Interview with Victoria Tauli-Corpus

Dec. 11, 2010: Bing Gong interviews Victoria Tauli-Corpus, former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, who played a key role for 25 years working internationally to pass the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2007. Vickie is a board member of the International Forum on Globalization and gives her assessment of the final outcome of COP16 in Cancun from an Indigenous Peoples perspective, and a message to the American people. For more info: Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education
            

Interview with Julian and Nanta

Dec. 5, 2010 - Two Maasai women from Kenya, Nanta Mpaayei and Julian Naisula, who are in Cancun to work for the rights of indigenous peoples, are interviewed by Victor Menotti. They describe the impact of climate change on their pastoralist communities.  Both women are with the Mainyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization.

Interview with Marcelo Carreon

Dec. 6, 2010 - Marcelo Carreon is interviewed by Victor Menotti, with IFG intern, Karen Abella, translating.  Carreon is leading a mobilization to Cancun of over 3,000 members of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Campesino Organizations-National Coordination (UNORCA-CN) in Mexico.  Drawing most heavily from the Mayan region that surrounds Cancun, indigenous, forest, and farming communities are coming to COP 16 to pressure governments to agree to ambitious cuts in the dangerous greenhouse gases. They are also demanding that all decisions respect indigenous peoples' and forest communities' rights.  Carreon explains how a decade-long drought that are believed to be increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.   The impacts are drying up the traditional corn crops threatening their livelihoods and survival.

Interview with Joseph Ole Simel

Dec. 4, 2010 - Joseph Ole Simel, Executive Director of Mainyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization (MPIDO), an indigenous MaasaI leader from Kenya, is interviewed by Victor Menotti. Joseph gives an insider's view of the UNFCCC negotiations on REDD, Reducing emission from Deforestation and Degradation, that indigenous peoples are concerned that their rights and tradition knowledge are included.

Interview with Sarah James

Interview with Sarah James

Dec. 10, 2010: Bing Gong interviews Sarah James of the Alaska Indigenous Gwich'in Nation in the Arctic Circle. Sarah is an activist fighting oil companies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, talks about the impacts of climate change on her community.

Interview with Ofelia Rivas

Dec. 10, 2010: Indigenous Perspectives - Bing Gong interviews Ofelia Rivas of the O'odham Nation on the border of Southwesterrn Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico. Ofelia talks about a proposed project of the Department of Homeland Security / Border Patrol to build a permanent wall across the Arizona/Mexico border - a wall that will bisect the traditional O'odham lands and severely limit the rights of ancestral passage.

Interview with Joshua Cooper

Dec. 10, 2010: Bing Gong interviews Joshua Cooper of the US Human Rights Center. Josh trains hundreds of indigenous activists on the fine points of the human rights framework empowering them to advocate for themselves in local, regional, national, and international arenas. He teaches political science and journalist at the University of Hawaii.

Interview with Francesco Martone - Part 1 of 2

Bing Gong interviews Francesco Martone, policy advisor for the Forest Peoples Programme UK that supports indigenous peoples rights.


From the Forest Peoples Programme website:
Forests cover 12% of the planet and nearly all are inhabited. Many of the peoples, who live in and have customary rights to their forests, have developed ways of life and traditional knowledge that are attuned to their forest environments. Yet, forest policies commonly treat forests as empty lands controlled by the state and available for ‘development’ – colonisation, logging, plantations, dams, mines, oil wells, gas pipelines and agribusiness. These encroachments often force forest peoples out of their forest homes. Many conservation schemes to establish wilderness reserves also deny forest peoples’ rights. Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) advocates an alternative vision of how forests should be managed and controlled, based on respect for the rights of the peoples who know them best. We work with forest peoples in South America, Africa, and Asia, to help them secure their rights, build up their own organisations and negotiate with governments and companies as to how economic development and conservation are best achieved on their lands.

Interview with Francesco Martone - Part 2 of 2

Bing Gong interviews Francesco Martone, policy advisor for the Forest Peoples Programme UK that supports indigenous peoples rights.

