UN Recognizes Unique Situation of Caribbean Indigenous Peoples in Official Report

United Nations, NY (UCTP Taino News) – One year ago, back in December 2004, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 59/174 establishing the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Although it may not be common knowledge, as a result of this resolution’s adoption, the Second Decade officially commenced on January 1st 2005. This resolution also requested that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan submit a report on a Comprehensive Program of Action for the Second International Decade to the sixtieth session of the General Assembly. The Program of Action was discussed and adopted by the General Assembly on November 21st 2005.

Highlighting the importance of participation within the international system, the program of action was developed based upon comments received from the UN system, governments, indigenous peoples' and civil society organizations. Twenty-two indigenous organizations provided input for the program of action. Among these submissions, the United Confederation of Taino People (UCTP) was the only entity representing Caribbean Indigenous Peoples to submit a formal proposal to be considered within this process. As a result of UCTP participation, the efforts of the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus of the Greater Caribbean was also recognized within the official report. Based on consultations among regional representatives, the Indigenous Peoples Caucus of the Greater Caribbean submitted various interventions during the fourth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues held in May 2005. The Caucus will reconvene at the next session to be held in May 2006.

UCTP President Roberto Mucaro Borrero stated “our participation within this process should make it clear that our people will not remain silent while governments, academics and others determine what they believe is in our best interest without our input or consent. All Caribbean governments and state-sponsored institutions need to not only respect our regional consultations and aspirations but they need to actively look for ways to work together with us in meaningful partnership as we are the First Nations of the region.”

The plan of action for the Second International Decade will rely on five key objectives which cut across the various areas of the main goal for the Decade established by the General Assembly, namely strengthening international cooperation for the solution of problems faced by indigenous people in the areas of culture, education, health, human rights, the environment and social and economic development. Those objectives also cut across the means set by the General Assembly for the achievement of the goals, namely “action-oriented programmes and specific projects, increased technical assistance and relevant standard-setting activities.”

Within the plan of action, a specific reference regarding Caribbean Indigenous Peoples can be found under Section 6 “Social and Economic Development”, item (b) Regional level, number 86. The recommendation suggests that “representatives of Caribbean indigenous peoples should be included in region-specific consultations and conferences in Latin America and the Caribbean, and on steering committees for planning and implementing the programme of activities for the Second International Decade. Serious consideration should also be given to organizing a special regional consultative session focusing on the unique situation of Caribbean indigenous peoples, which would take place in the Caribbean, hosted by a Member State and a local indigenous community.”

“This recommendation derives directly from the UCTP submission, which was based on consultations with regional representatives” stated Borrero. “This is a reference that community representatives can now use to lobby their local and national governments.”

The plan of action is available for review at the website of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in various languages.

Rodrigues defends Amerindian Bill against salvoes from groups

By Faizool Deo

AMERINDIAN Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues is refuting the claim by three Amerindian groups that the 2005 Amerindian Bill does not meet the needs of Amerindians in the country.

On the contrary, the minister feels the bill has come a far way from the Amerindian Act of 1951, and once implemented, will give Amerindians much more than they ever had.

At a press conference Tuesday at the Side Walk Café on Middle Street, Georgetown, members of the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA), The Amerindian Action Movement of Guyana (TAAMOG) and the Guyanese Organisation of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP) voiced their concerns about the Bill, which they dubbed ‘unacceptable’.

They charged that discrimination against the indigenous peoples remains entrenched and manifested in the bill, and their rights to lands, resources and to self determination are neither adequately recognised nor protected.

At a post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Ms Rodrigues indicated that the bill is not a product of the government, but rather comprises recommendations of the Amerindian people, who were an integral part in the consultation period prior to the formulation of the legislation.

“Forty-six of the 76 recommendations which were made at the consultations we took into consideration,” she said. “One of the recommendations that we took is that the communities could lease land; before they could not. We were advised by the international consultant not to do that, but we did it still.”

The minister said that unlike other countries, Guyana is making it very easy for Amerindian people to acquire land, and the bill stipulates that Amerindians can make claims for lands after occupying them for 25 years.

The groups of Amerindians looking for changes to the bill argue that it gives the minister too much power.

They are quoted as saying in their documentation presented to the media on Tuesday that, in the bill, the minister is vested with “arbitrary and draconian powers” that are incompatible with indigenous peoples’ self determining status and the exercise and enjoyment of other rights and fundamental freedoms.

But Rodrigues said her ministry will only be called in to address situations that could not be dealt with at other levels.

