Indigenous Training Session Includes Caribbean Indigenous Peoples

United Nations (UCTP Taino News) - Sponsored by the Tribal Link Foundation in partnership with the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, indigenous activists from around the world were selected to participate in the 2007 Project Access training session. The trainees included Mildred Gandia (Taino) and Reginaldo Fredericks (Lokono Arawak) and activities coincided with the preceding the Sixth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City.

Sweet potato - the perfect food?

By Laurel Robinson, Dietician

In the Highlands in Papua New Guinea, the wealth of a man is determined by the number of sweet potatoes in his garden patch ... the one tended by his wife. The man with the most potatoes is the most powerful in the tribe.

The sweet potato is a native American plant found by Columbus. The genus Ipomoea that contains the sweet potato also includes several garden flowers called morning glories.

Early Spanish explorers are believed to have taken the sweet potato to the Philippines and East Indies, from there it was soon carried to India, China and Malaya by Portuguese voyagers. In Asia the American origin of the plant was long overlooked, many believing it native to southern and southeastern Asia.

The sweet potato is far more important in these subtropical and tropical areas than is the Irish potato because it thrives in a hot, moist climate, while the latter requires a cool climate. It is prevalent as a food source in the warm Pacific islands, the East Indies, India, China, and is now the third most important food crop in Japan.

Ipomoea batatas - “batata” being the original Taino name, hence “potato” - is the Latin name for the sweet potato. It is commonly called a yam in parts of the United States. It's distant cousin, the true yam is of the genus Dioscorea, and is rarely seen in the U.S. and Canada but is a staple in tropical regions, where they can grow up to seven feet in length.

One baked sweet potato (3 1/2 ounce serving) provides about twice the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, yet it contains only 141 calories, making it valuable for the weight watcher. This vegetable provides 42 percent of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C, 6 percent of the RDA for calcium, 10 percent of the RDA for iron and 8 percent of the RDA for thiamine for healthy adults. It is low in sodium and is a good source of fiber and other important vitamins and minerals. A complex carbohydrate food source, it provides beta carotene, which may be a factor in reducing the risk of certain cancers. Despite the name “sweet,” it is actually a good food for diabetics, as preliminary studies on animals have revealed that it helps to stabilize blood sugar levels and lower insulin resistance.

In 1992, the Center for Science in the Public Interest compared the nutritional value of sweet potatoes to other vegetables. Considering fiber content, complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium, the sweet potato ranked highest in nutritional value. According to these criteria, sweet potatoes earned 184 points, 100 points over the next on the list, the common potato.

Sweet potato varieties with dark orange flesh have more vitamin A than those with light colored flesh.

Culinary Uses

When buying sweet potatoes, select sound, firm roots. Handle them carefully to prevent bruising. Store in a dry, unrefrigerated bin kept at 55-60 degrees. Do not refrigerate, because temperatures below 55 degrees will chill this tropical vegetable, giving it a hard core and an undesirable taste when cooked.

Wash cured sweet potatoes and bake in a baking pan until slightly soft for about an hour, here at altitude. Eat hot or refrigerate and eat cold or at room temperature with butter and salt. You can also eat them mashed as you would a white potato.

In South America, the juice of red sweet potatoes is combined with lime juice to make a dye for cloth. By varying the proportions of the juices, every shade from pink to purple to black can be obtained.

A unique variety of sweet potato grown in New Zealand, originally grown by the indigenous Maori, is the kumara, a red/purple variety with a unique flavor due to its isolation from other varieties.

Those Papuans ain't so crazy after all.

Laurel Robinson is a trained Dietitian who also practices NLP, a type of pro-active psychotherapy. She runs seasonal group cleansing classes in the spring and fall, and is available for private nutritional and weight-loss coaching, cleansing programs or eating-related psychotherapy at her office on Main Street. “Food Fore Thought” 708-0356.

U.N. Permanent Forum names North American representative

by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today

NEW YORK - Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an impassioned advocate for the rights of more than 370 million indigenous peoples in some 70 countries worldwide, has been named the North American representative to the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Frichner is the founder and president of the American Indian Law Alliance and the vice chair of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, both nonprofit indigenous organizations dedicated to supporting, promoting and maintaining sovereignty, human rights and social justice for indigenous peoples through advocacy, grants, training, technical assistance and other assistance.

