INDIGENOUS WOMEN: Ofelia Rivas and Michelle Cook in Bolivia

VIDEO INTERVIEWS, VOICES OF INDIGENOUS WOMEN: Ofelia Rivas, O'odham Voice Against the Wall, and Michelle Cook, Navajo, live from the Bolivia Climate Conference.

Watch video, recorded live by Earthcycles in Bolivia:http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6343599
Ofelia Rivas, founder of the O'odham Voice Against the Wall, describes recent beatings of O'odham living in their traditional homelands on the US/Mexico border by the US Border Patrol.With the constant attacks by immigration officials, Ofelia said the O'odham elders ask: 'Will they stop the wind from coming across the border?' Ofelia said the Him'dag, sacred way of life, is disrupted by the border wall and militarization. During the construction of the border vehicle barriers, O'odham ancestors were removed from their burial places by Boeing. She said when the people were reburied, a blessing was said for a cleansing rain which came. O'odham ceremonies and daily lives are disrupted, along with the survival of the plants and animals in the Sonoran Desert by the heavy militarization. Ofelia describes how the US Border Patrol halted and violated the ceremonial deer hunt of the O'odham. Rivas was co-chair of the vital Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Cochabamba, Bolivia, at the World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Ofelia Rivas was imprisoned in an immigration prison in southern Mexico, on false charges while supporting the Zapatistas, in 2010. She has been handcuffed and thrown up against a patrol car and told to "cooperate," by tribal police in her homeland. She has been held at gunpoint by the US Border Patrol. Ofelia was the recipient of a Borderlinks' Women on the Border Award 2010. Please visit her website, the O'odham Solidarity Project: http://www.solidarity-project.org/

Michelle Cook, Navajo arriving from Maori territory in New Zealand for the Bolivia Climate Summit, urges unity in Indigenous struggles. "We really need to do what we can to work together." Michelle said real change in the world begins within each us. She said Indigenous Peoples have the spiritual knowledge and power to bring about meaningful change that is needed. Michelle describes the connectedness of humans with the earth. Michelle describes her Navajo grandmother, who walks the Beauty Way. Describing environmental racism toward Native Americans, Michelle said the brutal cost of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation has resulted in cancer and disease for Navajos. Profiteering and deception by the carbon market is described. Michelle is a graduate of the University of Arizona in Indigenous and women's studies. She was active in border struggles with the Indigenous Alliance without Borders and supported the Zapatistas in the struggle for autonomy and dignity. She is now a Fulbright scholar and graduate student in Maori territory in New Zealand. Live from Earthcycles.

Playing Soccer with Evo Morales

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Reporters Notebook

Article and photos by Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
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COLOMI, Bolivia – While the crowds cheered and the band played on, the flags were waving. Fireworks sounded and surely around the world there was a sense that it was a good day to be Indigenous.

Earlier, when the international press jumped on the chartered bus in Cochabamba, we weren’t quite sure where we were going. “Are we going to play soccer with Evo Morales?” We all read those e-mails very quickly. Most of us just remembered something in the e-mail about playing soccer with Bolivian President Evo Morales.

As we drove up the mountains, the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and the city of Cochabamba gave way to the strikingly beautiful mountains. Time slowed and serenity joined us. When the bus stopped in Colomi, a few dozen international journalists and filmmakers heard the sounds of a band coming from the new gymnasium. We crawled under a barbed wire fence and ran up the hill.

There, Evo Morales was suited up in the number 10 jersey, vendors were selling ice cream and there was a sense that a member of their community had come home. Morales played out the game to cheers. When the game was over between the two Bolivian teams, tables were lined with fresh fish, fava beans, boiled corn, various potatoes and other delicious traditional foods of Bolivia. With the cheering, firecrackers and celebration, the media laughed, celebrated and carried home Bolivian flags.

Today, while others were examining the science of climate change, we watched another remedy for the overconsumption and waste of so-called developed countries. We ate delicious local food on clay plates that was served with love and honor. We joined in the celebration of a people, a people happy to cheer on their first Indian president.

Traveling down the mountain, I thought, that Martin Luther King, Jr., must have been thinking of the mountains of Bolivia when he said that he had been to the mountaintop and he was not afraid to die.

