In May, SLFP screened segments of the forthcoming Standing on Sacred Ground film series at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York and the annual conference and film festival of the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples.

As bulldozers began clearing the site of a new wind-energy facility in the desert of western Imperial County — ripping up forests of ocotillo cacti and threatening ancestral graves of the Quechan Tribe — tribal members stood outside the corporate offices of Pattern Energy, demanding a halt to the project.

In its lead editorial in the Sunday, April 3 edition, the New York Times spoke out strongly against a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline that would connect tar sands fields in Alberta, Canada, with refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Proponents of the pipeline point out

A few days ago, I was editing footage of shaman in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, when the phone rang and I heard the familiar voice of my old friend Jose Lucero of Santa Clara Pueblo calling from New Mexico. Jose said he recently received an audio tape in the mail containing an interview with Hopi spokesman Thomas Banyacya

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that the first offshore wind farm to be built in the U.S. has been given the green light.

The Nantucket Sound Cape Wind Project, opposed by the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, will be allowed to proceed provided that measures be undertaken in the construction of the energy farm to minimize negative impacts. Efforts to this end include a reduction in the number of wind turbines from 170 to 130 to reduce visibility from Nantucket Island.

In a demonstration to show solidarity with the Brazilian indigenous peoples who will be gravely affected by the recently approved Belo Monte dam project, actress Sigourney Weaver will join members of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to peacefully protest in front of the Brazilian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York [...]

All over the world, indigenous people protect places of spiritual significance and hotspots of biodiversity. James Cameron’s symbolic story of the Na’vi, in his film “Avatar” parallels the struggle that indigenous people around the globe face to defend sacred places Western culture seeks to dominate.

The federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has recommended that the U.S. Department of the Interior reject a proposal for the country’s first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, saying it would have ”destructive” effects on dozens of nearby historic properties, including Native American cultural sites.

With the U.S. Department of Energy’s March 3 withdrawal of a license application to build a high-level nuclear waste dump under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the long-contested project is at last on its way to being closed.

International outcry is mounting against the Brazilian government’s plan to move forward on the massive Belo Monte dam on the Amazon’s Xingu River. Take action and attend a Bay Area event March 19.

After a nearly 20-year hiatus, uranium mining has resumed on public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. In late December, Denison Mines Corp. began extracting high-grade uranium ore from its Arizona 1 mine, located about 10 miles from the boundary for Grand Canyon National Park.

A controversial and long-delayed hydroelectric dam project on Brazil’s Xingu River received the green light on Feb. 1 when the Brazilian Environment Ministry issued an environmental license for the dam’s construction.

In a first test of the Obama administration’s promise to honor the needs of Native Americans in policy- and decision-making, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with local tribes to determine whether to approve a massive offshore wind-farm project in Massachusett’s Nantucket Sound.