Saxakali magazine 3:1 End Attack on Land Rights: Environment and Cultural Survival in 21st Century

Saxakali Magazine V3N1
Environmental Issues:

End Attack on Land Rights
Environment & Cultural Survival in 21st Century

Local environments, cultures and communities are under attack by the combined forces of governments and international capital. All over the world, rural (and urban) communities are losing permanent rights to ancestral land, which are being privatized by national and state governments and offered for sale as individual property to large national and multinational corporations (MNCs).

Eviction and forced relocation of communities results in separation of families and destruction of cultures. As natural environments and resources are trashed for profit by MNCs, communities downstream have to deal with the trickle down effects of 'development' like pollution, political and social corruptiom, etc., in addition to the loss of irreplaceable environments and resources.

Who owns the land? Who should have rights to land? Who is responsible for the earth, for preserving the diversity of plants and animals, and the people and cultures they support? The people of the region, or the state and corporate interests?

These questions are bieng raised by a number of groups affected by land rights issues, including local communities, environmentalists worldwide, and young people all over the world who realize that their present and future rights to the earth's finite resources are being rapidly diminished and lost forever. Their dissatisfaction takes various forms, from helplessness and self destruction, to writing, protests and armed resistance.

As activists and concerned people in 'developed' and 'developing' worlds, we need to rethink the relationship between the profit motives of the state and capital, and the survival interests pf the earth, peoples and cultures. For example, one of the largest civil disobedience protests in usa history occured on september 16, 1996, in Carlotta, nothern california, against the ongoing Headwaters logging operations and govenrment complicity. Lockdowns, blockades and tree sits continue to this day. This action represents a rethinking of the notion of private property, as activists are questioning, "who own the last remaining acres of old growth forest in the usa?" The Hurwitz family of all americans?

In addition to actions aimed at reclaiming communal land rights, there are numerous movements to hold on to traditional land rights in the usa, canada, mexico, other parts of the americas, including suriname and guyana. This edition of Saxakali magazine focuses on some of these struggles in the hope of raising awareness on this very important issue.

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