Indigenous South Africans go on a yearly 400 mile pilgrimage to bring awareness to ongoing violations of basic human rights of South Africans, the withholding of remains and sacred items belonging to Indigenous communities by museums, as well as to reconnect to the earth and environment through the rigorous journey from coast to coast. We spoke to two South African Indigenous rights activists to hear their takes on how this tradition has shaped their activism.
Peter Buffett is a Co-President of the NoVo Foundation, which works to foster a transformation from a world of domination and exploitation to one of collaboration and partnership. As part of this work, NoVo supports work in Indigenous communities across North America, including community-led programs that center Indigenous girls and women. Suzanne Benally (Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa) is a leader in U.S. Indigenous rights advocacy, and serves as the Executive Director of Cultural Survival.
En este programa especial conoceremos de una Radio Comunitaria en Boca de Sábalo, Rio San Juan, Nicaragua quienes al igual que muchas Radios Comunitarias Indígenas están ocupadas en abanderar la lucha por la madre tierra y nuestros bienes comunes.
Musicalización
Días de Amar del Duo Guardabarrando, con su autorización
En este entrevista especial con Ada Villareal, Representante de la Red Centroamericana de Radios Comunitarias Indígenas de la que también Cultural Survival y nuestro programa de Radio de Derechos Indígenas es parte; te contamos la importancia que tienen la Radios Comunitarias en su función educadora, promotora y defensora de los recursos naturales para la garantía de la preservación y el buen vivir de las comunidades.
It was the Wampanoag People, the people of the first light, that encountered the Pilgrims when they arrived to Turtle Island (North America) from Europe in 1620. Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday in the United States, mythologizing the violent events that followed European arrival into a story of friendship and mutual sharing. But the reality is that the Wampanoags’ generosity was met with genocide, and this truth has been systematically suppressed in the US education system, government, and popular culture.
La celebración del Día de Muertos es una de las tradiciones más antiguas y representativas de México. Actualmente, muchas familias mantienen viva esta costumbre la cual varía su práctica a dependencia de cada estado.
Para hablar sobre esto, conversamos con un abuelo Zapoteco, de Valles Centrales de Oaxaca, México el señor Mateo Hipólito García, quien destaca que rendir culto a los muertos es una obligación y que además es parte del legado ancestral.
Locución: Teresita Orozco
Tema musical:
SOTZ´IL_Ch´a´oj
Though collaboration is crucial to finding solutions for climate change, Indigenous People must be able to maintain, protect, and control their cultural heritage, sciences, and technologies. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a legal framework for intellectual ownership by Indigenous communities of their traditional knowledge. However, many additional cultural barriers to equal-footed climate change collaboration exist, such as the automatic devaluation of Indigenous science by Western science practitioners.
A close relationship with local environments and ecosystems is more critical than ever in the face of a rapidly changing climate. This program features two perspectives from Indigenous communities that are practicing resiliency to global warming by adapting their traditional knowledge and science to put a changing climate into the context of their communities' history and lifeways.
INTERVIEWEES
Elizabeth Azzuz (Yurok), Cultural Fire Management Council
Jannie Staffansson (Saami), Arctic and Environment Unit of the Saami Council
Indigenous communities in Honduras have stewarded the Muskitia, a rain forest which includes one of the richest concentrations of biodiversity in the world, for centuries. Osvaldo Munguia is a representative of MOPAWI, an organization that partners with Indigenous groups to protect this UNESCO world heritage site from being overtaken by logging, mining, and forestry business interests.
MUSIC
"Remember Your Children," by Salidummay. Used with permission.
Introduction: "Burn Your Village to the Ground" by A Tribe Called Red. Used with permission.
What can Western science learn from Indigenous knowledge? We speak with Dr. Daniel Wildcat (Yuchi) and Tui Shortland (Maori) about the value of Indigenous longitudinal place-based knowledge that Indigenous People have gathered over millennia. We unpack what positive collaboration between Western science and Indigenous science can look like and why it is important.
Credits:
Background music:
"Atahualpa" and "Lights in the forest" by Yarina. Used with permission.