Indigenous People

34 US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Pardon Steven Donziger

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Steven Donziger speaks at a “Free Donziger” rally held in front of the Manhattan Court House in New York City on October 1, 2021. (Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

“We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice.”

More than 30 Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday called on outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who endured nearly 1,000 days in prison and house arrest after successfully representing Ecuadoreans harmed by Big Oil’s pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

In a letter to Biden led by Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.), 33 House and Senate Democrats plus Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted the “troubling legal irregularities” in Donziger’s case, which have been “criticized as unconstitutional or illegal by three federal judges, 68 Nobel laureates, and five high-level jurists from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations.”

Donziger represented a group of Ecuadorean farmers and Indigenous people in a 1990s lawsuit against Texaco—which was later acquired by Chevron—over the oil company’s deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of carcinogenic waste into the Amazon. He played a key role in winning a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts.

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However, Chevron fought Donziger in the U.S. court system, and when the attorney refused to disclose privileged client information to the company, federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan—who was invested in Chevron—held him in misdemeanor contempt of court. Loretta Preska, Kaplan’s handpicked judge to preside over Donziger’s contempt trial, is affiliated with the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.

Donziger’s case drew worldwide attention and solidarity, with human rights experts and free speech groups joining progressive U.S. lawmakers in demanding his release. He was released in April 2022 after 993 days in prison and house arrest.

“Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge,” the 34 lawmakers wrote. “We believe that the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron. We do not make this accusation lightly or without evidentiary support.”

The legislators warned:

Notwithstanding the personal hardship, this unprecedented legal process has imposed on Mr. Donziger and his family, we are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice. Those who try to help vulnerable communities will feel as though tactics of intimidation—at the hands of powerful corporate interests, and, most troublingly, the U.S. courts—can succeed in stifling robust legal representation when it is needed most. This is a dangerous signal to send.

“Pardoning Mr. Donziger,” the lawmakers added, “would send a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest.”

The lawmakers join more than 100 environmental and human rights groups that have urged Biden to pardon Donziger.

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In an April opinion piece published by Common Dreams, Donziger contended that “I need this pardon because I am the only person in U.S. history to be privately prosecuted by a corporation.”

“More specifically, the government (via a pro-corporate judge) gave a giant oil company (Chevron) the power to prosecute and lock up its leading critic,” he continued. “As a result of this unprecedented and frightening private prosecution, I still cannot travel out of the country and I have been prohibited from meeting with clients I have represented for over three decades. Nor can I practice law, maintain a bank account, or earn a livelihood.”

“No matter where one stands on the political spectrum,” Donziger added, “we should all be able to agree that what happened to me should not happen to anybody in any country that adheres to the rule of law.”

The appeal for a Donziger pardon comes amid a wave of eleventh-hour pleas from lawmakers for Biden to grant clemency to figures ranging from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier—often described as the nation’s longest-jailed political prisoner—and federal death row inmates including Billie Jerome Allen, who advocates say was wrongly convicted of murder.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading34 US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Pardon Steven Donziger

Tens of Thousands March for Indigenous Rights at New Zealand Parliament

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Māori and allies marched to protest a proposal to dilute Indigenous rights in Wellington, New Zealand on November 19, 2024.
 (Photo: Sanka Vidanagama /AFP via Getty Images)

The Māori Party co-leader called Parliament’s consideration of a bill that would reinterpret a key treaty “the deepest betrayal that we’ve ever had from a National government.”

An estimated 55,000 people marched outside New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington on Tuesday to protest legislation that critics argue would dilute Indigenous rights by reinterpreting a treaty signed in 1840 by the British Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs.

The peaceful demonstration was the culmination of a nine-day march, or hīkoi, that began at Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand and the most spiritually significant place in the country for Māori, who are about 20% of the 5.3 million-person population.

Reuters reported that some “dressed in traditional attire with feathered headgear and cloaks and carried traditional Māori weapons, while others wore T-shirts emblazoned with Toitu te Tiriti (Honor the Treaty). Hundreds carried the Māori national flag.”

“We have gathered in our tens of thousands, not just Māori, but others who support an inclusive, diverse, equal partnership that our country has been a world leader in pioneering.”

The Treaty Principles Bill targeting the Treaty of Waitangi, or Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is being pushed by the ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the center-right coalition government, which also includes the National Party and New Zealand First (NZF).