I also thought of all those journalists who have been writing me for encouragement. In recent years, I could offer none. There were no jobs, and perhaps no hope of any. But today there is a new reason to keep writing, even if you pay for it yourself. There is a new reason to keep telling the stories, keep telling the truth, even if no one hires you, even if no one publishes you.

The reason is this: Once in a lifetime we get to go watch Evo Morales play soccer in the mountains of Bolivia.

It is a good day to be a journalist, it is a good day to be alive.
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Read more articles:

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=6d0c34f507ab659d4e204b6556371c25
Planeta o Muerte -- Evo Morales and the Revolutionary Politics of Mother EarthNew America Media, News Report, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Apr 21, 2010
"In a 21st century twist on “Revolución o Muerte” (Revolution or Death), the slogan that powered Latin American revolutionary movements of the 60s and 70s, the generally soft-spoken Morales opened the conference by shouting “Planeta o Muerte!” (Planet or Death)."
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=6d0c34f507ab659d4e204b6556371c25

Evo Morales: Rights of Mother Earth

Bolivian President Evo Morales speaking on the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Photo copyright Brenda Norrell/Censored News

Bolivia: Grassroots Natives arrive at World Climate Conference

Michelle Cook, Navajo, arrives at the La Paz airport in Bolivia, along with Jose Matus, Yaqui, ready to participate as grassroots delegates to the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Michelle arrived from Maori territory in New Zealand, with a night over in Chile, and Jose from the US/Mexico border where he is director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders. Photos Brenda Norrell.

Bolivia's Morales slams capitalist debt to global warming
AFP
Bolivian President Evo Morales opened a "people's conference" on climate change on Tuesday with an attack on capitalism's debt to global warming, before participants booed a UN envoy.

Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities were scheduled to take part in the three-day summit focusing on the world's poorest, which they say were largely ignored at official United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

"Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth," leftist Morales said to a crowd of some 20,000 people.

"We're here because industrialized countries have not honored their promises."

The Copenhagen meeting was widely criticized for failing to produce a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Critics said the deal it produced will not avert a climate catastrophe.

The "People's World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights" will draft new proposals for the next UN climate talks in Mexico at the end of the year.

But the UN representative in Bolivia struggled to make her voice heard over a chorus of booing on Tuesday.

"We came with all respect to hear the people, you invited us to be here. If you don't want us to be here we can leave," said Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sought dialogue, inclusion and transparency in the world climate debate, according to a message distributed by Barcena.

The colorful assembly, dotted with Andean flags and ponchos, met in a small stadium surrounded by mountains in Tiquipaya, in the suburbs of Cochabamba.

"We have a choice between two paths: one is a path of life, one is the path of destruction," said participant Faith Gemmill, an ethnic Gwich'in of the Alaska inter-tribal council.

Morales, of Aymara origin, said that the lifestyle of indigenous peoples, including their harmonious relationship with nature, should be "the only true alternative."

Morales sought to refine proposals he had presented in Copenhagen, including the creation of a world tribunal for climate issues and a global referendum on environmental choices.

Developing nations have resisted a legally binding climate treaty, arguing that wealthy nations must bear the primary responsibility for climate change.

This week's gathering was expected to give a megaphone to a left-leaning bloc of Latin American leaders, including presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Nearly 130 countries, including many of the world's poorest, were to be represented in Cochabamba.

Anti-globalization activists Naomi Klein of Canada and Jose Bove of France were also on the guest list, while James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film "Avatar," and US actor Danny Glover were notable by their absence on Tuesday.

The conference followed a preparatory meeting between representatives from the world's leading economies in Washington ahead of the December UN summit in Cancun.

The US-led Major Economies Forum comprises 17 countries responsible for the bulk of global emissions and excludes smaller nations such as Sudan whose firebrand negotiators held up sessions at December's Copenhagen summit.

AFP

Earthcycles Live now from Bolivia

Earthcycles is streaming live now from Bolivia at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Native American Delegations arriving in La Paz

Native Americans Delegations arrive in Bolivia
UPDATED Tuesday
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrrell.blogspot.com
Native American delegations are now arriving in Boliva! Jose Matus, director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders based in Tucson and Sonora, Mexico, was at the La Paz airport Monday. Jose assisted Indigenous Peoples with translations. He is fluent in Spanish, English and Yaqui. Many grassroots delegates enroute are still struggling with flights, but there´s many Indigeous from North America already in Cochabamba. --Brenda