Victoria Tauli-Corpuzm, "Statement on the Announcement of the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

RED Declaration (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation) FYI, REDD means (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), "Protecting the World's Forests Needs More Than Just Money."”

Stephen M. Sachs, "Developing a Legitimate Carbon Trading Program To Appropriately Abate Global Warming."”

Jack D. Forbes, "Jamestown Celebration: Part of Racial Myth-Making."”

Patricia Vickers, "In the Absence of Love."”

 

 

 

 

STATEMENT ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WORLD BANK

FOREST CARBON PARTNERSHIP FACILITY

Victoria Tauli-Corpuzm, Chair, UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Grand Hyatt Hotel, Bali, Indonesia, 11 December 2007

Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present some of the views and concerns of indigenous peoples regarding the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

My name is Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and I am an indigenous person, a Kankanaey-Igorot, from the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Presently I am the Chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The Forum is the highest body in the UN which deals with indigenous peoples' rights and development. The Forum's main mandate is to provide advice to States, the UN System and other intergovernmental bodies, including the World Bank, on issues of indigenous peoples.

Those of us who live and depend on forests, are pleased that there is growing international consensus that policies to address climate change must include measures to combat deforestation and forest degradation in tropical and sub-tropical forests. We also welcome the Stern Review which urges that actions to prevent deforestation on a large-scale must be taken as soon as possible. We are very much aware that the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is designed to respond to this and is setting the stage for large-scale incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). The tropical and sub-tropical forests, the subject of the Facility, is the home of around 160 million indigenous persons who are the custodians and managers of forest biodiversity. Yet we remain in very vulnerable situations because most States still do not recognize our rights to these forests and resources found, therein.

While Facility can be a good thing we are very apprehensive on how this will work because of our negative historical and present experiences with similar initiatives. My task, as the Chair of the Permanent Forum, therefore is to communicate these concerns to you. I must inform you that International Human Rights Law and the recently adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples uphold our rights to own, control and manage our lands, territories and resources, which includes sub-tropical and tropical forests. Most of the countries aspiring for benefits from REDD voted for the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and these include, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia.

With all due respect to the Ministers present, the reality is that most governments or corporations have not played positive roles in preserving these remaining tropical and sub-tropical forests. We, the indigenous peoples, are the ones who sacrificed life and limb to save these because these are vital for our survival as distinct peoples and cultures. The indigenous peoples protected the Amazon from ranchers in Brazil, from loggers in Congo Basin countries and from commercial oil palm plantations and the forest industry in Indonesia. It is, therefore, a moral and legal imperative that indigenous peoples be fully involved in designing, implementing and evaluating initiatives related to REDD.

The success of efforts to lower carbon emissions from reduced or avoided deforestation hinge primarily on whether indigenous peoples will throw their full support behind proposed mechanisms, such as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. It also rests on how coherent institutions, like the World Bank, are in terms of what activities are being financed. While you are establishing this Facility, you are also financing fossil fuel extraction which will negate the carbon emissions saved from avoiding deforestation.

The following are some conditions which will determine whether indigenous peoples will support this or not.

First, the Facility and other actors such as States, corporations and NGOs should unequivocally state that they recognize and respect indigenous peoples rights as contained in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and that this will be the starting framework of any discussion or negotiations related to the access and use of resources of the Facility. Indigenous peoples' free, prior and informed consent should be obtained before any initiative on REDD is pursued in their territories and forests. I imagine that donors and the private sector would not like to put their resources in high risk projects which will not genuinely involve indigenous peoples and other forest-dwelling people.

Secondly, their capacities should be enhanced to effectively address the drivers of deforestation as identified by the UNFF.

Thirdly, if there is an acceptance of the Facility, indigenous peoples must have a representation in the governance structure at the same level as governments, donors and the private sector.

Fourthly, consultations should be undertaken with indigenous peoples who are directly affected and pertinent documents should be translated in major languages understood by them and these should be disseminated before the consultations take place. As the Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, I am committed to help facilitate such consultations and ensure that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples remains integral in the concept and implementation of mechanisms related to reduced emissions from deforestation.

