#Genocide of indigenous peoples

[no-passaran]

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

[kingskrazzyart]

Well, if you hate winter, you know how much of a pain it can be to constantly have to shovel your drive way. And if you don't get snow, you get seasons of heavy hurricanes and typhoons. Harsh weather conditions destroy homes, harm our communities, and take more money to repair damages than some people can afford. That's why you should help @ma7moudgaza2 and his family

Here's their verification || Verification 2

Mahmoud and his brother, Muhammad, are campaigning to buy supplies to survive this winter season. Their current goal is to buy covers and blankets to keep themselves warm because Surviving genocide is just as important as escaping it. Their family consists of 20 people-- that's an entire classroom of people! The money will be used for the supplies mentioned previously along with food, wood for a chair, clothes, and a shader to prevent their tent from sinking. For more details about how the money will be spent, click here. These people are your neighbors, graphic designers, phone repairers, and some maybe could've been your friends. If your neighbor's work blew up, wouldn't you want to help?

Pictured: Muhammad's work before and after the war.

"...I lost all of my work, leveled it to the ground, and completely destroyed my dream. As this war continued for more than 10 months, what I had saved was not enough for me. From money to buy my basic life, I am now without money and without a source of income, which the occupation has completely destroyed." -Message from Muhammad, read more here

Click here to see Mahmoud's work portfolio

The family has been a recent victim of *fraud* and had their campaign money STOLEN! Every cent you can donate matters! If 2500 people who reblogged this donated 10 USD then they'd reach their goal! If tumblr can come together for a fake movie, we can come together for this! We got this!!! Donate to their campaign and Paypal!

[communistkenobi]

whenever right wing people talk about “parental rights” they are talking about property rights. they are arguing for further political and legal enshrinement of their children as their literal actual property

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

Do not forget about West Papua.

Do not forget about the colonial genocide being committed against the indigenous West Papuans.

[thenuclearmallard]

[indecisiveavocado]

Some notes on the name Palestine

TL;DR: Palestine is a colonialist name from a group trying to deny an indigenous group's indigenousness as part of a genocidal campaign. It may have acquired other meanings, but the etymology is still linked tightly to that, and it still carries that past with it. Anyone who considers themselves pro-indigenous should not use the term.

Let's rewind. The word Palestine is related to "Philistine"; indeed, it comes from them. So who were they?

In short, a bunch of Greeks who created a syncretic culture in what is now, roughly, Gaza. They mixed with the native people, called Canaanites. (We don't know what they called themselves - Philistine itself derives from a Biblical term.)

They vanished pretty fast, and then, a while later, the Romans came.

The indigenous population rebelled too much, so they embarked on a campaign of genocide. They killed people, of course. But they also raped enough women that Judaism is matrilineal. They sold people as slaves, barred them from their holy city and capital, Jerusalem (which they renamed). They destroyed the Jewish holy temple, the Second Temple (there is now a mosque on top of it).

And then they tried to deny that the indigenous population was, in fact, indigenous. They renamed the region Syria Palestina. Why? Because Philistines weren't around anymore. They could pretend there weren't any indigenous people to displace.

Over time, that word, Palestina, moved. It moved to Arabic, where it became Filastin. It moved to English, where it became Palestine.

But the indigenous name for the region (except, arguably, for Gaza, give or take) has never been Palestine.

We don't know what the Neanderthals, the first group there, called it.

But we know what many of the indigenous people call it. Eretz Yisrael. Or, in English, the Land of Israel.

("But wait!" you say. "You just said that in Arabic it was Filastin. Palestinians are native and speak Arabic!"

But they didn't speak Arabic back then. Arabic came with the Arab conquerers (who Palestinians aren't super related to, FYI). Arabs spread vastly during the Islamic conquests, but before that, they were primarily a desert people, whose homeland corresponded to roughly Saudi Arabia, although it extended to places like Syria and Oman. There are majority-Arab countries and places today that range from Morocco to Mauritania, Sudan to Iraq, Egypt to (parts of) Iran. Arabs are not indigenous to any of those places, and neither is Arabic.)

You may not support the Roman genocide. I hope you don't. But you are still using a term European colonialists used to erase indigenous identity as they genocided them, and it still carries that baggage.

(If you refuse to call the region Israel, Canaan is also a fine term - although it may get you some weird looks.)

[reasonsforhope]

The bison.