“Every day in the ministry captains come to us with problems which they can resolve by themselves, and we will say to them you can do that by yourselves you do not need us. But there are cases when the council would come to us to make a decision, but this is always a last resort.”

Another issue she put to rest is that of the presumed procrastination on her ministry’s part in implementing the Indigenous Peoples Commission, which is to represent the Amerindian people.

She said her ministry would be happy for the commission to be put in place, but several factors are preventing this from happening.

But there is another grouse that worries the three Amerindian groups.

“What Guyana has done is to include in our national laws some international laws, so we have at least seven international covenants which have been included in our national laws. The Amerindian Act should be compatible with the laws. We are saying at present that it is not. So if it’s passed as it now reads, then we can challenge it in court, because it will be in contravention of the Constitution,” APA representative David James contended.

Rodrigues remarked that even if all the demands of the Amerindian groups opposing the bill are met, she still feels that they will go to court.

But she assured the indigenous people that the bill, once implemented, will enhance the well-being of the nation’s Amerindian population.

Puerto Rico’s Biotech Harvest

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

(Alternet, July 13, 2004) - If the American people are for the most part unaware of genetic engineering and food biotechnology issues, the people of Puerto Rico are blissfully in the dark – so far.

Puerto Rico, known for its pineapples and its world-renowned coffee crop, now has a new crop: the biotech harvest.

Much of the genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybean seed planted in the United States comes from this Caribbean island. Furthermore, Puerto Rico is also a preferred location for agricultural biotechnology experiments. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture

When one considers the vast difference in size (Illinois and Iowa have just over 50,000 sq. miles each, whereas Puerto Rico has less than 4,000 sq. miles) it becomes evident that Puerto Rico has more such experiments per square mile than any state, with the possible exception of Hawaii. Puerto Rico also tops California, with 1,709 experiments, although it is approximately 40 times larger than PR and has a vastly larger agricultural output.

These experiments are mostly aimed at the two most widely used GE traits: herbicide resistance (like Roundup Ready crops) and insect control (like the insecticidal Bt corn). But they also include research on biopharmaceutical crops – plants that produce pharmaceutical and industrial chemicals in their tissues – and has also included the controversial “Terminator” crops, which produce sterile seed.

Why Puerto Rico?

The island’s friendly tropical weather permits as many as four harvests per year, making it a favorite for seed breeders for agribusiness and biotechnology corporations like Dow, Syngenta, Pioneer and Monsanto, which got together in 1996 to form the PR Seed Research Association (AISPR).

But another reason for choosing Puerto Rico is its “good political climate.” Puerto Rico is not an independent country, nor is it a state of the American union. It is an “unincorporated territory.” Puerto Ricans are US citizens subject to US laws, yet they cannot vote in presidential elections and have no representation in Congress. There are no anti-biotech campaigns or protesters, not even the mildest criticism. If the American people are for the most part unaware of genetic engineering and food biotechnology issues, the people of Puerto Rico are blissfully in the dark.

Is agricultural biotechnology safe? The US government and the biotech industry argue vehemently that biotech crops and products are safe, are extremely well tested and regulated, and present no new risks to public health or the environment. But many scientists, farmers and environmental NGOs beg to differ.

Genetic Contamination

“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate GE foods,” stated the environmental group Friends of the Earth USA (FoE USA) in a report issued in 2003. Instead, says the report, the FDA has a “voluntary consultation” process that allows biotechnology companies to decide which, if any, safety tests to conduct and how they will be performed. “The company determines which data, if any, are shared with regulators. In fact, the company even determines whether it will consult with the FDA at all.”

Other groups, like the UK-based Institute of Science in Society and the US-based Center for Critical Genetics, claim that the scientific assumptions behind genetic engineering are plain wrong and obsolete.

One of the biotech critics’ main concerns is genetic contamination – the uncontrolled proliferation of GE crops through pollination, inventory errors and other means. In late 2002 I gave a presentation at a symposium on biotechnology organized by the Puerto Rico Agricultural Extension Service in which I warned that it is only a matter of time before a biopharmaceutical crop (for example one that produces a powerful pharmaceutical substance) accidentally ends up on supermarket shelves, causing a biological Chernobyl, a public health emergency of horrific and unprecedented nature.

After my talk, Dow corporation representative Victor Torres-Collazo, himself a former AISPR president, respectfully disagreed with me. He assured me that genetic contamination is not a problem because of very strict precautionary measures mandated by law.