Contact: Vicky@tebtebba.org, mobile: Bali(+62805611936: +639175317811)

 

 

 

RED Declaration (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation) FYI, REDD means (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation)

Posted by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) December 12, 2008

Governments meeting in Bali, Indonesia for the 13th Conference of the Parties/3rd Meeting of the Parties to the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 3-14 December 2007, need to recognise that this may be our last opportunity to stop runaway climate change and that with 18-20% of annual carbon emissions being caused by deforestation, protecting our forests is a key part of this.

This problem is made even more important because forests are a key part of the earth's carbon and hydrological cycles. Without forests rainfall will fail in many regions. Yet forests themselves are being impacted by climate change and may already be losing their ability to regulate the planet's climate. Further increases in temperature threaten to increase heat stress and drought, causing forests, particularly tropical forests, to become net sources of emissions, rather than stores. Furthermore, deforestation can also trigger irreversible ecosystem die-back.

Governments and intergovernmental organisations, including the World Bank, have responded by submitting a number of proposals concerning `Reducing Emissions from Deforestation' (RED) and, in the case of the Bank, a proposal to launch a Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. However, these proposals, especially those that argue that forests should be included in carbon markets as offsets, fall far short of what is needed to combat climate change swiftly and effectively.

Carbon trading and offsetting are being used as a smoke-screen to ward off legislation and delay the urgent action needed to cut emissions and develop alternative low-carbon solutions. At the same time they encourage businesses, governments and people to continue with or even increase unnecessary polluting activities - reducing life to a commodity to be bought and sold.

Despite all these concerns, because carbon finance mechanisms hold the prospect of spectacular commercial profit in what may become one of the largest commodity markets in the world, they are at the top of many governmental and commercial agendas here in Bali.

Yet the UNFCCC's project-and trading-based emissions reductions schemes to date have been totally ineffective in terms of their ability to significantly reduce emissions. The UNFCCC's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was launched in Kyoto in December 1997, was intended to allow countries with emissions reductions targets under the Kyoto Protocol to invest in projects that lead to developing countries being able to reduce their emissions more cheaply.

The CDM has not worked. Projects have tended to lead to excessive profits for business, whilst generating investment for many projects that would have happened anyway. Several years of carbon trading have not stopped increasing rates of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, studies show they may be resulting in an overall increase in emissions. Many projects are not `clean' nor are they leading to poverty alleviation or sustainable development, as intended.

The World Bank has an equally appalling track record in relation to carbon funding, not least because it continues to fund oil, gas and mining projects, despite recommendations from its own review which suggested most of these projects be rapidly phased out; and as a broker it has a vested interest in promoting carbon trading. Its planned Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) - intended to channel carbon finance from donors to recipient countries - could also have serious negative social and environmental impacts.

Carbon financing is proving intensely inequitable. Forests are the home and source of livelihoods for over 1.6 billion people, including Indigenous peoples, and forest-dependent communities. Wealthy companies and countries are able to buy the right to continue to pollute, whilst poor communities often find themselves locked into unfavourable, long-term commercial contracts. Furthermore, forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples and local communities have already found that it is they who may have to bear the real cost of climate mitigation projects based on carbon finance, while garnering none of the benefits. Some carbon finance projects are subsidizing industrial tree plantations at the expense of communities, ecosystems and food production.

The proposed RED policies could trigger further displacement, conflict and violence, as forests themselves increase in value they are declared `off limits' to communities that live in them or depend on them for their livelihoods. Women and Indigenous Peoples are the least likely to profit from the destruction of forests and therefore also the least likely to receive compensation. Carbon finance mechanisms result in forests being transferred or sold off to large companies who aim to acquire profitable `carbon credits' at some point in the future.

