What the Interior Secretary Failed to Tell the United Nations Forum of Indigenous Peoples

Video of lithium mine underway on the Paiute Massacre Site at Thacker Pass in Nevada.
 Video by Young Warrior 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ChO5tXyzQ

While the United States desecrates the land, water and sacred places -- around the world, Indigenous land defenders are being assassinated. In New York, rhetoric dominates the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

Watch UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, Tuesday:

https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1e/k1em34yuev

NEW YORK -- Here's what Interior Sec. Deb Haaland did not mention during her address to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York on Monday.

While promoting President Biden and glorifying his actions, portraying Biden as honoring Native people and their lands, Haaland did not mention the Willow Project in Alaska -- an oil drilling carbon bomb now threatening the lives of polar bears and caribou -- or the lithium mining now gouging out the earth of the Paiute Massacre site on Thacker Pass in Nevada, a lethal threat to all created things.

This desecration by a Canadian company, Lithium Americas, is enriching the company. Biden is promoting it as 'green energy,' for batteries for electric vehicles. 

During the rhetoric at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, only a few delegates described the widespread assassinations of Indigenous land and water defenders around the world.

While praising the government of Mexico, the delegate from Mexico failed to point out the horrific assassinations and disappearances widespread in Mexico right now. Although he praised Mexico for the creation of a university language program for  Yaqui in Sonora, he failed to dignify the deaths of Vicam and Bacum Yaqui who were assassinated, and Bacum Yaqui who remain disappeared, in Sonora and Sinaloa, south of the Arizona border.

The delegate from Peru was one of the few delivering a passionate plea for Indigenous Peoples who are fighting for their lives. Speaking out for the rights of women and children, the Peruvian delegate described the racist and colonial violence in Peru.

Quechan delegate from Peru at UN Forum

"We are being killed as Quechua Indigenous Peoples." Quechua and Aymara are being murdered. There is widespread racism, and impunity for the murders of Indigenous Peoples, right now in Peru.

"The representative of the National Organization of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian Women said that in Peru, racism and classism by members of civil service, Congress, and the media have become more visible through racist speech," U.N. media reports.

"The Peruvian State does not care about the lives of our brothers," she underscored, noting the impunity, as well as the use of judicial power to prosecute and criminalize Indigenous Peoples.

“Indigenous women are protecting the lives of people and Mother Earth, and for defending those rights, we are prosecuted and killed,” she emphasized, voicing hope that recommendations are issued to States so that they comply with international conventions and treaties to which they are signatories. Further, States must be called upon to respect the rights of Indigenous women and girls who will continue to ensure the survival of their cultures.

Meanwhile, the representative of the government of Mexico spoke only of the positive, failing to describe the widespread assassinations and disappearances of Indigenous Peoples, targeted assassinations of media, displacement of Indigenous Peoples for development, and theft of Indigenous Peoples resources, throughout Mexico.

 

Watch the video by Young Warrior of the desecration and destruction of the Paiute Massacre Site at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, near the Oregon border, now underway. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ChO5tXyzQ