Interview with Mrinal Kanti Tripura

Mrinal Kanti Tripura I was born in 1965 in a remote village of Khagrachari Hill District, Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region, the southeastern part of Bangladesh. We are nine (9) brothers and sisters. I belong to Tripura (Borok) Indigenous People, one of the eleven indigenous groups commonly known as Jumma inhabiting in CHT region since time immemorial. I had my primary education in my village school and later went to high school at district headquarters. I studied in a college in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and finally I graduated in B. Sc. Engineering (Mechanical) from Bangladesh Institute of Technology (BIT). After that I joined the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), the political party of indigenous Jumma People, which was established in 1972 and struggling for the establishment of Indigenous Peoples rights to self-determination, in 1994 and still involved in the party activities as the Assistant Secretary of Information and Publicity Department.  Since 1999, I have been involved in activities for promoting and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples at international level. At present I am more involved in activities of Training and Education on Indigenous Peoples rights and Human rights in general.

Interview with Leitanthem Umakanta Meitei

Leitanthem Umakanta Meitei is a lawyer and human rights defender in Manipur, a state in NE India that borders Burma (Myanmar). Umakanta is Secretary General of the Threatened Indigenous Peoples Society (TIPS) and the elected spokesperson of Apunba Lup, a coalition of 34 civil society organizations representing the 1.7 million indigenous Meitei people in Manipur.

Umakanta says, “We, the Meitei people of Manipur, are not asking for special treatment. We are merely asking for the same treatment that all other citizens in India have the right to enjoy. We want [martial law] to be repealed and the daily threat of armed conflict in our region be renounced. We want an equal voice in the government of India.”

Interview with Christiana Saito Louwa

Bing Gong interviews Christiana Saito Louwa of the Indigenous Elmolo people of Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya.  She is Director of El Molo Eco-Tourism, Rights and Development Forum.  

Interview with Brian Keane, Land is Life - Part 1 of 2

Bing Gong interviews Brian Keane, Director of Land is Life.

Founded in May 1992 at the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples on Territories, Environment and Development, Land Is Life is an international network of indigenous communities and organizations.

Since its inception, Land Is Life has strengthened indigenous participation in international policy making processes, promoted dialogue between indigenous leaders and international development institutions, worked within the United Nations system to promote and protect indigenous peoples' rights and assisted communities to secure rights at the local and national levels. 

Land Is Life collaborates on projects and campaigns to advance the strategic goals of over twenty indigenous peoples in sixteen countries. Land Is Life believes that keeping land in the hands of indigenous peoples is the best way to confront climate change, protect biological diversity and guarantee sustainable development.

Interview with Brian Keane, Land is Life - Part 2 of 2

Bing Gong interviews Brian Keane, Director of Land is Life.

Interview with Jason Pan - Part 1 of 4

Bing Gong interviews Jason Pan of the Indigenous Pingpu Pazeh  people of Taiwan, Director of Taiwan Indigenous Knowledge Action Network.  Jason is an advocate of his people to be recognized by the Taiwan government to keep alive the Pazeh culture and language.

Interview with Jason Pan - Part 2 of 4

Bing Gong interviews Jason Pan of the Indigenous Pingpu Pazeh  people of Taiwan, Director of Taiwan Indigenous Knowledge Action Network.  Jason is an advocate of his people to be recognized by the Taiwan government to keep alive the Pazeh culture and language.

Interview with Jason Pan - Part 3 of 4

Bing Gong interviews Jason Pan of the Indigenous Pingpu Pazeh  people of Taiwan, Director of Taiwan Indigenous Knowledge Action Network.  Jason is an advocate of his people to be recognized by the Taiwan government to keep alive the Pazeh culture and language.

Interview with Jason Pan - Part 4 of 4

Bing Gong interviews Jason Pan of the Indigenous Pingpu Pazeh  people of Taiwan, Director of Taiwan Indigenous Knowledge Action Network.  Jason is an advocate of his people to be recognized by the Taiwan government to keep alive the Pazeh culture and language.

Link to audio file here of Post Carbon radio show on 12/13/10: 

What Happened in Cancun?  Report back on the UN Climate Summit in Cancun  Nov. 29 - Dec. 10, 2010

Bing Gong attended the UN Climate Summit in Cancun from November 29 to December 10, 2010.  In this program, we interviewed Victor Menotti, Executive Director of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), who was active inside the negotiations and on the outside mobilizing civil society.

Joining the conversation in the studio was Mark Dowie, West Marin journalist and author of Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.

Victor Menotti, Executive Director

International Forum on Globalization

Mark Dowie, West Marin journalist and author

Conservation Refugees: