THE MYSTIC LAKE DECLARATION
From the Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop II:
Indigenous
Perspectives and Solutions
At Mystic Lake on the Homelands of the Shakopee
Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prior Lake, Minnesota
November 21, 2009
Dr. Henrietta Mann, Southern Cheyenne |
As community members, youth and elders, spiritual and traditional leaders, Native organizations and supporters of our Indigenous Nations, we have gathered on November 18-21, 2009 at Mystic Lake in the traditional homelands of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Oyate. This Second Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Workshop builds upon the Albuquerque Declaration and work done at the 1998 Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We choose to work together to fulfill our sacred duties, listening to the teachings of our elders and the voices of our youth, to act wisely to carry out our responsibilities to enhance the health and respect the sacredness of Mother Earth, and to demand Climate Justice now.
We acknowledge that
to deal effectively with global climate change and global warming issues all
sovereigns must work together to adapt and take action on real solutions that
will ensure our collective existence. We hereby declare, affirm, and assert our
inalienable rights as well as responsibilities as members of sovereign Native
Nations. In doing so, we expect to be active participants with full
representation in United States and international legally binding treaty
agreements regarding climate, energy, biodiversity, food sovereignty, water and
sustainable development policies affecting our peoples and our respective
Homelands on Turtle Island (North America) and Pacific Islands.
We are of the Earth.
The Earth is the source of life to be protected, not merely a resource to be
exploited. Our ancestors’
remains lie within her. Water is her
lifeblood. We are dependent upon her
for our shelter and our sustenance. Our
lifeways are the original “green
economies.” We have our place and our responsibilities within
Creation’s
sacred order. We feel the sustaining joy
as things occur in harmony. We feel the pain of disharmony when we witness the
dishonor of the natural order of Creation and the degradation of Mother Earth
and her companion Moon.
We need to stop the
disturbance of the sacred sites on Mother Earth so that she may heal and
restore the balance in Creation. We ask the world community to join with the
Indigenous Peoples to pray on summer solstice for the healing of all the sacred
sites on Mother Earth.
The well-being of the
natural environment predicts the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual
longevity of our Peoples and the Circle of Life. Mother Earth’s
health and that of our Indigenous Peoples are intrinsically intertwined. Unless our homelands are in a state of good
health our Peoples will not be truly healthy. This inseparable relationship
must be respected for the sake of our future generations. In this Declaration,
we invite humanity to join with us to improve our collective human behavior so
that we may develop a more sustainable world –
a world where the inextricable relationship of biological, and environmental
diversity, and cultural diversity is affirmed and protected.
We have the power and
responsibility to change. We can preserve, protect, and fulfill our sacred
duties to live with respect in this wonderful Creation. However, we can also
forget our responsibilities, disrespect Creation, cause disharmony and imperil
our future and the future of others.
At Mystic Lake, we
reviewed the reports of indigenous science, traditional knowledge and cultural
scholarship in cooperation with non-native scientists and scholars. We shared
our fears, concerns and insights. If
current trends continue, native trees will no longer find habitable locations
in our forests, fish will no longer find their streams livable, and humanity
will find their homelands flooded or drought- stricken due to the changing
weather. Our Native Nations have already disproportionately suffered the
negative compounding effects of global warming and a changing climate.
The United States and other industrialized countries have an addiction to the high consumption of energy. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized society and its dominant economic paradigm, which places value on the rapid economic growth, the quest for corporate and individual accumulation of wealth, and a race to exploit natural resources. The non-regenerative production system creates too much waste and toxic pollutions. We recognize the need for the United States and other industrialized countries to focus on new economies, governed by the absolute limits and boundaries of ecological sustainability, the carrying capacities of the Mother Earth, a more equitable sharing of global and local resources, encouragement and support of self sustaining communities, and respect and support for the rights of Mother Earth and her companion Moon.
In recognizing the
root causes of climate change, participants call upon the industrialized
countries and the world to work towards decreasing dependency on fossil fuels.
We call for a moratorium on all new exploration for oil, gas, coal and uranium
as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels, without nuclear
power, with a just transition to sustainable jobs, energy and environment. We
take this position and make this recommendation based on our concern over the
disproportionate social, cultural, spiritual, environmental and climate impacts
on Indigenous Peoples, who are the first and the worst affected by the
disruption of intact habitats, and the least responsible for such impacts.
Indigenous peoples
must call for the most stringent and binding emission reduction targets. Carbon
emissions for developed countries must be reduced by no less than 40%,
preferably 49% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 95% by 2050. We call for national
and global actions to stabilize CO2 concentrations below 350 parts per million
(ppm) and limiting temperature increases to below 1.5ºc.
We challenge climate
mitigation solutions to abandon false solutions to climate change that
negatively impact Indigenous Peoples’
rights, lands, air, oceans, forests, territories and waters. These include
nuclear energy, large-scale dams, geo-engineering techniques, clean coal
technologies, carbon capture and sequestration, bio-fuels, tree plantations,
and international market-based mechanisms such as carbon trading and offsets,
the Clean Development Mechanisms and Flexible Mechanisms under the Kyoto
Protocol and forest offsets. The only real offsets are those renewable energy
developments that displace fossil fuel-generated energy. We recommend the
United States sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and to the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
We are concerned with
how international carbon markets set up a framework for dealing with greenhouse
gases that secure the property rights of heavy Northern fossil fuel users over
the world’s
carbon-absorbing capacity while creating new opportunities for corporate profit
through trade. The system starts by translating existing pollution into a
tradable commodity, the rights to which are allocated in accordance with a
limit set by States or intergovernmental agencies. In establishing property
rights over the world's carbon dump, the largest number of rights is granted
(mostly for free) to those who have been most responsible for pollution in the
first place. At UN COP15, the conservation of forests is being brought into a
property right issue concerning trees and carbon. With some indigenous
communities it is difficult and sometimes impossible to reconcile with
traditional spiritual beliefs the participation in climate mitigation that
commodifies the sacredness of air (carbon), trees and life.