But fears of GE contamination are indeed well founded. In 2000, over 300 US supermarket products were found to be tainted with Starlink, a variety of GE corn that the FDA had deemed unfit for human consumption. Some 140 million bushels were contaminated, food processors and grain traders spent around $1 billion over six months trying to locate it and get rid of it, and even today traces of Starlink keep showing up occasionally in American corn exports.

The following year GE corn was discovered growing in Mexico’s rural communities, a development whose long-term consequences for biodiversity, agriculture and human health remain uncertain.

In February 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) unveiled a pilot study that shows that breeders’ varieties of corn, soy, canola and cotton seed in the United States are contaminated with GE material. This means that farmers in the USA – and wherever American seed is exported – could be planting GE seed without knowing it.

“Seeds will be our only recourse if the prevailing belief in the safety of genetic engineering proves wrong,” warns UCS. “Heedlessly allowing the contamination of traditional plant varieties with genetically engineered sequences amounts to a huge wager on our ability to understand a complicated technology that manipulates life at the most elemental level.”

Uncontrolled Experiments

The aforementioned genetic experiments in Puerto Rico are not carried out in sealed greenhouses or fermentation vats. “These are outdoor, uncontrolled experiments,” said Bill Freese, of FoE USA. “These experimental GE traits are almost certainly contaminating conventional crops just as the commercialized GE traits are. And the experimental GE crops aren’t even subject to the cursory rubber-stamp ‘approval’ process that commercialized GE crops go through – so I think the high concentration of experimental GE crop trials in Puerto Rico is definitely cause for concern.”

I asked P.R. agriculture secretary Luis Rivero-Cubano if he thought GE crops were any reason for concern. He said that the GE fields here are “just experimental.” The agriculture secretary himself seemed unaware of the massive commercial production of GE seed right here in Puerto Rico.

I then spoke with P.R. Farm Bureau president Ramon Gonzalez, who told a somewhat different story. According to Gonzalez, there are no GE experiments in Puerto Rico; all biotech crops grown here are for commercial use.

Gonzalez himself grows GE corn and soy – for export to the USA as seed – in his farm in the town of Salinas. He claimed to be particularly happy with the soy, which is genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup herbicide. He said Roundup is “environmentally benign,” a claim disputed by environmentalists and organic farmers.

Next on my list was the USDA, which has to approve every open-air biotech crop field test. None of Department’s employees seemed to know anything about genetically engineered crops. After an exasperating and fruitless exchange, one of them provided me a USDA phone number in Washington, which turned out to be that of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Service.

The local office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proved no more helpful. Its spokesman Jose Font stated that agriculture does not concern the agency unless toxic pesticides are used.

Finally, I tried the P.R. Environmental Quality Board. No dice. A spokeswoman said that since Puerto Rico has no laws or regulations for GM crops, it has no mandate to intervene or investigate.

Civil society organizations? Forget it. Their leaders have no position on the issue, to the extent that any of them even know what biotech is.

A “good political climate,” indeed.

No protests, no opposition. Not yet, anyway.

Puerto Rican journalist Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero directs the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety. He is also a Research Associate of the Institute for Social Ecology, a fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, and a senior fellow of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

SEE RELATED ARTICLE AT:
http://www.checkbiotech.org/blocks/dsp_document.cfm?doc_id=4093

Caribbean Native nations join U.N. Permanent Forum

A group of Caribbean indigenous nations gathered for special ceremonies and events in late May during the 4th United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, held in New York City. The indigenous movement in the Caribbean represents one of the lesser-known currents of Native cultural and political resurgence. This spring at the United Nations, the various delegations of Caribbean indigenous peoples coalesced in interesting and welcome ways.

For the first time in many years, Caribbean indigenous representatives were able to meet, share food and culture, and get down to the hard work of U.N. resolutions, interventions and document reaffirmation that marks much of international work. The Taino Nation of the Antilles, with primary bases in Puerto Rico and New York City, organized events for Caribbean delegates. It fund-raised the costs of one delegate from Dominica and coordinated presentations. Roberto Borrero, a Taino who serves on the NGO committee of the Indigenous Permanent Forum, also helped fund delegates to the event and has been active in hemispheric organizing. An Indigenous Peoples Caucus of the Greater Caribbean has been formed.