A citizen of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, Frichner is widely known for her dedicated work as an attorney, educator, advocate and longtime leader on behalf of indigenous peoples' rights throughout North America and beyond.

Born and raised in the Onondaga's traditional territories (what is now known as New York state), Frichner was imbued with and shaped by her people's history and culture, which she then applied through two decades of work in the United Nations and other international forums.

''Her life has been guided and defined by the rich international advocacy heritage of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, as well as by the excellent oratory and critical thinking skills she learned directly from her mother and family, and her chiefs and clan mothers whose ancestors were the first Indigenous Nation to execute a treaty with the new United States in 1776,'' Christopher Peters, president of Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, said in a prepared statement.

Frichner's legacy has impressed her with the power and importance of an indigenous presence in international relations, and of the critical significance of treaty rights and obligations between nation states and indigenous nations, Peters said.

''Clearly, such a perspective will be of great benefit to her new role in the U.N. Permanent Forum,'' Peters said.

The U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council with a mandate to discuss indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights.

The forum is the United Nation's central coordinating body for matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. The forum holds annual two-week sessions in New York and Geneva.

Frichner's three-year term will begin Jan. 8, 2008, and run until December 2010, a period in which the struggle for the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the U.N. General Assembly will continue to take center stage.

Frichner is committed to the declaration's adoption.

''This document is built of the sweat and tears of indigenous peoples, and when adopted, it will provide hope and optimism for meaningful change for our peoples throughout the world,'' Frichner said in a statement announcing her election as representative to the forum.

The declaration was finalized last year at the forum's fifth session and adopted by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, but last fall the general assembly failed to adopt what has been called ''the most important international instrument for the promotion and protection of the human rights of indigenous peoples'' by Roberto Mucaro Borrero, of the Indigenous Peoples' Caucus, and chair of the NGO Committee on the Decade of the World's Indigenous People.

During last fall's session, a group of African states, many of which had chosen not to participate during 24 years of negotiating the declaration, blocked its adoption by voting to hold more ''consultations'' about the document. The move was made with the support and encouragement of New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the United States. These opponents are all countries with large populations of indigenous peoples who own significant land and resources, including more than 560 federally recognized tribes in the United States.

The sixth session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues will take place at the United Nations in New York May 14 - 25. This year's special theme is Territories, Lands and Natural Resources.

VENEZUELA: The Gift of Native Tongues, On the Air

by Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, May 4 (IPS) - Eiker García and Nelson Maldonado took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, producing a long "mmm" sound, following the instructions of the professional radio presenter who was giving them breathing and elocution lessons.

García and Maldonado are young Ye'kuana Indians from the Watamo and La Esmeralda communities in the Amazon rainforest some 800 kilometres south of Caracas, where one of eight indigenous community radio stations, networked with the public Venezuelan National Radio (RNV) station, is to be installed later this year.

"We're learning to overcome our fear of the microphone and how to conduct interviews," García told IPS during a break in the lessons. He was still enjoying the excitement caused by his first airplane flight.

Maldonado told IPS that very few of their people were qualified for this work. "The community sent us on this first course because we are cultural promoters back home," he said.

Twenty-one young people from 10 different indigenous groups, nearly all of them from remote border regions, participated in the short introductory course on radio broadcasting in late April, in preparation for the installation of the radio stations next October.

The course was provided by the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL).

"CONATEL will assign the frequencies and provide the transmitters and other necessary equipment to instal eight FM stations, and will also give support in technical and management aspects to guide those responsible for the facilities," general services manager for CONATEL Wilfredo Morales told IPS.

RNV director Helena Salcedo said the public station has carried out trial broadcasts in indigenous languages, using its repeaters in border zones.

"The new stations will help indigenous people recover and preserve their culture, and to recognise it and value it for themselves," Salcedo told IPS.

Some parts of the country do not receive any Venezuelan radio signal at all.

Maldonado said that in the backwater of La Esmeralda, where his community is located, people can only tune in to Radio Casiquiare (the name of a river in the Amazon region), which retransmits broadcasts from government radio stations and is operated by members of the military.