Climate change
mitigation and sustainable forest management must be based on different
mindsets with full respect for nature, and not solely on market-based
mechanisms.
We recognize the link
between climate change and food security that affects Indigenous traditional
food systems. We declare our Native Nations and our communities, waters, air,
forests, oceans, sea ice, traditional lands and territories to be “Food
Sovereignty Areas,”
defined and directed by Indigenous Peoples according to our customary laws,
free from extractive industries, unsustainable energy development,
deforestation, and free from using food crops and agricultural lands for large
scale bio- fuels.
We encourage our
communities to exchange information related to the sustainable and regenerative
use of land, water, sea ice, traditional agriculture, forest management,
ancestral seeds, food plants, animals and medicines that are essential in
developing climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, and will restore
our food sovereignty, food independence, and strengthen our Indigenous families
and Native Nations.
We reject the
assertion of intellectual property rights over the genetic resources and
traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples which results in the alienation and
commodification of those things that are sacred and essential to our lives and
cultures. We reject industrial modes of
food production that promote the use of chemical substances, genetically engineered
seeds and organisms. Therefore, we affirm our right to possess, control,
protect and pass on the indigenous seeds, medicinal plants, traditional
knowledge originating from our lands and territories for the benefit of our
future generations.
We can make changes
in our lives and actions as individuals and as Nations that will lessen our
contribution to the problems. In order for reality to shift, in order for
solutions to major problems to be found and realized, we must transition away
from the patterns of an industrialized mindset, thought and behavior that
created those problems. It is time to exercise desperately needed Indigenous
ingenuity –
Indigenuity –
inspired by our ancient intergenerational knowledge and wisdom given to us by
our natural relatives.
We recognize and
support the position of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate
Change (IIPFCC), operating as the Indigenous Caucus within the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that is requesting language
within the overarching principles of the outcomes of the Copenhagen UNFCCC 15th
Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) and beyond Copenhagen, that
would ensure respect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples,
including their rights to lands, territories, forests and resources to ensure
their full and effective participation including free, prior and informed
consent. It is crucial that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is entered into all appropriate negotiating texts
for it is recognized as the minimum international standard for the protection
of rights, survival, protection and well-being of Indigenous Peoples,
particularly with regard to health, subsistence, sustainable housing and
infrastructure, and clean energy development.
As Native Nations and
Indigenous Peoples living within the occupied territories of the United States,
we acknowledge with concern, the refusal of the United States to support
negotiating text that would recognize applicable universal human rights
instruments and agreements, including the UNDRIP, and further safeguard
principles that would ensure their full and effective participation including
free, prior and informed consent. We will do everything humanly possible by
exercising our sovereign government-to-government relationship with the U.S. to
seek justice on this issue.
Our Indian languages
are encoded with accumulated ecological knowledge and wisdom that extends back
through oral history to the beginning of time. Our ancestors created land and
water relationship systems premised upon the understanding that all life forms
are relatives –
not resources. We understand that we as human beings have a sacred and
ceremonial responsibility to care for and maintain, through our original
instructions, the health and well-being of all life within our traditional
territories and Native Homelands.
We will encourage our
leadership and assume our role in supporting a just transition into a green
economy, freeing ourselves from dependence on a carbon-based fossil fuel
economy. This transition will be based
upon development of an indigenous agricultural economy comprised of traditional
food systems, sustainable buildings and infrastructure, clean energy and energy
efficiency, and natural resource management systems based upon indigenous
science and traditional knowledge. We are committed to development of economic
systems that enable life-enhancement as a core component. We thus dedicate
ourselves to the restoration of true wealth for all Peoples. In keeping with
our traditional knowledge, this wealth is based not on monetary riches but
rather on healthy relationships, relationships with each other, and
relationships with all of the other natural elements and beings of creation.
In order to provide
leadership in the development of green economies of life-enhancement, we must
end the chronic underfunding of our Native educational institutions and ensure
adequate funding sources are maintained. We recognize the important role of our
Native K-12 schools and tribal colleges and universities that serve as
education and training centers that can influence and nurture a much needed
Indigenuity towards understanding climate change, nurturing clean renewable
energy technologies, seeking solutions and building sustainable communities.
The world needs to
understand that the Earth is a living female organism –
our Mother and our Grandmother. We are kin. As such, she needs to be loved and
protected. We need to give back what we take from her in respectful mutuality.
We need to walk gently. These Original Instructions are the natural spiritual
laws, which are supreme. Science can urgently work with traditional knowledge
keepers to restore the health and well-being of our Mother and Grandmother
Earth.
As we conclude this meeting we, the participating spiritual and traditional leaders, members and supporters of our Indigenous Nations, declare our intention to continue to fulfill our sacred responsibilities, to redouble our efforts to enable sustainable life-enhancing economies, to walk gently on our Mother Earth, and to demand that we be a part of the decision-making and negotiations that impact our inherent and treaty-defined rights. Achievement of this vision for the future, guided by our traditional knowledge and teachings, will benefit all Peoples on the Earth.
Approved by
Acclamation and Individual Sign-ons.
###
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Adopted by the General Assembly September 13, 2007
Article 25
Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen
their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or
otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and
other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in
this regard.
Cemanhuac |
World Water One
www.www.www
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Indian Country Today Article
www.www.www
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Indian Country Today Article
November 25, 2009
Climate workshop stresses sustainability, indigenous knowledge
Territorial Integrity of Mother Earth
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