From The Field: RAN’s Work Pays Off In Indonesia

I’ve only been in Indonesia for a few days and already I’ve heard multiple accounts of intimidation, corruption, kidnapping, torture and even murder suffered by our allies here who have been bold enough to speak out and resist the destruction of their forests and villages by palm oil and pulp and paper companies. But I [...]

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U.S. Announces Support for UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights

With President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will “lend its support” to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the U.S. has at last joined the global consensus on this critical human rights issue. In a decision that reverses the position taken by the Bush administration in 2007, when the [...]

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U.S. Should Join World In Supporting Indigenous Rights

Canada has now formally endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), leaving the United States as the only country to remain opposed to the most comprehensive international statement on Indigenous rights to date. After its adoption in 2007 by the UN General Assembly, UNDRIP was heralded around the world by [...]

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The Latest Small Grants Supporting Frontline Communities

The below dozen grants distributed over the last few months through RAN’s Protect-an-Acre program and through our role as an advisor to Global Greengrant Fund supported frontline community efforts to defend their land and rights in forest regions in Africa, South & Central America, Southeast Asia and Appalachia. Protect-an-Acre KONTAK Rakyat Borneo $4,000 to carry [...]

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Grassy Narrows Seeks Justice After 4 Decades of Mercury Poisoning

RAN supported the community of Grassy Narrows in Ontario, Canada with a $3,000 grant facilitated through our role as an advisor to Global Greengrants Fund for 2 public events in Toronto on the 40th anniversary of when the community was poisoned by mercury from an upstream pulp mill (which continues to make people sick today). [...]

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Ecuadorian Community Activists Get Canadian Mining Company Delisted from TSX

Over the past 12 years, RAN has supported through our Protect-an-Acre small grants both Defense and Ecological Conservation of Intag (DECOIN) and Community Defense Council in the Intag region in the western Andes of Ecuador, a cloud forest ecosystem that is a globally significant biological hot spot. For 2 decades now, communities there have successfully [...]

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Small Grants Supporting Land Rights, Climate Justice and Self-Determination

The below 8 grants distributed over the last few months through RAN’s Protect-an-Acre program and through our role as an advisor to Global Greengrant Fund support frontline community efforts to defend their land and rights in forest regions in Africa, South America and Canada and at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Protect-an-Acre La Fundacion de [...]

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Victory for Black Mesa

In December 2008, RAN supported Black Mesa Water Coalition, a youth-led inter-tribal organization, with an emergency $5,000 grant through our role as an advisor to Global Greengrants Fund to support a mobilization to fight Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit for operations on Black Mesa, AZ. As this report back from a previous Understory [...]

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Victory for KI First Nation

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation, located in the Boreal Forest of Ontario, Canada – 200 km from the nearest road – just won its fight to say “no” to mining exploration company Plantinex. RAN has supported KI with grants through our Protect-an-Acre program and through our role as an advisor to the Global Greengrants Fund. [...]

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Indigenous peoples as the most effective protectors of rainforests

RAN believes that indigenous peoples are the best stewards of rainforests. Supporting this belief, a new study by researchers at U of Illinois and U of Michigan has added to the growing body of evidence that indigenous peoples are better protectors of their forests than governments or industry. In a review of 80 forests in [...]

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