Indigenous People protest exploitation, evictions

By Soumya Dutta

As the Copenhagen conference is expecting the arrival of the Big players... the heads of states and their high power ministers - in the next few days, pressures from various quarters are also building up.

As the various business lobbies are pushing for more & more "incentives" (like the controversial & as yet untested CCS - carbon Capture & Storage commercial interests lobbying hard for its inclusion as a CDM entry),

various peoples groups , resistance struggles, indigenous people etc are also strengthening their voices of protest. The many forest peoples alliances have made their opposition to REDD, REDD+ etc very clear, and there were very lively demonstrations .

Today's most intense, heart-rending, protest and appeal to the international community was by the indigenous people from Canada (seen in above picture), who clearly brought out the devastation of their communities health and forcible occupation of their reserves - by the Tar sand oil industry. "WE DON'T WANT YOUR DIRTY OIL" ,
'I HAVE SURVIVED, BUT MANY OF MY RELATIVES ARE LYING BURIED UNDERGROUND - DYING OF INCREASED CANCER & OTHER DISEASES' ,

many such real stories came from the Indigenous peoples reserves - which also houses some of the largest reserves of dirty tar sand oil. The story victimization of the already marginalized, by the insatiable greed of the rich & over consumers - continues, BUT ARE BEING CHALLENGED WITH INCREASING STRENGTH.