Below is the synthesis of Landless Voices: Land & Indigenous Peoples held May 2024. LANDLESS VOICES is a series of online consultative forums where rural people’s groups can share their land issues and struggles amid the global food crisis. The outcomes of the consultation series were shared during the May 13 Speakout of the Landless and served as reference to the Rural People’s Development Agenda of the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land and Climate Justice.
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For this session we aimed to zoom in on the issue of land dispossession among Indigenous Peoples, the right to self-determination, and attacks against Indigenous land defenders.
A salient point that arose in the discussion among Indigenous Peoples is how tightly linked the right to land and right to self-determination are with each other. Indigenous knowledge, culture, and practices are deemed by people in power as “unfit” for their so-called “developed” world– this argument is thus used to justify the widespread land-grabbing of our ancestral domains by hiding behind the guise of “green development”, “conservation” and “economic development” which are claimed by multinational and transnational contractors as “more effective” and beneficial for the greater good.
Mau Forest is one of the largest tropical forests and water towers of Kenya. Evictions in the Mau Forest, ancestral land of the members of the Ogiek people, have been happening since time immemorial. This resulted in landlessness, loss of livelihood, food insecurity, decreased literacy levels, and increased forest destruction through logging. OPDP has pointed out how the Kenyan government has repeatedly claimed that the Ogiek are culprits of the deforestation of the Mau Forest, thus making evictions necessary to “protect” the ecosystem. Yet we are seeing otherwise.
Indigenous Peoples are being pushed out of lands in the name of “Home for the Wildlife”, dispossessing them of their natural co-existence with the animals since time immemorial. Extractive industry and infrastructure development also push Indigenous Peoples out from their lands.
As our friends from the Single Mothers Association of Kenya, has pointed out “the government is misusing climate change, indigenous, wildlife conservation, and tourism to grab lands from indigenous communities”
Contrary to claims of “conservation” lands taken away from Indigenous Peoples in Kenya are now being encroached by international institutions and bodies. Unpayed loans from institutions such as the Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF-WB) are being used to justify conceding lands to MNCs and UN bodies such as the UNEP and UN Habitat. One striking project currently still under construction is the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport being financed by the World Bank, the construction has led to deforestation and forest degradation.
In the 1970s, the DRC government expelled thousands of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral land in Bukavu to create “protected areas” and make way for the establishment of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. 5 decades later the dispossession of Indigenous lands continues to happen in the DRC, made possible by funding from various intergovernmental agencies, International NGOs, and donors such as the Word Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society among others. Indigenous communities have fought back against these through various legal means, and with militant actions such as returning to the Park to reclaim their land. According to a report by the Initative for Equality, the people’s resistance are met by the DRC government with military violence, resulting to deaths, arbitrary arrests, and torture, and even cases of rape and children being burned alive.
Militarist and fascist government campaigns are almost if not always constantly used to subdue our just resistance against land-grabbing. State resources that could have otherwise been used for social services are being channeled towards greater military funding, and have resulted in long lists of human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples.
The Chittagong Hills Tract in Bangladesh, where various Indigenous groups live, has been under military control for 27 years. Because of the government’s failure and outright intent to not implement a peace accord in 1997, massive deployment of military forces has been justified by the State as necessary. The military presence in the CHT has been utilized to carry out land-grabbing in the name of “tourism” and “development”, and have forcefully evicted Indigenous families out of the CHT to neighboring countries such as Burma and India. The military has also been funding armed groups to carry out criminal activities and terrorize the people, only to further justify the military’s presence in the area.
In the Philippines, energy and mining are being sold as the economic cornerstones of the Marcos Jr. administration’s plans for the country’s progress. But this resulted in the construction of numerous mines and dams, endangering the livelihood and right to land of Indigenous Peoples. Naturally, the attempts to drive out Filipino Indigenous people out of their rightful land, are met with resistance and opposition from communities. The Philippine government is responding to these just demands with judicial harassment, criminalization and false charges. Leaders of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance have been arbitrarily declared as “terrorists” by the Anti-Terrorism Council, under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. While others have fallen victim to extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, with some still missing to this day.
Attendees of the discussion are in unison that amidst the slew of land dispossession, human rights violations, and the neglect of Indigenous Peoples right to self-determination, our just cause for justice, peace, and people-centered development persists. Participants have pointed out the need for greater discussions among Indigenous Peoples organizations and communities, the need for international solidarity among movements, and opportunities for collaboration to further strengthen our cause, and sharpen our analyses towards building a strong Indigenous Peoples movement against land dispossession, climate crisis, and imperialist plunder. #