Deusdedit Ruhangariyo
Special to ICT
Around the world: Indigenous groups in Brazil fight a railway project, Ukrainians rediscover their language, Indigenous women play key roles in Canada and Australia, and 3-D printing could help preserve an important tradition.
BRAZIL: Indigenous groups fight soybean railway
Indigenous groups in Brazil are demanding a voice in a soybean rail project that could cause deforestation in hundreds of thousands of acres of land, Mongabay.com reported on March 7.
The Ferrogrão railway project – designed to reduce transportation costs between the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Pará, where soybeans are a key export – would cross several Indigenous territories in the Xingu River Basin, Mongabay.com reported.
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A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais concluded the railway line could cause loss of more than 568,000 acres of rainforest to deforestation in the state of Mato Grosso, of which more than half would be in the Xingu Indigenous Park.
The project was suspended in 2021 by Brazil’s Supreme Court, but the current government has prioritized the project. The court’s plenary session in May will determine the project’s future.
The resumption of work on the controversial EF-170 railway project in the Brazilian Amazon has prompted Indigenous leaders to demand a proper consultation process. They have also vowed to fight for reparations for the project’s potential impact on their territories.
Concerns have been raised about the project’s environmental and social impacts, particularly in the territories of Indigenous groups such as the Kayapó, Munduruku, and Panará.
UKRAINE: War stirs use of Ukrainian language
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, about one-third of the people living in the capital city of Kyiv have switched to speaking Ukrainian, with only about 13 percent still speaking Russian, according to a recent survey reported by The Guardian on March 6.
Until the invasion, Kyiv had largely been a Russian-speaking city, with only about 46 percent of the people there saying they had been speaking Ukrainian before the invasion, The Guardian reported.
Ukrainians are generally bilingual, with the Ukrainian language traditionally spoken in the west and Russian spoken more prevalently in the south and east.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who grew up in a Russophone city, now addresses his citizens and foreign parliaments in Ukrainian or English. He only speaks Russian when urging Russian soldiers to surrender or addressing Russian citizens about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions.
Mykhailo Revenko, a native Russian speaker living in Kyiv, is among those making the switch. He told The Guardian he decided to improve his Ukrainian after listening to explosions from the Russian invasion in March 2022.
He said he had studied Ukrainian in school and knew the language, but needed to expand his vocabulary. So he began reading, he told The Guardian.
His partner has now also switched to Ukrainian, as have many colleagues at work. But he still speaks Russian to his mother, who great up in Troitske, a village near the Russian border.
The decline of Russian among native users in Ukraine is at odds with one of Putin’s key reasons he gave for invading the country – to “save” its Russian speakers. Instead, the Russian Army has killed thousands of Russian-speaking civilians since February 2022.
CANADA: First Nations woman is first in forensic pathology
Dr. Kona Williams — the only First Nations forensic pathologist in Canada — considers it an honor to learn about someone in death, CBC News reported on March 9.
As medical director of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Health Sciences North, a regional hospital in Sudbury serving northeastern Ontario, Williams now handles numerous cases from First Nations communities.
“You actually get to see this person in death in a way that nobody else can,” Williams, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Cree, told CBC News.
Her journey to forensic pathology was not without its challenges, however. Forensic pathology is a field that focuses on investigating the cause and manner of death of individuals who die suddenly, unexpectedly, or violently.
Williams said she faced racism, stereotypes, and discrimination throughout her 14 years of post-secondary education and while working in different regions of Ontario.
“Medicine, there’s still a lot of systemic racism,” she told CBC News. “I’ve gotten horrible things like, ‘I hope you end up missing and murdered.’”
She is considered a trailblazer, however, by many.
“Indigenous women in medicine bring a quality and gift that changes lives,” said Deanna Jones-Keeshig, director of Indigenous Health at the Sudbury health center. “Her connection to spirit, heart, mind as well as ways of being and doing has allowed her to share her knowledge to uplift and empower Indigenous communities.”
NEW ZEALAND: Artist uses 3-D shells for stringing
A Pakana man in New Zealand — worried that climate change would alter the traditional art of shell-stringing in Tasmania — is now using 3-D printing to create artificial shells that can replace the ones now threatened by rising ocean temperatures, Te Ao Maori News reported on March 5.
With permission and a set of Pakana sea shells gifted to him by the Indigenous community, Gall employed 3-D scanning, drawing, and printing technology to recreate the shells.
His research had shown that rising ocean temperatures could make the water more acidic, causing the shells used for stringing to become thinner and weaker. The kelp, on which the shells grow, could also be impacted, Te Ao Maori News reported.
He acknowledged that the 3-D shells are not yet as precise in detail as he would like them to be.
“We’re about 85 percent,” he said according to Te Ao Maori News. “The process is there now, but we’re not quite there with the accuracy and the color.”
The art of shell-stringing is a sacred and significant women’s practice that fosters a connection among them. Gall’s daughter, Alana Gall, met with senior shell stringers before Gall proceeded with the project.
“It was imperative that my dad obtained permission to do this work from senior shell stringers. This is a very important aspect of cultural protocols,” Alana Gall said, according to Te Ao Maori News.
“Going out on Country and collecting the shells, and then cleaning the shells and then stringing them together… it’s that relationship building, that bonding,.” she said.
AUSTRALIA: Indigenous women play key roles at BHP mine
Indigenous women are playing key roles at The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited’s South Flank iron ore mine, National Indigenous Television reported on March 8.
BHP’s central Pilbara mine boasts a 40 percent female workforce, with a management team that has 60 percent female representation, National Indigenous Television reported.
Miammi Leadbitter, a Wagyl Kaip woman, is at the forefront of leadership at the mine, serving as the site improvement manager and as a mentor to other Indigenous workers.
“For me, as an Indigenous woman in a leadership role, I know that working at South Flank I am treated with respect and measured on what I do and who I am, not how I look,” she said, according National Indigenous Times.
“Having a higher proportion of women at site in roles at all levels makes for a far more respectful and more productive workplace.”
BHP established a target in 2016 to attain a gender-balanced workforce by 2025. At that time, women accounted for nearly 18 percent of BHP’s global workforce. Today, it has risen to more than 33 percent.
Additionally, the company has made efforts to narrow the gender pay gap and minimize the disparity between male and female voluntary turnover, officials said.
My final thoughts
My final thoughts are in Ukraine where Vladimir Putin’s war has prompted Ukrainians to go back to their language. Because of the war, the majority of them have taken their language more seriously and are working to improve their native language proficiency. Today, most Indigenous people speak a second language more than they speak their native language. And you will hear young people shamelessly confessing that they don’t know their native language well. When a people lose their mother tongue, they lose their identity.
We don’t have to be invaded by Russia to go back to speaking and learning our mother languages. Get back to your roots. Learn or improve your comprehension of your mother tongue. It defines who you are.
Global Indigenous is a weekly news roundup published every Wednesday by ICT (formerly Indian Country Today) with some of the key stories about Indigenous peoples around the world.
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