Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Great Land Rush – Bertelsmann Future Challenges

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The Great Land Rush – Bertelsmann Future Challenges.

This is a great article talking, largely about land rights and it explores the idea of the global food system and the impact of our population explosion. With the population set to reach 7 billion by the end of 2011 – how do we feed all of these people? How do we provide for 7 billion people when we can’t even feed 100% of our current population? What more needs to be done that is already being done? More land deals? More energy consumption? More mining?!

In finding ways to provide for 7 billion, we also have to find ways to acknowledge the rights of 7 billion. How do we balance the needs of 7 billion with the rights of 7 billion?

As the article asks, “how can we make these land deals more equitable and beneficial to indigenous people and small farmers?” There are some of us who are losing out while others are getting what they need, and sometimes more than what they need.

Occupy Wall Street‘s message reverberates further than it intends to, equitable distribution isn’t just about money and the big banks, equitable distribution is about equality on all levels. Is there a lack of recognition that we are all equal and thus some of us aren’t justified to benefit from what others benefit from?

If this is the case, we have a long way to go before we can start talking about equitable distribution, we have to recognise equality first.

I am, You Are, We Are Australian

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I don’t know how many of you out there in the world are familiar with the above line. But most of the Australians who have lived here will be familiar with this tune.

There is a real emphasis in Australian culture, not to mention an entire line dedicated to this concept in the Australian National Anthem..”For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share…’ of a sense of unity and connection to land, history and each other.

But perhaps this is not the case at all. Aboriginal people continue to have their land rights and their sovereignty denied in Australia. Where is the sense of unity and connection to each other, if not all can enjoy those rights?

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/australia?gclid=CMy3xcuR8qsCFY1S4godyVAipQ

How does nationalism and nation-hood play out in other countries of the world and how do these sentiments affect the indigenous peoples of those lands?

Video: The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes

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This is an amazing video. It really shows how far we haven’t come to address the issue of environmental damage and degradation. From observation, this was given in the early 90s. How far have we really come to address the issue of environmental damage that we are causing, as humans to this planet?

We really do need to start taking drastic actions and measures to positively affect the wellbeing of our only source of sustenance and life! We need to include all the voices at the table to come to appropriate solutions. I invite everyone’s response to this video as it has been possibly TEN YEARS since this girl spoke in front of a UN assembly of country delegates – do we need another teenager to tell the adults off once more?

Rights and Resources Initiative – Dialogue on Forests, Governance and Climate Change

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“A core principle of international law that peoples have sovereignty over their natural resources and they cannot be deprived of their means of subsistence…to achieve sustainable development, governments and the United Nations must ensure the active participation of major groups in the decision making, women, groups, NGOs and indigenous peoples…”

Quote by Marcus Colchester in video, see below.

Sharing the Management Table: Indigenous expertise and climate change in Australia – Bertelsmann Future Challenges

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Sharing the Management Table: Indigenous expertise and climate change in Australia – Bertelsmann Future Challenges

As it becomes clear that western culture is ill-equipped to adequately respond to climate change, demand for alternative forms of climate data is growing. In Australia the knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples is attracting particular attention for its capacity to provide rich information about local level ecology and cross-generational ecological change. Indeed the diverse cosmological perspectives offered by ATSI groups, in which materialism and linearity are not part, evidence alternative and sustainable ways of being and draw striking parallels with new fields of science as well as various social and environmental movements. Moreover ATSI communities are increasingly ‘demanding a place at the management table’ and offering dynamic alternatives to the dilemmas we face.

For more of this article, please click on the link above…

By Erin Riddell from Future Challenges

Welcome to First Voices…

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This site is dedicated to creating a better and greater understanding and connection between indigenous and non indigenous peoples all over the world. However, this distinction has the effect of, as politics so comfortably does, bifurcating this complex, multi-layered and shared world. We are not indigenous and non indigenous, nor Western or non-Western, nor are we first world and third world, we are people in ONE world.

The intention behind this site is to create a space where people of an indigenous background living in a post-colonial or ‘settler’ state are able to share their experiences with those interested and an opportunity to know about what you might have not been able to hear because it gets drowned out by the noise of global financial crises, market stability and the ‘Wars on Terror’.

Beginning after an Amnesty International Human Rights Conference held in Brisbane, Australia in 2011, a group of interested and inspired people decided to start this blog where indigenous rights and knowledge could be shared and experienced, in the online sphere. There are voices that aren’t being heard because they are being actively ignored.

It is open to ALL who wish to contribute and especially for the First Voices of our world.