Carib cultural activist Prosper Paris, among others, joined the U.N. events. Prosper is from the Carib Territory in the north coast of the small Caribbean island of Dominica. He was one of several presenters on a panel on Indigenous Education and Cultural Survival organized by the Taino Nation. This writer chaired the panel, held at the customary indigenous gathering place in New York City: the United Nations Church Center at 777 United Nations Plaza, where several dozen Taino, Carib, Arawak, Guajiro and other indigenous peoples gathered.

The notable event, ably organized by Vanessa Pastrana, Inarunikia, among other volunteers from the Taino Nation, featured a dance presentation from young Taino people and recitations in the Taino language that are the product of a vigorous reconstruction and relearning of the insular Arawak language by members of that nation since the 1980s.

"From Cuba, in the mountains of the Sierra, from Dominican Republic, from our own Boriken [Puerto Rico], we have met relatives, holding on to our identity and retaking our indigenous roots,'' said Cacique Cibanakan, of the Taino Nation. ''Our hearts pound with excitement that our people are coming together."

Indigenous delegates from all over the world arrive in New York City every spring for the now-permanent U.N. forum on Indigenous peoples' issues. There are always dozens if not hundreds of important and fascinating stories - both positive and negative - on the conditions of tribal peoples and on the always tortuous and troubled trajectory in the world of highly exploitative industries, with their rapacious hunger for indigenous lands and natural resources.

In too many cases, the political contentions of land and resources are accompanied by attacks on Native leaders and political and social structures. Quechua and Aymara from Bolivia and Ecuador, Kuna from Panama, Maya from Guatemala, northern Canadian Cree leaders, Lakota treaty chiefs and Haudenosaunee traditionalists from the United States and Saami from Norway, among many others, sustained a necessary dialogue on human rights and development through the work of U.N. gatherings.

In New York representing the Arawak community at Joboshirima in Venezuela, Chief Reginaldo Fredericks found a not-so-distant relative in Daniel Rivera, Wakonax, one of the active leaders in the Taino movement in Puerto Rico and the diaspora. The Arawak chief, who is Onishido Clan and lives mostly in the rain forest, was very happy to meet Taino relatives.

Among the messages carried by Fredericks from his people is the need to preserve and restore indigenous language. He commended the Taino language recovery program, developed by the nation's elder language advocate, Jose Laboy, Boriquex, and offered to help bring together the Arawak (Lokono) peoples wherever possible. ''It is wonderful we are more and more recognizing each other; we have a lot to offer each other,'' Rivera, who made an intervention at the United Nations on behalf of Caribbean Indian peoples, responded.

Of the many currents of indigenous movement across the Western Hemisphere, the Caribbean is the most hidden and marginalized. As communities, clans and nations coalesce, however, encounters such as the one at the United Nations in New York, provide common ground for exchange and mutual education. The shared cultural history is fascinating.Fredericks narrated stories of his people to the Taino Nation elder, which tell of six original Lokono (later Arawak) nations, which the chief called ''clans.'' Of the six ''clans,'' three are unaccounted for while Taino is in the process of vigorous cultural and social recovery.

According to Fredericks, the ancient Lokono tribes or clans were called Oralido, Cariafudo, Onishido ''rain people,'' Gimragi, Way'u, and the ''good people'' from the great islands (Taino). Today, ''as far as we know,'' the chief reported, only Onishido and Way'u survive on the mainland. The chief was most intrigued that hundreds and perhaps thousands of Taino descendants from the islands of the Greater Antilles are reaffirming themselves. The chief pointed to his headdress, which shows six feathers, symbolizing the six tribes or clans of the Lokono. ''The good island people, the Taino, are one of the six feathers,'' Fredericks reminded the other Caribbean delegates.

From La Guajira, Colombia, Karmen Ramirez represented the Way'u Morerat ORJUWAT organization. She pointed out not only her Native Way'u nation, but also four tribes from Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta as Arawaks who originate with the Way'u of the Guajira Peninsula. It was another instance of people from common ancestors and linked contemporary identities meeting and recognizing each other as a result of an indigenous international movement. The Way'u, who also reside in neighboring Venezuela, are one of those peoples hurtfully divided by an international border.

Caribbean indigenous delegates, in the shadows for decades if not centuries, put their statements into the record at the annual U.N. event. The Caribbean indigenous caucus signaled the following major goal: ''That the collective rights of the indigenous peoples of the Greater Caribbean to lands, territories, resources, and traditional knowledge be enshrined in the Constitution of all Greater Caribbean countries and in other states where indigenous peoples exist.''

Author: Jose Barreiro
Source: Indian Country Today