Intercultural Vision Radio Program

(English Translation by Morgan King; original text by Limber Gomez)
The radio program "Intercultural Vision" is an informative program and is a political, social, cultural and economic analysis, that Limber Gomez started in 2006, but because of the lack of economic resources and sponsors it cannot continue. In the seventh month running we began with a new sponsorship from the National Intercultural University of the Amazon (UNIA), but the sponsorship was only for one month and now it is gone. It is sad that we had such a short time, the indigenous population identifies with Intercultural Vision because they say that it is the voice of the indigenous people.
Intercultural Vision is concerned with political, social, economic and cultural issues, and they have denounced to the regional authorities that they have listened but that the population asks for a real voice and that Intercultural Vision continue.

If any Village Earth supporters are interested in helping keep this Intercultural Vision program alive and running, please contact kristina@villageearth.org

Por Limber Gomez:
EL PROGRMA RADIAL "VISION INTERCULTURAL" ES UN PROGRAMA INFORMATIVO Y DE ANALISIS POLITICO, SOCIAL, CULTURAL Y ECONOMICO, QUE INICIO EN EL AÑO 2006, PERO POR CUESTIONES DE FALTA DE RECURSOS ECONOMICOS Y LA FALTA DE AUSIPICIADORES NO PUEDE TENER CONTINUIDAD. DESDEPUS DE SIETE MESES INICIO NUVAMENTE PERO CON EL AUSPICIO DE LA UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL INTERCULTURAL DE LA AMAZONIA - UNIA, PERO EL AUSPICIO HA SIDO DE TAN SOLO UN MES Y AHORA NO ESTA SALIENDO AL AIRE. PERO APESAR SUS CORTOS TIEMPOS DE SALIDA, OCUPA EN EL PRIMER LUGAR DEL REITIN Y LA POBLACION INDIGENA SE IDENTIFICA CON VISION INTERCULTURAL PORQUE DICEN QUE ES LA VOZ DEL PUEBLO INDIGENA.

VISION INTERCULTURAL VIENE CON TEMAS POLITICOS Y SOCIALES, ASI MISMO ECONOMICOS Y CULTURALES, Y SUS DENUNCIAS A LAS AUTORIDADES REGIONALES HAN SIDO ESCUCHADAS, POR ESO LA POBLACION PIDE A VIVA VOZ QUE VISION INTERCULTURAL CONTINUE.

Amazon Anti-Oil Campaign

Thank you to all who supported this important campaign!

National and international allies staged an important protest outside the Houston Petroleum Club, while the vice president of AIDESEP (the Inter-ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Amazon), Robert Guimaraes, took the opportunity to speak to potential investors and let them know the risks of investing in oil development in the Amazon.

Unfortunately, two of the three Shipibo delegates were not able to make the trip because their visas were denied by the US government. In many respects, this symbolizes the obstacles that indigenous people face in participating in global dialogue that are crucial in exercising the right to determine their own "development" path.

The good news is that Robert Guimaraes was able to deliver a powerful message to potential investors and to Perupetro, Peru's hydrocarbon licensing agency. Quoting Robert Guimaraes, "We request that you exclude those blocks that overlap communal indigenous territories. More that 80% of the population in Corrientes river, mostly children, have cadmium and lead in their blood. Just as for you there are things that cannot be negotiated, for us some things, like indigenous land, cannot be negotiated." The cadmium and lead that Robert refers to is the result of over 30 years of Oxy Petroleum operations in Northern Perú, where the Achuar people have been severely affected.

The Peruvian government's latest efforts to place the Amazon region in the hands of oil developers puts the entire Amazon at risk, especially indigenous people in voluntary isolation, and clearly violates international rights benchmarks such as Free, Prior and Informed Consent, contained in the recently approved UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (of which Peru is a signatory). It is precisely the Peruvian government's rather shameful attempt to manipulate, distort, and even suppress indigenous opposition to oil development that makes it so important to support indigenous leaders efforts to make their voices heard at international venues such as Perúpetro's Houston road-show. Otherwise, potential investors not only get a distorted view of indigenous opinion, but local indigenous people are excluded the global decision-making process that directly affect their lives.

Given that two of the delegates weren't able to come to Houston, we would like to continue with our efforts to support these types of crucial interventions. Perupetro is planning another event in August, again designed to divvy up the Amazon for even more oil development. With your continued support, we would like to help these delegates make their presence at this event as well. And hopefully the impact will be even greater.

Letter from AIDESEP to Peruvian Government Officials

Lima, 08 de Febrero de 2008.

Señores:
Alan García Pérez
Presidente Constitucional

Juan Valdivia Romero
Ministro de Energía y Minas

Daniel Saba de Andrea
Presidente
PERUPETRO S.A.

Presente.-

Las comunidades indígenas de la amazonia peruana a través de nuestras organizaciones representativas, en múltiples oportunidades hemos manifestado nuestra firme posición de rechazar el ingreso de las compañías petroleras en nuestros territorios comunales, por que no queremos contaminar nuestros recursos naturales tales como bosques, ríos, quebradas, biodiversidad; en ella se desarrolla nuestras vidas, es nuestro espacio cultural y espiritual y de las futuras generaciones, queremos conservarla frente a los graves consecuencias tales como el calentamiento global y sus efectos los cambios climáticos.

Recientemente, el congreso ha aprobado la Ley Nº 28736, Según el artículo 4° deben respetar la vida y salud de los pueblos en situación de aislamiento voluntario por encontrarse en situación de alta vulnerabilidad, motivo por el cual se prohíben actividades de aprovechamiento de recursos, como son las actividades hidrocarburíferas, nada esto se está respetando en estos procesos de licitaciones, mal informando a los inversionistas, negando nuestras existencias.
Los pueblos indígenas consideramos que la actividad petrolera no es la única fuente de ingresos para el país, queremos conservar nuestros recursos, comos lo hemos conservado con sabiduría, hoy vemos como se destruyen fácilmente.

Basta ya Señor Alan García, usted no puede calificar a los ciudadanos que los eligieron de “Perros del Hortelano” Somos pueblos con derechos, dignos de ser respetados y escuchados.



Robert Guimaraes Vasquez
Vicepresiodente

Geographic Technology as a Tool for Indigenous Empowerment

There is only one month left before the monumental Indigenous Tribunal in the Ucayali region of the Amazon!

As part of the Tribunal, Village Earth was asked to facilitate community mapping workshops for Shipibo Communities but we need your support to get the necessary resources to indigenous leaders.

We've bundled these resources into a low-cost and easy to use "Mapping Kit" that we would like to give to community representatives participating in our free mapping workshop.

You can help by purchasing one of these kits for a Shipibo community today!

Support Village Earth and the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon with your sponsorship of a Mapping Kit!
(Contributions of any amount are welcome, greatly appreciated, and 100% tax-deductible.)

Each Mapping Kit will include a hand-held GPS unit and Map Book of their territory to be given to community leaders. Village Earth will then provide the instruction in how to use this technology to their advantage.

Mapping Kits will enable communities to:

• Identify their boundaries to determine if outside interests are illegally taking their resources or colonizing their lands.

• Identify illegal logging using the satellite imagery available in the map books.

• Map existing resources to establish a baseline for future comparisons of resource depletion/restoration

• Better manage and plan for the use of their limited resources.

Village Earth has been using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to create maps of indigenous territory combined with satellite images of the region. Some Shipibo leaders have already used these maps to dispute government and colonist land claims and build their case in support of indigenous land rights in the region.

Your contribution not only provides the mapping resources, but will help further the greater collective vision for the alternative development of the region based on indigenous knowledge and values. By supporting the Shipibo's efforts at mobilizing the region and these community-based mapping endeavors, together we can:

• Organize indigenous communities in the Ucayali region to increase their economic and political clout to determine their own futures
• Teach GPS technology to indigenous leaders so they no longer have to rely on expensive and biased government GPS technicians
• Support Shipibo efforts to reclaim and restore indigenous land stewardship practices.

Protecting Shipibo Territory

"During the past 40 years, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest has been cut down - more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization began."*

Yet, the Shipibo have sustainably managed their forests for many generations. However, an aggressive program of Amazonian "development" has been promoted during the past 50 years, which has fragmented Shipibo territory by the incursion of non-indigenous colonists, government "development" projects, and foreign corporations exploiting the land by logging, hydrocarbon extraction, and industrial-scale agriculture. However, protecting indigenous land rights has come to the forefront in their struggles for self-determination as the Peruvian government continues to open up the farthest reaches of the Amazon basin for oil exploration and other extractive enterprises.

Below: This map, originally created by the Instituto del Bien Comun and given to a Village Earth representative by AIDESEP, shows indigenous communities, protected areas, and oil concessions in Peru.

Protection and defense of indigenous territory was decided as the most important focus area out of their plan for self-determination of the region's indigenous inhabitants from the last Village Earth-Shipibo regional workshop.

To aid the Shipibo in the protection and defense of their territory, Village Earth created map books of the region using GIS layers of the native titled communities (as provided by the Sistema de Informacion sobre Comunidades Nativas de la Amazonia Peruana [SICNA] of the Instituto del Bien Comun [IBC]) and colonist settlements overlaid onto satellite images. Satellite images are an interesting mapping medium because they show vegetation cover, as well as land degradation based on the light reflected from different vegetation or soil types.

Below: A Village Earth program coordinator conducting a mapping workshop in one Shipibo community in Masisea district.

As well, Village Earth held a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) workshop and gave hand held GPS units to Shipibo leaders so they can continue to use the technology to protect their lands.

After the Village Earth mapping workshops, two Shipibo communities have begun the process of increasing their legally-titled land in order to protect more forest from outside exploitation, as well as remove illegally settled non-indigenous colonists using their new map books and GPS points. Shipibo jefes (chiefs) even asked a Village Earth representative to attend meetings with them at the local AIDESEP and Defensoria del Pueblo offices in Pucallpa - local NGOs that work to protect and defend indigenous rights in Peru. We, accompanied by reps from Defensoria del Pueblo, then attended meetings with the local Ministry of Agriculture in Pucallpa, the branch of government that deals with indigenous land titling.

As well, these Village Earth initiatives have increased intercommunity cooperation and participants in the workshops now have a greater consciousness of their geography.

Empowering indigenous peoples by providing the training and materials to use geographic technology, in turn, allows for self-determination of their way of life - since their land and resources are inextricably linked with their culture, economy, and physical health.

Issues of land and territory will be a hot topic throughout the Indigenous Tribunal being held in June of this year. This will be a seminal event in mobilizing and organizing their communities to better protect their land and resources. The outcome of this Indigenous Tribunal will be to form a grassroots, indigenous organization in the region to direct their own path to self-determination which includes forming an indigenous working group on environmental conservation.

Thousands of hectares of highly biodiverse forest and the accompanying watershed have the potential to be protected the indigenous inhabitants taking a stand against the market forces of globalization.

*Wallace, Scott. "Last of the Amazon" in National Geographic. January 2007.

Shipibo Regional Organizational Workshop

Above: Enjoying a relaxing evening after the workshop.

Village Earth was asked by some prominent Shipibo leaders a few months back to facilitate another regional workshop this time with more of an emphasis on intercommunity cooperation. So the Village Earth team returned for a 7-day workshop in early January. Twenty-four Shipibo leaders participated representing six communities in four different districts throughout the Ucayali. The workshop began with a review of past Village Earth-Shipibo collaborations and a viewing of the Village Earth/Shipibo documentary film, "The Children of the Anaconda". Then we began a district-wide mapping session so community members would be begin to think beyond their own borders. This brought up an array of environmental issues as participants discussed sharing forest and river resources with neighboring communities, but also the destruction being wrought by logging and oil companies in the region.

Below: Shipibo children participated by drawing their own map of their community and then presented it to the group. For community initiatives to be truly sustainable, children, too, must always be involved in the process.

Village Earth would like to facilitate collaboration between our project partners, and both the Lakota and Shipibo have expressed much interest in working together in the future as they face many of the same issues being the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. We decided to do a viewing of the Village Earth-produced documentary film "Rezonomics" which highlights the economic situation on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Although they inhabit vastly different environments, the Shipibo found many similarities in their struggles and learned from the Lakota new ways to think about many of their issues.

This was followed by a discussion on the roles and activities of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Shipibo country. This led to a very interesting discussion about NGOs and top-down funding models which many times inhibits NGOs from being responsive to community needs and truly participatory community-based development. The Shipibo have dealt with NGO after NGO letting them down with failed promises. However, this is not purely the fault of the NGO. The Shipibo, too, recognize that they need to be proactive and organized when soliciting the assistance of NGOs. Only when both parties are in consensus and work through the Shipibo model of community organization is there the potential to have successful collaborations.

This led us to the discussion of 'So, what has been successful?' What has worked before and how did they organize to make it happen? This is an important part of the Village Earth process because we want to encourage communities to build off of past successes instead of reinventing the wheel each time. Many community projects had been successful before - from communal construction projects to fish farms. Then we questioned, "How did the communities organize themselves in order to make these projects happen?"

