Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
Across the Americas
University of Arizona, Center for Latin American Studies Human Rights Initiative
Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, Rogers College of Law
8:30am – 6pm
Arizona Historical Society
949 E. 2nd Street
The objective of this one day conference is to bring to the fore a range of issues and concerns with regard to natural resource extraction on indigenous lands across the Americas. Drawing on a human rights framework the conference participants examine some of the multiple, complex responses by indigenous peoples to the social, juridical and environmental dimensions of extraction. Recent examples from Chile to Mesoamerica to the United States, Canada and the Russian Far North illustrate the timeliness of such an examination.
The conference intends to facilitate a meaningful exchange of ideas and practices among social science and legal scholars, activists and between the university and the community at large. We broaden our scope geographically to open a discussion about the commonalities and contradictions that ordinary indigenous people face on their homelands. The Center for Latin American Studies will interview and film with each participant at the conference about their work. These five minute video clips will be made available on their UA LAS website.
Provisional Program
8:00 coffee
8:30 Yaqui Pascua opening ceremony( not confirmed)
8:45 Dean JP Jones, College of Social and Behavioral Science – Welcome
9:00 Professor Linda Green, Director, Center for Latin American Studies, Associate Professor of Anthropology – opening remarks, moderator
KeyNote
9:15 Dr. Salvador Aquino, anthropologist, CIESAS, Pacifico Sur, Cuidad de Oaxaca, Mexico “Si a la vida, no a la mineria: Large scale mining exploitation and the challenges confronting indigenous peoples in Mexico”
10:15 coffee break
Panel
10:30 Professor Benadict Colombi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American Indian Studies, UA, “Kamchatka: Mapping Indigenous Cartographies and Extractive Industries”
11:00 Professor Dana Powell, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Appalachian State University “Extractive Industries have productive effects: Energy activism on the Dine Nation”
11:30 Mr. Manuel Prieto, PhD student, School of Geography and Development, UA “The Chilean Water Reforms: Mining and Dispossession of the Atacameno People”
12:00 Mr. Cory Schott, PhD candidate, Dept. of History, UA “Colonial Histories of Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries in the Americas
12:15 Mr. Sebastian Quinac, “Reporting from the “Encouentro del Pueblos de MesoAmerica “, Sierra de Oaxaca, January 2013
12:30 Discussion
12:45-1:30 lunch hosted by LAS and IPLPP
1:30 Professor Robert A.Williams, Jr., E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies, Faculty Co-Chair, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program,UA- “Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights to Ancestral Lands in Historical and Contemporary Perspective:Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group v. Canada”
2:30 Professor James Hopkins, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, UA, “Rio Yaqui Land and Water Rights and the Agro-Chem Industrial Complex”
3:00 Ms. Seanna Howard, Staff Attorney, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program—“Maya Community of Southern Belize and Western Shoshone: Indigenous Peoples and the Inter-American Human Rights System”
3:30 “Arizona Tribes, Extractive Industries and Indigenous Human Rights”- (speaker TBA)
4:00
Mr. Austin Nunez, Chairman, San Xavier District, Tohono O’odham Nation—Mining, Water and O’odham lands (not confirmed)
Mr. Vernon Masayesva, Founder and Director of The Black Mesa Trust and former Tribal Chairman of The Hopi Nation—coal mining, water and Hopi lands (not confirmed)
4:30 Discussion
5:30-6:15 Closing Ceremony and Performance – Institute for Latin American Studies Leaders, cultural exchange from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru.
Co- sponsors: American Indian Studies, Institute for the Environment, Confluence Center, Department of History, School of Anthropology, School of Geography and Development