I know this seems like old news to a lot of people but Americans slaughtered the bison to further the genocide of the indigenous peoples (who are still here) and despite that the bison have been reintroduced.

they have returned to their native grazing grounds, the ecosystems where they have returned are flourishing for it. and to top it all off it was the peoples this government tried so desperately to erradiacte that brought them back.

the day I heard Bison had been reintroduced to the plains I sobbed like a baby and began to choose hope.

!!!! The recovery of the bison is something I've been following and it's been such a source of hope and and sign healing for me!!

Especially tribally managed reintroductions and herds!!

Really impossible to understate how much of an ecological and and humanitarian and ethical tragedy and atrocity is finally beginning to be healed

[olowan-waphiya]

if usamericans are excited about the concept of anti-colonialism in other countries oooh boy do i have some exciting news for you...you can practice decolonization right here at home!

[mareastrorum]

An annoying part about any fandom discourse is the push to categorize characters, populations, and factions as representations of actual groups IRL. The most annoying one (to me) is insistence that a particular group is Indigenous Peoples and the other is the White Settlers.

Like a lot of people in the U.S., I'm mixed race. Many who are mixed race don't identify as such; they pick one or another. Why? Because mixed race identities are systematically ignored or erased on multiple levels of government and political influence: census records, diversity reports, financial aid qualifications, membership in political groups, etc. Choosing one identity alone is rewarded with greater voice and resources in different spheres. Acknowledging that this split isn't real is offensive to groups in power, both for the dominant hegemony of Whites and the coalitions of minority groups. Each group benefits from enforcing this exclusionary practice because it allows specific people to justify their leadership based solely on their heritage: a new aristocracy.

All this fake dichotomy nonsense in fandom is a replication of that mentality. Like, some media like The Terror really, truly are commentary on colonialism. There's no need to hide the ball about it. If your favorite media has nothing to do with conquest, exploitation of land and resources, or the subjugation of populations for the benefit of foreign powers, then it's not about colonialism. There's other themes to explore.

[news4dzhozhar]

[reddeadsredhead]

One thing I feel like people don't understand is Charles shooting one of the poachers. I see so many people saying how he's only standing up against poaching and animal abuse in general. I see people say he was cruel and cold.

But they're ignoring a huge part of real-world history; the fact that bison hunting was many natives' livelihood, what kept them fed and warm in the winter. Charles even mentions at the very beginning how important bison were to not only their culture but their very survival, and the mass killing and poaching of bison was a deliberate, calculated attempt to wipe out indigenous populations. Bison hunting was strongly encouraged by the government.

And sadly, it worked.

This is why Charles's rage feels, at minimum, somewhat justified. He's staring genocide straight in the face and he feels nothing but pure disgust and seething anger. I can't blame him for reacting the way he did.

[naivety]

So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.

[...]

Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities. What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us? This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land? We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it. We seek nothing but total liberation.

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

🌿An Earth Day fusion repost from @theimeu and @muchachafanzine.

🌿In honor of Earth Day, please visit @zaytoun_cic, @handmadepalestine, or @plant.eenolijfboom to plant an olive tree in Palestine. 🕊

🌿From @theimeu:

This Earth Day, we mourn the 34,000+ Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza and Israel’s continued degradation of Gaza’s land, water, and other natural resources that make life possible for Palestinians.

In the past 6 months alone, Israel has destroyed farmland and greenhouses, contaminated natural resources with hazardous materials, bombed key water purifying infrastructure and wells, and created conditions for epidemics caused by an extreme excess of sewage, waste, and pollution.

Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s environment is part of its goal of making life for Palestinians in Gaza unlivable.

Link in bio to contact your reps and urge an immediate, permanent ceasefire and the immediate suspension of all arms and funds to Israel.

Sources: The Guardian, Scientific American

🌿From @muchachafanzine:

Reminder this #EarthDay that from Turtle Island to Pa1estine, your environmentalism doesn’t mean sh!t if you don’t support giving the #LandBack to Indigenous people. 🤷🏽‍♀️

[ladychlo]

Today, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced their recognition of the state of Palestine. Long live the resistance. This would not have been possible without the resistance 🇵🇸🔻

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

"I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

- Mark Twain

Time for some star-spangled history lessons, comrades!

[thenuclearmallard]

There's an Indigenous page for the ethnic groups in the Caucasus region speaking out against the misuse of the word and bringing education due to the war and erasure going on.

There are a lot of Indigenous pages beginning to form and being highlighted with activism against Russia. This is powerful to see.