Bianca Jagger was born in the largest rainforest in Central America, in Nicaragua. Her relationship to the natural world was shaped by her upbringing, as was her commitment to the environment.
She carried that commitment to the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP) World Summit on Indigenous Philanthropy September 25-27 in New York City. The large event came on the heels of the People’s Climate March, and the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), and attracted many of the same Indigenous leaders.
Related: Indigenous Philanthropy Forms a Brooklyn Footnote to WCIP and Climate Week
“Indigenous Peoples’ wisdom forged my understanding of Mother Earth and our responsibilities towards it,” Ms. Jagger said in her keynote. “Future generations may not be so blessed. If we do not curb our reckless exploitation of the earth’s natural resources our children and our children’s children may never know this beauty, may never walk in the rainforest.”
Keynote speaker Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Igorot), the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, shared her thoughts on indigenous philanthropy, climate change, and the just concluded WCIP.
“This is the time for us to think more deeply about doing philanthropy,” Ms. Tauli-Corpuz, better known to her audience as Vicky, said.
Courtesy IFIP
Opening prayer and ceremony of the Women’s Mobilization Hub by Guadalupe Martinez, in Nahuatl language. Red, yellow, white and black candles, representing the four cardinal points, were lit by an Indigenous woman each from a different continent. “Today’s day is not a coincidence, a random chance, nothing is. Everything is happening because there is a pact between the spirits of the Universe so that we all meet here, today.”
“Long-term relationships of funders with IPs will enable them to be better advocates,” Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said. “The problems are grave and fostering relationships is key.”
Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said IPs have the last resources the world needs, and IPs have the traditional knowledge and practices. “That is were our strength lies, so we should really focus a lot of our efforts to really strengthening our efforts against states, and some corporations,” she said. “I think we will be able to get some gains. We need businesses run by IPs that respect collective rights.”
On climate change: “IPs did not contribute to climate change, but we are asked to solve the crisis,” Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said. “Controlling climate change requires the respect and protection of IPs’ rights. First secure IPs’ fundamental rights before you ask us to do carbon sequestration (forest carbon storage).”
On the need to ensure free, prior, and informed consent projects that are brought before IPs, “I just want to say this document (that resulted from the WCIP) is going to be a very major tool for us to use,” Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said. Nor will the document undermine UNDRIP. “We’ll have to work hard for implementation,” she said.
Related: What Did Indigenous Peoples Get Out of the World Conference?
“I know that there are many of you who will provide stories I need to make many good reports. So that’s my mandate as a rapporteur.” But she said some people, particularly from North America, decided to boycott the WCIP.
Biodiversity took several venues. “The International Union for Conservation of Nature reports that 80 percent of the remaining biodiversity are on indigenous territories and women tend to be the major caretakers and stewards of the land,” Ms. Arce said.
“We have brought about the destruction of the forests and caused a tragic decline in biodiversity, with extinction rates rising exponentially as habitats disappear,” Ms. Jagger said.
Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) of the Cultural Conservancy is a berry person. She comes from a long line of buffalo hunters. Speaking about agrobiodiversity in a panel on Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Agriculture: A Global Strategy is a natural fit for Ms. Nelson.
Agricultural biodiversity, or agrobiodiversity is a vital sub-set of biodiversity. Agrobiodiversity is the result of natural selection processes, and the careful selection and inventive developments of farmers, herders and fishers over millennia. Many people’s food and livelihood security depend on the sustained management of various biological resources that are important for food and agriculture.
“We need [agrobiodiversity] for the ongoing management and selection by IPs for their adaptation,” Ms. Nelson said. “We need that adaptative evolutionary process. We need some mechanism to attract new funding to this field.”
In the same panel, Alejandro Argumendo of the Asociación ANDES in Peru spoke about the thriving biodiversity of their Potato Park, where humans are only one community in a community of the sacred: animals, plants, rocks, mountains, lakes, rivers, pastures, food crops, wildlife, spirits, that contribute to the well-being of the whole community.
“The management of our landscapes is a communication of food, the landscape, and the sacred,” Mr. Argumendo said. “We created a local economy. Some of the motivations caused people to bring together with their land, this relationship between the wild and the sacred, to stop land devaluation, you keep the balance because you keep an objective, of the wild, of the food, of the sacred.”
They established Potato Park in 2000, Mr. Argumendo said, with six communities of 6,000 people. The region is home to eight known native and cultivated species, and 2,300 varieties of the 235 species, and over 4,000 varieties found in the world. Also found in the region are 23 of over 200 wild species found in the world.
Courtesy IIED
Potato Park potato varieties.
Another focus were Indigenous women, the reasons abundantly clear: Indigenous women are on the frontline of most of the pressing issues of our time, said IFIP’s executive director Evelyn Arce.
“They see how climate change is threatening the food for their children,” Arce said. “They are organizing to keep their land for their communities – often standing at the very front of protests facing the guns of the military. And they are building the strength of their daughters to stand up against the corporations that are trying to grab the power from all us.”
Women like Tarcila Rivera Zea, a Quecha leader who left her village to learn the language of the dominant culture, cleaned houses before becoming the executive director of Chia Paq, an organization that defends the rights of all Peruvian IPs.
Dayamani Barla, who lead a courageous people’s resistance in India to stop the world’s largest steel company from evicting 50,000 IPs from their homes.
Or Mirna Cunningham from Nicaragua, a Miskita feminist who became the Minister of Health, then the first Governor of the indigenous autonomous region on the coast; she also served as the Secretary General of the Indigenous Inter-American Institute.
And Josephinae Ekiru, who mobilized warriors to work for peace in Kenya and was elected as the first woman Chair of a 93,000-acre conservancy operated by IPs. Directly funding Indigenous women is the best investment funders can make for the future of the Earth.
Bianca Jagger founded her Human Rights Foundation (BJHRF) in 2005 to be a force for change. For over three decades she has been a voice for the most vulnerable members of society, campaigning for human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice and environmental protection throughout the world.
She has campaigned on behalf of the Miskitos and Mayangna in Nicaragua, the Yanomami, the Guarani, and the Surui Paiter in Brazil, the Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa, and Huaorani tribes in Ecuador, the Kondh in Orissa, India, among others, in their struggle to protect their ancestral lands and way of life from the encroachment of mining, drilling, dams, logging and development.
“Indigenous Peoples do not seek to exploit their environment, but live in harmony with it,” Ms. Jagger said in her closing keynote. “They are the natural custodians of the land they live in, eat, work and pray on. We in the developed world should take note of their wisdom.”