Monthly Archives: September 2015

Rights are Fundamental

Did you know Alaska Hwy cut right through Tlingit land but they kept their communities?

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In 1942, the US sent troops to Canada to build the ALCAN-Alaska Canada Highway and protect north america from the Japanese during the war.  But no one noticed they were ‘invading’ Tlingit territory.

The Tlingit survived contact anyway, despite the insensitivity of the war effort and bad disease outbreaks.

A wonderful museum tells the story with wonderful photos by a Tlingit photographer — George Johnston.

Amazing resource in Teslin, CA

Picturing a People: George Johnston, Tlingit Photographer

1997, 50 min.
Canada, Documentary, Docudrama

Director: Carol Geddes (Tlingit)
Producer: George Hargrave, Sally Bochner
Writer: Carol Geddes (Tlingit)
Produced by: Nutaaq Media Inc., National Film Board of Canada

This portrait of George Johnson, who made a remarkable photographic record of his people during the first half of the twentieth-century, is done by a filmmaker from the same inland Tlingit village in Canada.

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Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, Alberta CA

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Looking for an incredibly cool place to visit — go to the cliff and interpretive center of Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta CA just north of Waterton National Park.  The Blackfeet have created an amazing place to visit — at one of the oldest cliffs used to drive herds of bison to their death and feed, clothe and supply clans of Blackfeet through long hard winters in the frozen North.  With months of preparation, and careful preservation of knowledge on how bison think and act, Blackfeet clans were able to set bison into a stampede before horses were introduced to North America and thus hunt large numbers of bison that were the main source of food, clothing, tents, utensils, hunting and gathering implements, water pouches and beautiful art for the Blackfeet.  This center is amazing — 5700 years of bone debris strata show long use over the past 10,000 years before the horse changed hunting. I won’t explain the name– go visit!!

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

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Rights are Fundamental

Mayagna in Nicaragua celebrate having their territorial rights

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Pueblo Mayangna commemorates the restitution of their rights in the 14th anniversary of the Awastigni case in the International Human Rights court

Awastigni anniversary

The community of Awastigni in the Amasau territory of the Mayagna Peoples of Nicaragua hosted a celebration of the 14th anniversary of an historic ruling in Latin America by the International Human Rights Court reclaiming their rights to 62,000 hectares that had unjustly been granted to a timber concession of Sol del Caribe S.A. (SOLCARSA) by the Nicaraguan government.  This ruling is historic for the Mayagna and also set a key precedent for other Indigenous Peoples of Central America and South America to gain restitution of land and territories and rights over natural resources.  What a great anniversary!