COVID-19 Daily News Digest – August 21, 2020
COVID-19 website to track people of colour is launched in Quebec
A new website seeking to get an accurate reading on how people of colour are being affected by COVID-19 in the province of Quebec is taking shape.
The online platform, named Colors of Covid, was launched Wednesday by Montreal entrepreneur Thierry Lindor.
Indigenous Land Defenders Left Wondering Why Twitter Suspended Their Accounts
Now, the fight to protect ancestral land is far from over for Wet’suwet’en, with CGL still pushing ahead with pipeline construction, despite calls from Indigenous communities to halt resource extraction while COVID-19 continues to pose a risk. Social media helps community members disseminate information, even when mainstream media isn’t paying attention, Wickham said.
Guatemala Indigenous families pick through remains of homes
He said the aggressors have been invading the plantation, and Choc Ico suspects they wanted to chase the community away so they could take their impending cardomom harvest for themselves.
He said he fears for his family’s safety and isn’t sure if all the community’s families will come back.
Hearing, seeing, living. How one school is focusing on fluency to revitalize Indigenous languages
“I got a taste of those classes and it just took hold of me. I don’t know, the only way to describe it is I became obsessed,” said the 23-year-old student at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Roberts had participated in dance, potlatch ceremonies and cultural activities growing up in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, but the deep dive into her ancestral language brought laser-sharp focus to her studies and goals. “It was just so important to me that our nation didn’t lose this beautiful language we have,” she said
Daniel Levy promotes University of Alberta’s Indigenous Canada course
Levy said he recently signed up for the course, which has 12 lessons that explore Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. The university’s website says the course is told from an Indigenous perspective and highlights national and local Indigenous-settler relations.
“I thought if I am going to sign up and learn, maybe some other people would want to join me and we could do this as a group,” Levy said in his social media video.
Getting Los Angeles’ Indigenous communities the help they need amid COVID-19
The disasters they face now go beyond just public health and economics, as the lack of communication rears its head again, but about safety protocols..
Many undocumented Indigenous people who worked in several industries also lost their incomes and had limited access to relief efforts, as those funds often rely on documentation.
Martinez explained that CIELO started receiving a lot of calls about people needing resources after restaurants shut down. They applied for a $10,000 grant from the Seventh Generation Fund, and with that money they were able to provide $400 per family.
NT remote Indigenous communities tackle alcohol problem
Remote Indigenous community leaders across the Northern Territory are dismayed to see much of the increased Covid support payments being spent on alcohol.
They say it’s caused dire consequences in their communities, where grog runners are selling illegal alcohol for up to $500 a bottle.
The Peppimenarti community in the Territory’s Daly region is tackling the problem head-on, with local projects including a new BMX bike track
Indigenous self-determination: Between International Law and tragedy.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on indigenous peoples, along with the context of violence and territorial dispossession to their detriment, forces us to think of solutions from the most varied legal and political spheres. On the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, celebrated on August 9, this essay summarizes the way in which international law has addressed self-determination, with an emphasis on the need to strengthen its application to indigenous peoples. This is because of the imperative to preserve the existence of such peoples and their cultures, and the need to mitigate the effects of environmental crises of which the exposure to pathogens displaced from their natural habitat – such as SARS-COVID-2 – is only one manifestation
Brazil bars Doctors Without Borders COVID-19 help to indigenous villages
The Brazilian government has not allowed Médecins Sans Frontières to provide assistance to prevent and detect suspected cases of COVID-19 in seven villages of the Terena indigenous tribe in southern Brazil, the medical NGO said on Thursday. MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, presented a plan to assist the seven communities with about 5,000 inhabitants, adding in a statement that it had been invited to help by tribal leaders.
Indigenous protest over COVID-19 resumes on Brazilian grain highway
SAO PAULO — Indigenous protesters on Thursday blocked a key Brazilian grain highway in the Amazon state of Para, the federal highway police said, resuming a protest that halted trucks carrying corn earlier in the week.
The Kayapó tribe say the federal government has failed to protect them from the coronavirus pandemic that has killed four of their elders, and has not consulted them on a plan to build a railway next to their land.
Back to school feels like ‘a gamble’ for Manitoba First Nations parent
“I feel like it’s a gamble sending the kids back, especially with our [COVID] numbers spiking in the province. But as a parent, I really want them to have that structure and obviously the education. So I’m kind of torn,” she said.
While most schools in Manitoba will begin classes on Sept. 8, Charles Cochrane, executive director of the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre which oversees the MFNSS, said the decision to have in-person classes will lie with each individual First Nation and its leadership.
“We have a remote learning strategy with packages that are developed by our teaching staff for schools that have decided to not open up,” said Cochrane.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/manitoba-first-nations-schools-reopening-1.5694336