April 19, 2024. The Peoples' Forum hosted indigenous activists and lawyers to discuss how to confront the model that privatizes profits and socializes costs. “And indigenous peoples are at the forefront of that struggle,” the organizers summarized.
Indigenous activist Joan Carling warned that criminalization and environmental destruction is not just happening with fossil fuels, but with transition minerals. She warned that at the heart of the problem is the lack of full recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples, and the criminalization of the exercise and practice of our traditional ways of life. “Then, when we speak out against these destructive projects, we are faced with trumped-up charges,” he noted.
Some of the challenges lie in the fact that corporations and investors do not have strong regulatory frameworks, they can destroy and pollute with impunity. In addition, in many communities they are not aware of their rights or the tools to defend them.
Indigenous lawyer Natali Segovia recounted the experience of the Water Protector Legal Collective, which was born at Standing Rock in 2016. More than 800 criminal cases against water defenders came out of that struggle. He emphasized that nowadays, social networks make it possible to know what is happening on the ground.
He denounced that since the 1970s we have seen the growth of the term ecoterrorism, promoted by corporations, in which they put everything under the sun. Now there is also strategic litigation against public participation. “This is the situation that we live in the United States and that we have to face as environmental defenders and as defense lawyers. We need more safeguards in the law to protect the native nations that predate these colonial states,” Segovia concluded.
Aaron Marr Page spoke about the attack on environmental defenders as a corporate strategy. Corporations can bring the same case before dozens of courts, pay witnesses to bring charges against defenders, demonize them, put them on trial, and drag out litigation.
Steven Donzinger, who was part of the team that litigated against Chevron in Ecuador and was criminally prosecuted for it, believes he was viciously attacked as a way to kill the idea that such litigation existed. And for considering him a traitor to his class and privilege.
