The Learning Edge: Working in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

In this issue:

The Learning Edge: Working in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

Inter Pares works around the world with Indigenous communities, and the organizations that support them, to challenge the economic and political forces that – left unchecked – destroy social and physical landscapes and prevent people from transforming the chronic social and economic exclusion they face.

A Say in their Future

While recent political shifts in Burma have brought hope for positive change, marginalized ethnic groups like the Chin must be given a say in their future if this change is to be just, sustainable, and bring lasting peace to the country.

Saving Teztan Biny, Redux

Fish Lake – Teztan Biny in the Tsilhqot’in language – along with its watershed is a remarkably productive trout fishery. It is an important economic, spiritual, and cultural area for the Tsilhqot’in, and habitat for at-risk grizzlies. The Prosperity Mine project would have drained Teztan Biny and turned the upper watershed into a toxic tailings pond, causing devastating and irreparable damage to the Tsilhqot’in, the area’s fish stocks and the grizzly.

Food Secure Canada: Weaving a (food) web of solidarity

For Indigenous peoples, food is part of a web of relationships with the natural world that nurtures cultures and communities. As an elder from the Anishinaabe community states in the People’s Food Policy: “The recovery of the people is tied to the recovery of food, since food itself is medicine; not only for the body, but for the soul, for the spiritual connection to history, ancestors, and the land.”

A Time for Wise Decisions

Increasingly, Indigenous peoples have been denouncing the discrimination against them, and calling for deep structural changes. Yet these demands have often fallen on deaf ears. Inter Pares supports Indigenous peoples’ efforts to make their own voices and proposals heard, including improving the internal capacity of their organizations, and helping them link with others facing similar struggles.