Carbon markets, like other commodities, are also proving notoriously volatile. Far from creating a predictable commercial environment and financial flows, the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme Phase I, for example, has had "very questionable effects" on "the extent to which emissions are reduced, and the extent to which it provides a stable and effective carbon price" (UK Environmental Audit Committee, 28 February 2007). The protection of forests and our climate is essential to all our futures and should not be subject to the vagaries of the market.

Recommendations - We are calling for governments to:

§ Address the direct and underlying `drivers' of deforestation and the destruction of biodiversity in other ecosystems which are also critical to climate stability by reducing demand for agricultural and forest products and energy; removing trade and investment liberalisation rules that fuel deforestation; and stopping corruption.

§ Ensure that all forest protection programs are based upon and uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples (as laid down in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), women and local communities, by prohibiting any actions that seek to exclude Indigenous peoples and forest dependent communities from 'conservation' areas. Outstanding land and tenure questions and the free and prior informed consent of affected communities should be addressed as a prerequisite, before the implementation of any such programs.

§ Give the highest priority to halting the development, production and trade of agrofuels, and suspend all targets and other incentives, including subsidies, carbon trading and public and private finance related to the development and production of agrofuels.

§ Keep forests out of carbon finance mechanisms, which are unpredictable, inequitable and discourage the reduction of emissions at source. This includes keeping forests out of the Clean Development Mechanism and all carbon trading initiatives; and rejecting the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).

§ Ensure that developing countries are assisted in their efforts to protect their forests with well targeted, predictable and sufficient financial and other support, in the form of an international fund that rewards the complete rather than partial cessation of deforestation; supports policies that promote community-based forest management and reforestation, natural regeneration and ecosystem restoration; and finances a global forest fire fighting fund and expertise, to assist countries unable to prevent or stop out-of-control forest fires.

§ Redirect the very substantial amounts of public funds, tax exemptions and other forms of subsidies currently provided to the fossil fuel and agrofuels industries, into avoided deforestation assistance funds, the effective promotion of public transport and the development of solar, wind, geothermal, wave and energy efficiency technologies, (Government spending on energy subsidies currently totals US$250 billion per year.)

§ Ensure that funds are not used to compensate logging and plantation companies and others involved in large-scale deforestation.

§ Strengthen weak forest conservation policies and institutions, encouraging bans or moratoria on industrial logging and forest conversion, and addressing corruption and lack of enforcement.

§ Implement a moratorium on all public financing and subsidies of oil, coal and gas exploration, and rapidly phase in subsidies for clean energy alternatives with just transition programmes to phase out existing fossil fuel activities, whilst protecting ecosystems, communities and food production from agrofuels.

Signed by: Amigos de la Tierra/Friends of the Earth Spain; Asamblea Patagonica contra el Saquco y la Contaminacion, Patagonia, Argentina; Biofuelwatch; Carbon Trade Watch; Centro de Defeso dos Direitos Humanos, Brazil; COECOCEIBA/Friends of the Earth Costa Rica; Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, Colombia; Down to Earth; Ecologistas en Acción, Spain; FERN; Focus on the Global South; Foundation for Ecological Security, India; Freunde der Naturvoelker e.V./ Friends of Peoples close to Nature, Germany; Friends of the Earth Argentina; Friends of the Earth International Global Forest Coalition; Global Justice Ecology Project, US; Grupo Reflexion Rural, Argentina; Indigenous Environmental Network, US/Canada; Madre Tierra/ Friends of the Earth Honduras; MONLAR, Movement for Land and Agriculture Reform, Sri Lanka; National Farmers Assembly, Sri Lanka; Nature Alert; NOAH/ Friends of the Earth Denmark; O le Siosiomaga Society, Samoa; Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis "Christen & Ökologie", Germany; Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition

Quaker Concern for Animals, UK; Red de Alternativas a la Impunidad y la Globalización; Regional Advisory Information and Network (RAINS), Ghana; Rettet den Regenwald, Germany; Salva la Selva, Ecuador; Sobrevivencia/ Friends of the Earth Paraguay; Sociedad Ecologica Regional (A Ho Valle y Comarca Andina, Argentina; Sustainable Energy and Economic Network; Swiss Working Group on Colombia (Grupo de Trabajo Suiza Colombia); Tamil Nadu Environment Council (TNEC), India; Terre des hommes-Arbeitsgruppe Schwäbisch Gmünd / Germany; Timberwatch Coalition, South Africa; Transnational Institute; Via Campesina; WALHI/ Friends of the Earth Indonesia; Watch Indonesia! Germany; World Rainforest Movement; Xàrxa de l'Observatori del Deute en la Globalització, Barcelona, Spanish State.

For more information contact Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Executive Director, Indigenous Environmental Network, PO Box 485, Bemidji, MN 56619 USA, ien@igc.org, www.ienearth.org.

 

 

 

 

DEVELOPING A LEGITIMATE CARBON TRADING PROGRAM TO APPROPRIATELY ABATE GLOBAL WARMING

Stephen M. Sachs

Carbon Trading, as an approach to global warming, is a controversial issue. It involves setting permissible levels of carbon emissions and requiring those who wish to emit carbon to have permits to do so, which can be traded - or sold - so that an entity wishing to emit carbon into the atmosphere can purchase permits to do so from other carbon emitters, or obtain them, as offsets, in return for acting to take carbon dioxide out of the air, such as by planting trees or other plants that transform CO₂ into oxygen and carbon, or protecting existing forests or other carbon reducing plants, or by supporting other means for taking carbon out of the air.

In my view, there are two aspects to of Carbon Trading and offsetting that need to be considered in making policy about them. Supporters argue that this can be an effective method for reducing carbon pollution. By providing incentives for compliance, which in cases of offsetting, may have additional positive benefits, such as protecting rain forests (including providing incentives for protecting them - which in some cases may be necessary for insuring their preservation). Objectors point out, that carbon trading and offsetting do not directly reduce carbon emissions, as they allow those who purchase carbon credits to continue their pollution. Moreover, they correctly point out that some of the organizations, such as the World Bank, who run and favor such programs, have very bad records of promoting the increase of carbon pollution, and have fostered development in forests which both reduces their carbon absorbing capacity and often is destructive of the rights and lives of Indigenous people.¹

Both views need to be taken into account in deciding what to do about carbon trading and offsetting. As Osborne and Gaebler have pointed out,² there are limits to how much regulation can be achieved by simply ordering compliance. Providing incentives, such as in pollution credit trading, can increase compliance, while reducing the costs of regulation, as has been illustrated with controlling pollution a in a number of cases, particularly in limiting acid rain causing pollution in U.S. power plants in the 1970s.³ Moreover, offsetting can produce desirable results, in itself, such as preserving rainforests and encouraging development of appropriate carbon absorbing technologies. Similarly, carbon trading can result in reduction of C0₂ in the atmosphere if it operates so that for you to continue operating you carbon polluting power plant at its current level, you have to pay me to close my coal powered plant, and replace it with a wind farm. The key is to operate such programs, legitimately and appropriately, by people who are trustworthy (and many would not consider the World Bank to be so), so that carbon pollution is actually sufficiently reduced, with the achievement of other desired benefits at a sufficient level, while keeping negative side effects (any action has at least some negative and some positive effects) within acceptable parameters, an indeed, enhancing, rather than destroying the rights and well being if Indigenous peoples.

An appropriate carbon trading and offsetting program, as part of a broader carbon emissions reduction policy, would require a number of elements, including the following: 1) The regulating/administering body or bodies must function to assure they are trustworthy, have adequate information - and ability to collect information - (both for determining regulation and enforcement/application of policy) to operate effectively, and to have the power (with a fair adjudication-appeals process) to enforce/carry out policy.

2) The levels of total carbon pollution permitted - and the amount of carbon pollution credits given each and any entity - would have to be appropriate. Since time will be required to make the carbon reduction without undo cost, the allowable levels will need to be reduced over time. In calculating the appropriate levels, it must be realized that the need for reduction is so high that appropriate reductions cannot be achieved without significant cost - and there must be a willingness to pay them, as investments, to avoid later catastrophic costs.

