Feds Drop Charges Against Winnemem

Month after month in early 2012, the Winnemem Wintu organized protests, online petitions and letter-writing campaigns demanding the closure of a small stretch of the McCloud River in northern California. They were requesting the river closure from the U.S. Forest Service so the tribe could hold a coming-of-age ceremony for the young woman who will…

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IUCN Approves Sacred Natural Sites Motion

On September 12, delegates attending the World Conservation Congress in Jeju, South Korea, voted overwhelmingly to approve a motion aimed at strengthening protection for sacred places. The congress is convened every four years by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and represents governments, NGOs and environmentalists focusing on global issues. Ten thousand people…

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Standing On Sacred Ground Screenings a Success

A standing-room only crowd of indigenous leaders, NGOs and U.N. representatives previewed Sacred Land Film Project’s forthcoming film series Standing on Sacred Ground at a side event of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York on May 9. It was the first of two successful May screenings of the four-part series, which…

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CA Tribe Fights Wind Farm on Sacred Land

As bulldozers began clearing the site of a new wind-energy facility in the desert of western Imperial County, California — ripping up forests of ocotillo cacti, damaging sensitive wildlife habitat and threatening ancestral graves of the Quechan Tribe — tribal members and their allies stood outside the La Jolla corporate offices of Pattern Energy on…

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Action Alert: Help Protect Winnemem Ceremony

Each summer, the Winnemem Wintu, whose home is the McCloud River watershed in northern California, hold a four-day coming-of-age ceremony on the river for the tribe’s young women. But this sacred ritual has, in recent years, been threatened by the presence of outsiders drinking alcohol and shouting threats and racial slurs as they travel on…

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PNG Court Rules in Favor of Nickel Mine

A court in Papua New Guinea this week cleared the way for the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. to proceed with a $1.5 billion nickel-mining project, which had been blocked by injunctions over the environmental impact of the company’s plan to dispose of mine tailings in the ocean. The long-awaited decision denied a petition for…

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July 21 Event: Winona LaDuke and Stewart Brand

Two thought leaders with clashing viewpoints on the future of environmental stewardship will be going head to head on the topic of whether technologies like nuclear power can be used to foster sustainability, at 7 p.m. on July 21 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, as part of  Earth Island Presents. Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe)…

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