeline is now battling Line 3 and dozens of other fossil fuel projects across the country. Biden did the right thing on KXL, now it’s time to go a step further and say no to all new fossil fuel projects everywhere.”
Clayton Thomas Muller, another longtime KXL opponent and currently a senior campaigns specialist at 350.org in Canada, said: “This victory is thanks to Indigenous land defenders who fought the Keystone XL pipeline for over a decade. Indigenous-led resistance is critical in the fight against the climate crisis and we need to follow the lead of Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous women, who are leading this fight across the continent and around the world. With Keystone XL cancelled, it’s time to turn our attention to the Indigenous-led resistance to the Line 3 and the Trans Mountain tar sands pipelines.”
McKibben also made the direct connection to KXL and the decision now looming before Biden when it comes to Line 3 in northern Minnesota. “When enough people rise up we’re stronger even than the richest fossil fuel companies,” he said. “And by the way, the same climate test that ruled out Keystone should do the same for Line 3.”