Although the National and NZF have said that they are only supporting the legislation for the first of the three readings—meaning it is highly unlikely to pass—Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of the Māori Party, or Te Pāti Māori, told the podcast The Front Page that even allowing it to be tabled is a “deep shame.”

“We deserve better than to be used as political pawns,” Ngarewa-Packer argued. “The fact that National has decided that we were tradeable and the mana of the coalition agreement was so much more important than the mana of Te Tiriti and tāngata is the deepest betrayal that we’ve ever had from a National government.”

Pointing to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who won earlier this month after being ousted in the previous cycle, Ngarewa-Packer added, “We’re a country that had the first women’s vote, we have always punched above our weight in the anti-nuclear space, the anti-discrimination space, and here we are in 2024 with the sort of Trump-like culture coming into our politics.”

The New York Times noted Tuesday that “a year before American voters’ anger over the cost of living helped Donald J. Trump win the presidency, similar sentiments in New Zealand thrust in the nation’s most conservative government in decades. Now, New Zealand bears little resemblance to the country recently led by Jacinda Ardern, whose brand of compassionate, progressive politics made her a global symbol of anti-Trump liberalism.”

As the newspaper detailed:

The new government—a coalition of the main center-right party and two smaller, more populist ones—has reversed many of Ms. Ardern’s policies. It has rescinded a world-leading ban on smoking for future generations, repealed rules designed to address climate change, and put a former arms industry lobbyist in charge of overhauling the nation’s strict gun laws.

And in a country that has been celebrated for elevating the status of Māori, its Indigenous people, it has challenged their rights and the prominence of their culture and language in public life, driving a wedge into New Zealand society and setting off waves of protests.

Parliament was briefly suspended last Thursday after Maori members staged a traditional dance called a haka to disrupt the first reading. The haka—which garnered global attention—was started by Member of Parliament Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who tore up a copy of the bill.

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Speaking to the Wellington crowd on Tuesday, Maipi-Clarke—who at 22 is the country’s youngest MP—said, “We are the sovereign people of this land and the world is watching us here, not because of the system, not because of the rules, but because we haka.”

Other participants in the Tuesday action included the Māori Queen, Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō, and Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader Rawiri Waititi, who led the crowd in a chant to “kill the bill.”

According to The Northern Advocate, ACT Leader David Seymour, “the architect of the Treaty Principles Bill, was booed back inside the Beehive today by the tens of thousands protesting against his controversial bill.”

While Seymour has framed the bill as an effort to end division and ensure equal rights for all, critics like Ella Henry, professor of Māori Entrepreneurship at Auckland University of Technology, warn that it is an effort to roll back New Zealand’s previous progress in terms of relations with Indigenous people.

“So we have gathered in our tens of thousands, not just Māori, but others who support an inclusive, diverse, equal partnership that our country has been a world leader in pioneering,” Henry told SBS News. “Those are the people who are marching.”

Hayley Komene, who is from the Ngāti Kauwhata tribe, similarly toldThe Guardian that there was a “real strength and pride” at the march, and “there are people from lots of different backgrounds here for the same reason—it’s beautiful.”

Komene also slammed the government’s Māori policies as “absolutely ridiculous” and stressed that “Te Tiriti is a constitutional document of our country.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Continue ReadingTens of Thousands March for Indigenous Rights at New Zealand Parliament

Indigenous People Push Back Against US ‘Thanksgiving Mythology’

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Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

“We will not stop telling the truth about the Thanksgiving story and what happened to our ancestors,” says Kisha James, whose grandfather founded the National Day of Mourning in 1970.

JESSICA CORBETTNovember 24, 2022

The United American Indians of New England and allies gathered at noon Thursday at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts for the 53rd National Day of Mourning—an annual tradition that serves as “a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.”

“It has continued for all these years as a powerful demonstration of Indigenous unity and of the unity of all people who speak truth to power.”

“We don’t have any issues with people sitting down with their family and giving thanks,” Kisha James—who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and is also Oglala Lakota—told BBC. “What we do object to is the Thanksgiving mythology.”

In a Thursday speech, James—whose grandfather founded the National Day of Mourning in 1970—challenged the lies of “mythmakers” and history books, instead highlighting “genocide, the theft of our lands, the destruction of our traditional ways of life, slavery, starvation, and never-ending oppression.”

“When people celebrate the myth of Thanksgiving, they are not only erasing our genocide but also celebrating it. We did not simply fade into the background as the Thanksgiving myth says. We have survived and flourished. We have persevered,” she declared.