3) It must be insured that the trading - offsetting is real, and only continues in the program so long as the actual trade or offset actually functions in practice. For example, if a tribe and nation are paid to preserve or expand a forest, the offset remains in effect only so long as the forest continues to exist (or expand) at the transaction level. If that forest is reduced below that level (or fails to grow at the transaction rate), for whatever reason, the offset credit must simultaneously be reduced at the same rate (and similarly the measuring involved must be accurate, with no double counting - for example a new tree grown as an offset can only count once, and not used in another offset as well). This should create a pressure for leaving forests undeveloped, and help stop mining, lumbering, farming and other activities within them, which would reduce their carbon absorbing capacity.

4) There must be fairness in who receives the benefits of carbon trading and offsetting. For example, if a forest in a carbon trade is in the territory of an Indigenous people, they should receive the benefit of the offset, which if it were in monetary terms, would have a secondary benefit for the country their territory is in. If in the Indigenous people concerned’s view, the nation’s action is needed to assist in protecting or expanding the forest - or if some incentive is needed to insure the national (or sub-national) government’s appropriate action - a reasonable and small portion of the benefit received might go to the state.

5) As in any trading arrangement, nothing should be done without the consent of the parties involved. For example, if the trade or offset involves Indigenous territory, that Indigenous people must be a full partner in the negotiation. Moreover, where the forest concerned is in the land of an Indigenous people, the arrangements for management and control of the forest must rest with those people. If they need assistance, they can contract for it, if necessary using a portion of the payment they receive for the offset.

6) As in any other program - especially one involving the environment - since everything is connected (but each location is different), a carbon trading and offsetting program must be set up and operated on the basis of properly and carefully considering the full range of relations that are involved, and taking into account the full range of impacts of the functioning of the program, making appropriate adjustments for new developments and new information obtained, over time - especially as not all conditions and impacts can be foreseen). One set of those relationships involves the people concerned. Where Indigenous people are involved, the arrangements of such programs must enhance their rights and welfare, and not diminish them.

7) Carbon trading and offsetting can only be one part of a much larger greenhouse gas reduction effort. To begin with, there simply are not enough available offsets to meet the need. Much more has to be done, and rapidly accomplished, to meet the great need for lowering the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, while minimizing negative side effects. Public regulation, and public and private investment are needed in reducing emissions with existing technology (e.g. higher efficiency standards, substituting green technology for polluting technology, expanding efficient public transportation, and encouraging less energy using and polluting life styles and actions), and in developing and applying new appropriate technologies.

It is important to note that, in its three years of operation, the European Union carbon trading system has experienced major difficulties because it has not met all of these standards, resulting in a rise in the levels of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, instead of a reduction.⁴ Reports indicate that this occurred because two many carbon trading permits were allocated (violating the second requirement for a valid system) at the beginning, and then further increased, as a result of national governments - who had the responsibility for issuing permits within their jurisdiction - succumbing to lobbying by industries (violating the first requirement). EU regulators are now attempting to overhaul the dysfunctional aspects of the market, reducing the number of permits and charging more for polluting. The EU is considering moving permit issuing from national governments to the EU, which it is hoped will be less susceptible to lobbying pressure from industry. Energy intensive industries are resisting the changes, as are some of the poorer EU nations who are concerned that reducing carbon emissions will undercut their economic development.

The EU carbon trading program is also under attack from environmentalists who object to EU - and other - atmospheric carbon emitters from using large numbers of permits from the UN offsetting program, which sends funds to developing countries, supposedly to reduce their airborne carbon output. Serious questions have been raised about the effectiveness of that program. Clearly, the UN offsetting system needs to be fixed, or shut down.

All perspectives in the debate over carbon trading and offsetting have important contributions to make in developing an appropriate trading-offset program that can play a positive role in a comprehensive climate change policy, if all the concerns and factors are properly taken into account, both at the beginning and as the policy unfolds. This includes wealthier nations and regions assisting poorer ones in fighting climate change and other environmental degradation. For Indigenous forest people, a proper carbon trading and offsetting program can increase their rights, assist in preventing imposed development in their territory, and enhance their welfare. It all depends how the program is established and operated, Clearly no trading and/or offsetting program should be allowed to operate that does not function properly, in terms of adequately reducing carbon emissions, avoiding creating other environmental degradation, fairly distributing costs and benefits, and respecting the rights and welfare of the people involved, including Native people.

FOOTNOTES

1. RED Declaration (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation) FYI, REDD means (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), "Protecting the World's Forests Needs More Than Just Money,” Indigenous Policy, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Spring 2008). See also the statements of Indigenous and Environmental groups on the proposed World Bank Carbon program in the same issue of IPJ in Ongoing Activities: International Activities.”

2. David Osbourne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1992), Ch. 10.

3. For early examples see, Citizens Power, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1992, published by Citizens Action Coalition, 3951 N. Meridian St., Suite 300 Indianapolis, IN 46208, which contains several articles on this topic. Osborne and Gaebler Reinventing Government, pp. 299-395 touches on this issue in environmental regulation and discusses some other incentive based approaches to environmental regulation.

4. James Kanter, "The Trouble with Markets for Carbon,” The New York Times, June 20, 2008, pp. C1 and C5. From 2005 to 2006, factories engaged in carbon trading in the EU increased their carbon emissions by .04%, and from 2006 t0 2007 by .07%. In Brittan, the energy intensive iron and steel sector over the three years increased CO₂ pollution by more then 10%, while the cement industry raised carbon output by over 50%.

 

 

 

 

JAMESTOWN CELEBRATION: A PART OF RACIAL MYTH-MAKING

Jack D. Forbes*

The recent celebration of the Jamestown colony in Attan-Akamik (Virginia) is an example of the distortions of North American history found in the popular culture of the USA and Canada, and also in our schools' educational curricula. The latter, at heart, is designed to firmly plant in every child's mind the priority and dominance of the English heritage in North American development.

Jamestown was a "corporate" attempt to seize and invade an American territory for the purpose of profit-taking and imperial expansion. It was a completely illegal, immoral, and selfish undertaking by British government officials and entrepreneurs who had already been raiding the American coasts. In these early raids many Americans (Indians) had been seized and carried back to Europe, including several kidnapped along the Rappahannock River of Attan-Akamik.

But Jamestown was not the first European base in North America, and it was not even the first European foothold in the future United States. The Spaniards, with the use of persons of Native American and African ancestry as laborers and guides, had already established St. Augustine, Florida (1565) and San Juan, New Mexico (taken over in 1598 from the Tewa people).

Why is it that the media and state governments promoted Jamestown and other English settlements (Plymouth Colony will be coming up in 2020!), but neglect far older activities of the Spaniards with their African and Native American workers and collaborators? I would suggest that it is because the Anglo-Americans, who have controlled the USA, want to honor and trace their own ethnic heritage. Other heritages can be ignored because they might alter the essentially genealogical and racial approach to US history, an approach which results in the ignoring of thousands of years of American history.

The celebration of Jamestown must be understood within the context of what is not being celebrated. North America and the United States have a number of remarkable historical sites that possess immense significance in the evolution of life in our land. For example, we possess such sites as Cahokia, a major American city and ceremonial area that endured for hundreds of years near St. Louis. Cahokia itself was a city of perhaps 50,000 inhabitants. It was also associated with a huge complex of ceremonial sites along both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. This complex was probably related to the evolution of many ancient American cultures that still endure among the Hochunk (Winnebago), Osage, Oto, Iowa, and other Siouan-speaking native nations. Can it be that white society cannot celebrate true American history which is part of our ancient past but which did not involve recent European triumphs?

One can mention many other immensely important sites found throughout the country, but I want to concentrate on only one, Chicora, because it involves Africans, Native Americans, and Spaniards. To me Chicora is much more interesting than Jamestown because it involves all three of the races which have long been part of United States history. First, some background: in the early 1500s Spanish slave-raiders were engaged in the profitable task of replacing the Americans of Haiti and Cuba, who were dying off rapidly because of extreme abuse as captive labor. The Spaniards especially were attracted to the islands of the Lucayos, now known as the Bahamas, because the Americans there were numerous, peaceful, and relatively easy to capture because of having few natural defenses. Slave raids soon depleted the population (although I believe that some Lucayos were able to successfully flee to the coast of Chicora, now known as South Carolina).

During the early 1500s many Africans came to the Caribbean with the Spanish invaders. Many rebelled and joined the surviving Americans in resistance to enslavement. Africans, mixed persons, and Americans thereafter were drafted for virtually every Spanish attempt to invade North America.

In the 1520s Spaniards under Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon attempted to establish an outpost in Chicora, a region thought to be near the mouth of the Pedee River of South Carolina. The fascinating thing about this precursor to Jamestown is that the African captives were able to rebel in about 1528, no doubt in cooperation with American captives or servants. What we are told is that the Spaniards decided to abandon the colony, while some of the Africans, at least, probably joined the local Americans.

Thus these African rebels became the first non-Native permanent settlers in North America! Now is that not a significant happening? But where is this story being told? Not in the U.S. history books, and not in the popular literature. Even Black Americans usually do not tell this story because, perhaps, they have been propagandized into believing that the first African-Americans arrived only in 1619 as captives purchased by white Virginians from Dutch vessels, thus giving the Jamestown whites priority and ignoring the Blacks and mixed persons involved in St. Augustine, Florida, from 1565.

But what about Chicora? The Africans seem to have remained in the Carolina/ Georgia region, intermarrying with Americans. We think this likely because when the terrorist De Soto led his raid into Florida and the Southeast in the 1540s, one of the prominent American female leaders in the region of the Savannah River had a Black male consort.

Thus Chicora seems to mark the beginning of the intermixture of Americans and Africans, as well as the first permanent settlement of non-Americans in what ultimately becomes the United States of America.

*Jack Forbes is of Powhatan-Renape ancestry and wrote his first article about Powhatan history for The Masterkey in 1955. He edited the Powhatan newspapers Tsen-Akamak and Attan-Akamik for several years. His recent book The American Discovery of Europe contains references to the native people of the Bahamas and Chicora. He is author of the column, "Native Intelligence," carried in a number of media, and can be reached at: Native American Studies Department, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis California, 95616, fax: 530-752-7097; phone: 530-752-3626, jdforbes@ucdavis.edu, http://nas.ucdavis.edu/nasforbes.htm.

ndn = natives defending nations

 

 

 

IN THE ABSENCE OF LOVE

Patricia Vickers, February 4, 2008, pjvickers@mac.com

I went to the suicide summit in December in response to the suicides in the Hazelton area.  It was a very long day with Gitxsan, RCMP, Hospital, and community service providers hosting the meeting. Gitanmaax Hall was full of concerned people.  

Unfortunately, the outcome was the same. Community members and service providers said what the young people needed was more recreation buildings and programs, more and improved recreation facilities. More human beings have been seeking more happiness and freedom through "having" for a very long time.

The youth responded by saying they wanted the obsessive bingo to stop and cultural teachings that help them to know their ancestral history. What the youth said they wanted was elders and cultural teachers to spend time with them. Their voice was ignored.

Transforming the atrocities of our bare branched history takes intentional action.  Residential and federal day school with a history of terror against children and socialization to sub-human existence is a reality. The roots have branched out to impact generations of human beings.  Our youth are telling us that Love has been absent for too long.  It is time for change.

Learning to love requires disciplined action. Daily disciplined action. Being present in the moment. Awareness and acceptance.  Patience and kindness.  Gentleness and more gentleness.    

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