June 22, 2012 — Yesterday at Rio+20, 400 Indigenous people from throughout the world attempted to enter the UN Rio+20 summit to deliver the Kari-Oca II Declaration to United Nations leaders (see previous post). Only a handful of the delegates were permitted to enter the summit due to military intervention. The delivery of the declaration was visited on by the overflight of a condor.
The Kari-Oca II Declaration (available here) states, in part:
“We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the ‘Green Economy,’ and its premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its life-giving and life-sustaining capacities as a continuation of the colonialism that Indigenous peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and resisted for 520 years… Indigenous activists and leaders defending their territories continue to suffer repression, militarization, including assassination, imprisonment, harassment and vilification as ‘terrorists.’ The violation of our collective rights faces the same impunity. Forced relocation or assimilation assault our future generations, cultures, languages, spiritual ways and relationship to the earth, economically and politically.”
(listen to audio interviews with members of the delegation here and here).