“That first Day of Mourning in 1970 was a powerful demonstration of Native unity,” she said, “and it has continued for all these years as a powerful demonstration of Indigenous unity and of the unity of all people who speak truth to power.”

James noted that “many of the conditions that prevailed in Indian Country in 1970 still prevail today,” pointing to life expectancy, suicide, and infant mortality rates—along with the rising death rate for Native women—and taking aim at racism and “the oppression of a capitalist system which forces people to make a bitter choice between heating and eating.”

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“And we will continue to gather on this hill until we are free from the oppressive system; until corporations and the U.S. military stop polluting the Earth; until we dismantle the brutal apparatus of mass incarceration,” James vowed.

“We will not stop,” she said, “until the oppression of our LGBTQ siblings is a thing of the past; until unhoused people have homes; until human beings are no longer locked in cages at the U.S. border despite the fact that no one is illegal on stolen land; until Palestine is free; until no person goes hungry or is left to die because they have little or no access to quality healthcare; until insulin is free; until union-busting is a thing of the past; until then, the struggle will continue.”

Writing about the annual event for The Lily last year, James explained that “my grandfather was heroic, and I am proud to be his granddaughter and help lead UAINE as we continue our work. But I also have noticed over the years, and especially while going through old newspaper clippings, that for decades the media often focused solely on the men as spokespeople and organizers of National Day of Mourning.”

She continued:

In recent years, my mother and I have worked to ensure that women’s voices, as well as those of two-spirit and LGBTQ people, are amplified at the National Day of Mourning. When I look at the Line 3 struggle or at the Indigenous people who were on the streets in Glasgow demanding climate justice, I see Indigenous people of all ages, and especially women and two-spirit leaders, as part of a continuum of resistance leading into the future.

Women have long been at the center of Indigenous activism, and are respected and revered within many traditional Indigenous cultures as leaders and culture-bearers—even if they were silenced by settlers. That’s why it’s crucial for our voices to be amplified within modern-day movements, especially because settler-colonial violence continues to disproportionately impact women, as evidenced by the ongoing epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the United States and Canada.

James pledged that “we will not stop telling the truth about the Thanksgiving story and what happened to our ancestors.”

The gathering in Massachusetts was not the only annual Indigenous-led event held Thursday.

Lakota historian Nick Estes—a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, co-founder of the Red Nation, and author of the book Our History Is the Future—tweeted: “On the East Coast, there is the National Day of Mourning. On the West Coast, today is marked by a sunrise ceremony to commemorate the Alcatraz Island takeover by the Indians of All Tribes in 1969.”

“The reclaiming of Alcatraz… I call it one of the original ‘land back’ movements,” Morning Star Gali, the community liaison coordinator for the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), told Axios. “Alcatraz represented the lack of housing, the lack of education, the lack of having access to healthy food and clean water. None of that existed on the island.”

The purpose of the 43rd annual Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island, Ohlone Territory—hosted by IITC—is “to celebrate our resilience, resistance, and survival and to affirm truth in history,” Gali wrote earlier this week for the San Francisco Examiner.

According to Gali:

Many Americans prefer a skewed retelling of Thanksgiving over the painful and shameful truth, because viewing the Day of Mourning through the lens of tribal people challenges their role in the continuing colonization of Native people in the United States and around the world. This includes appropriation of lands and resources, strategic disempowerment, and dehumanization of Indigenous people.

During the fall-themed holiday, the average American consumes 3,000 calories in celebration of an abundance of resources, while at the same time a recent study by the Native American Agricultural Fund found that 56% of Native people reported food insecurity during the pandemic. Many tribal nations in rural reservations have been designated as “food deserts” with lack of access to affordable, healthy, and traditional foods, resulting in diabetes and other poor health outcomes. Thanksgiving is the embodiment of Eurocentrism, overindulgence, and complete disregard for the trauma and lived experiences of Indigenous people.

“Today, Native people are disproportionately incarcerated in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups—double the incarceration of whites. Criminalization and confinement of Native people, Native women and youth in particular, is as American as apple pie,” she added. “To gather diverse people and cultures in Indigenous-led prayer and solidarity on the island turns the notion of colonial Thanksgiving on its head and asserts the interconnection and resilience of Indigenous people, cultures, and lands.”

Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Continue ReadingIndigenous People Push Back Against US ‘Thanksgiving Mythology’