In Páez, a municipality in the extreme northwest of Venezuela, between the gulf of Venezuela and the Colombian gulf of Guajira, "you can easily pick up Colombian television channels, but not Venezuelan ones," María Alejandra González, a young Wayúu woman who is studying journalism and took the CONATEL course, told IPS.

"Throughout the Guajira peninsula (most of which falls within Colombian territory but a small part of which belongs to Venezuela) we can listen to the Fe y Alegría radio station, which transmits in Wayunáiki (the language of the Wayúu, or Guajiro, people) and their news programmes cover events on both sides of the border," said González.

Fe y Alegría is a Catholic organisation, with radio stations in several parts of both Colombia and Venezuela.

González believes that the new indigenous radio station, further south where the Bari, Yucpa and Japreira peoples live, will be able to profit from the existing experience of Fe y Alegría's indigenous language radio station, especially the way it has taken up the concerns, claims and proposals of the indigenous communities.

"We also want to follow their example by creating an Indigenous Radiophonic Institute, like Fe y Alegría's but based on the new indigenous community radio stations," said Wayúu activist Anairú Canbar, who is part of the team leading the recently created Indigenous Peoples Ministry.

The eight radio stations "will begin by broadcasting in the languages of the communities where they are based, but later there will also be programmes to reach other communities within broadcasting range, in their own languages, as far as possible," Canbar said.

García is one of those preparing for the multilingual phase of the radio stations. His mother tongue is Ye'kuana, but he also speaks the language of a neighbouring indigenous community, the Yanomami people.

"We want to identify and train indigenous information workers in all the communities, to work as journalists and send their reports by radio, or by telephone to the radio stations, to provide material for indigenous newscasts, which will then interact on the network," Canbar said.

Funding for setting up the indigenous radio stations is being provided by the Information Ministry, as part of its programme for supporting community radio. CONATEL has registered 192 community stations so far. The Information Ministry also has oversight of the Venezuelan National Radio station.

CONATEL's Morales did not mention specific figures, but he said that "the investments are neither large nor costly in comparison with the service they will provide by empowering indigenous communities."

That is what young people like García and Maldonado are learning new skills for. "Get ready to project your voice," said their instructor as he gave them the microphone. "All Venezuela is listening to you now." At least a part of it will be listening, when the first of the indigenous community stations comes on air.

The planned date for this event is October 12, in many countries officially known as Columbus Day, but now celebrated by original peoples as Indigenous People's Resistance Day.

UNPFII Prep-Meeting: UCTP Reps. meet with North American Indigenous Leaders

Minneapolis, MN (UCTP Taino News) – The North America Region Preparatory Meeting for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 6th session took place at the University of Minnesota Law School Human Rights Center from April 21-22, 2007.

Indigenous leaders from throughout the region met to discuss the Permanent Forum’s theme 2007 theme - Land, Territories and Natural Resources. The meeting highlighted many critical issues, struggles and perspectives on the theme of Land and Natural Resources from the region and the preparatory meeting provided the opportunity for leaders to share important information as well as regional positions and recommendations on key issues. A strong focus on Treaties was put forth and there was a consensus on including the recommendations from the UN Seminar on Treaties and Agreements that was held in Samson Cree Nation in November 2006 in joint statements.

Among the participants attending this important gathering, representatives of the United Confederation of Taino People had the honor to attend and provide input to the discussions.

“This was an important opportunity to strengthen our networks of solidarity and to help raise awareness of Caribbean indigenous issues among our North American relatives” started UCTP representative Roberto Mucaro Borrero. The Taino delegation also included Liza O’Reilly and Cheyenne Velazquez who are both UCTP Liaison Officers in the State of Minnesota.

As the meeting was held in the Minneapolis area, the Minneapolis Indian Community organized a special reception/pow wow at the Minneapolis Indian Center in honor of the delegates and their work at the international level for Indigenous Peoples. At the reception/pow wow, the delegates of the preparatory meeting were introduced to the local community and were invited to address those gathered.

The 6th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum takes place from May 14-25 2007 at UN Headquarters in New York.

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UCTP Taino News Online Editor's Note: To review the final report of the North American Preparatory Meeting, a pdf file is located at North American Region Preparatory Meeting for the United Nations or you can View as HTML . Courtesy of www.hrusa.org/workshops/prepsession2007/resources/Final%20Report.pdf