Above: One influential Shipibo leader, Limber Gomez, draws out the model of intra and inter-community governance that the Shipibo people use to organize themselves. This highlighted the disconnect between the way NGOs were entering the communities and beginning their work and the way in which Shipibo communities build consensus and participation for projects.

Shipibo communities already have their own consensus-building processes in which the community authorities hold assemblies where everybody is welcomed and encouraged to attend. From this point, committees are democratically-elected to take on different project aspects which then report back to the authorities and the community during the assemblies. They have their own treasurers and methods for financial accountability. Although this seems like such common sense, it is surprising how many outsiders come in thinking they have the answers or that the Shipibo don't know how to manage their own finances or run their own projects. Yet, the Shipibo are actually running their community affairs with incredible organizational capacity which is only disrupted when outsiders try to impose top-down funding and project management.

We then began the strategic planning session with a five-year vision emphasizing regional unity. This was really a question from the heart - what do they really feel for their community and their people, as opposed to just thinking about what material goods they would like to have. This really forced them to look deep inside themselves to come up with their comprehensive vision collectively. Their vision consisted of four main emphasis areas: Community Development, Formation of Shipibo Professionals (business leaders, doctors, engineers, lawyers), Cultural Revival, and the creation of Micro-enterprises.

This led to the question, "What obstacles are holding you back from achieving your vision?" The participants really focused on obstacles they could change themselves instead of focusing on larger global systemic issues that might seem more daunting to overcome. We then moved onto Strategic Directions where participants looked at what they can do in the next year to overcome their obstacles and begin to move toward their vision. The Strategic Directions really got the participants involved and thinking about what they can actually do to achieve their own vision for the future.

Below: All participants were involved in putting their ideas onto the board throughout the visioning process. These young men were rearranging the group's ideas into coherent groupings for the Strategic Directions phase of the workshop.

Finally, the workshop reached its pinnacle in the Action Planning phase. Participants mapped out their plans for the next three months - practical actions that they can actually take to move toward their vision and be active agents in their own "development" process. Eight aspects were deemed the most important areas for action. They are:

• First and foremost -- protect and defend Shipibo territory
  


• Broader regional unity
  


• Cultural revival
  


• University scholarships for their children
  


• Small business development
  


• An Indigenous Bank to facilitate economic development
  


• Promoting indigenous foods for better nutrition
  


• Shipibo-run radio stations broadcasting throughout the region
  

A committee was formed for each of these eight areas, tasks were assigned, timelines and budgets were drawn up, and finally they were presented back to the group.

Above: Leaders of the group planning actions to protect indigenous territory present their plan back to the group for approval.

These eight areas will be further discussed in forthcoming Blog postings. A Transitory Committee was democratically-elected amongst the participants (with at least one representative of each community present in the workshop) to hold an Indigenous Tribunal in June. This June event will be the follow-up to this workshop and it is Village Earth's great honor that the Shipibo have asked Village Earth to return and co-facilitate this historic event. The Tribunal will be a gathering of Indigenous leaders from all 120 Shipibo communities, as well as other regional indigenous groups, to discuss their own alternative plan for "A Better Ucayali".

All in all, this Regional Organizational Workshop was an incredibly empowering event and a great learning experience for all involved. The Shipibo have expressed to the Village Earth team how happy and grateful they are for our support for their self-determination. Yet, when we asked "Who came up with this plan?", the participants realized that it was completely decided and directed by them with Village Earth only providing the framework from which to begin to question and think about some of these important issues.

Village Earth is honored to work with these amazing individuals that participated in this workshop and the Shipibo people as a whole. And we feel privileged to be invited to co-facilitate their landmark Indigenous Tribunal in June 2007.

Above: Village Earth facilitators Kristina Pearson and David Bartecchi dance with the group as the Shipibo band plays in the background. The community organized a farewell party on the last evening of the workshop to celebrate the achievements of the group.

Below: A special thank you to Mayer Kirkpatrick, Mateo Arevalo, and Freddy Arevalo for their hardwork and dedication to this project.




Above: Thank you to Ralf (Village Earth's media specialist), and Chloe (Village Earth's Poet Laureate) for their hardwork and help throughout the workshop.

Below: A very special thank you to Flora - an amazing volunteer who gave so much of her time to help with translations and facilitating the workshop.

And most of all - THANK YOU to all of our donors - without you none of this would have been possible!