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The New Dd Newsletter

Indigenous Rights Under Threat In The Amazon

Why we need your support

Additional News from Dd & Partners

• Read more on the Waorani legal victory from The New Yorker, and Aliya's post on the role of maps in the legal process
• Towards a Technology of Solidarity - Emily shares 10 lessons from the first 10 years of Digital Democracy
• Local-First Software for Frontline Communities - Karissa's reflection on how & why we're building tools that work completely offline
• We received a grant from Samsung Next Zero! Read Kira’s piece on what we’ve been up to thanks to their support
• How does an indigenous group map their territory in the remote Amazon? Check out this behind-the-scenes look, Mapping Living Memories from our partner Nick at Amazon Frontlines
• Our partners ECA-RCA, who manage the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Peru, were one of the Equator Prize Winners this fall. We're working closely with ECA-RCA to pilot Mapeo Mobile
• Looking for a tool that frontline communities can use to map their land & document what matters to them? Check out the Mapeo website

The New Dd Newsletter

Indigenous Rights Under Threat In The Amazon

Why we need your support

Additional News from Dd & Partners

• Read more on the Waorani legal victory from The New Yorker, and Aliya's post on the role of maps in the legal process
• Towards a Technology of Solidarity - Emily shares 10 lessons from the first 10 years of Digital Democracy
• Local-First Software for Frontline Communities - Karissa's reflection on how & why we're building tools that work completely offline
• We received a grant from Samsung Next Zero! Read Kira’s piece on what we’ve been up to thanks to their support
• How does an indigenous group map their territory in the remote Amazon? Check out this behind-the-scenes look, Mapping Living Memories from our partner Nick at Amazon Frontlines
• Our partners ECA-RCA, who manage the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Peru, were one of the Equator Prize Winners this fall. We're working closely with ECA-RCA to pilot Mapeo Mobile
• Looking for a tool that frontline communities can use to map their land & document what matters to them? Check out the Mapeo website

A Prayer For The New Year

As the year draws to a close, I’m heading into 2020 with the hope for humanity to have clear vision of the enormous challenge of human-caused climate change, and the potential for us to change course. May this be a year that lives up to its name, and may the new decade see the changes that are so necessary to protect people & the planet. 

At Digital Democracy we’re doing our part to turn that prayer into a reality, partnering with communities on the frontlines of protecting human & environmental rights around the planet.

In 2019 we witnessed terrible losses. In the Amazon, where we have primarily worked the past five years, we saw fires, land invasions and murder of indigenous leaders. Scientists warn we are nearing the tipping point, where a deforestation will trigger dramatic changes and turn parts of the rainforest into savannah. 

But we also watched our partners win historic victories. In Ecuador, the Waorani people protected 1/2 million acres of primary rainforest from oil drilling, and the Kofan of Sinangoe halted gold mining on their territory. In Peru, we worked with our partners ECA-Amarakaeri as they documented illegal logging & mining, and worked with the government to protect Peru’s largest communal reserve. Across the Amazon we saw Indigenous people unite against their collective threats, and lead the way in protecting the rainforest for the sake of all of us. 

In 2020 the Digital Democracy team is being asked to support new communities, in Brazil, Central America & Southeast Asia. We want to take the tools & lessons learned from our current partnerships and support frontline communities around the world. We’re working to do our part to make the world a more just place, and we’re asking for your help. 

Can you donate to Digital Democracy today, and help us support frontline communities in the year to come?

Donate

Community land mapping workshop

Last fall, Digital Democracy collaborated with our partners Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) to deliver a training workshop on community based monitoring and mapping to members of indigenous and Afro descendent peoples from Peru and Colombia, including Embera-Chamani, Huitoto, Kichwa, N+pode+mak+, Shipibo and Wampis people. The five day training took place in the community of Soledad, which lies on the banks of the river Santiago, in the heart of the territory of the Wampis nation, in Northern Peru.

The communities are facing a range of threats, from land invasions and land grabs, to mining, deforestation and oil activities. In total we trained nearly 30 people to use Mapeo Mobile and Desktop to collect and analyze data. The workshop also included training in GPS devices and tools to help them publish data on online maps and websites. We're now supporting the participants remotely as they incorporate the tools into existing monitoring programs and pilot new initiatives. 

On Data Solidarity

Conferences, job postings & other opportunities

Connect & recharge: Do you work at the intersection of tech and social change? If so, the upcoming Web of Change 2020 retreat in Balcones Springs, Texas could be the perfect event for you. Apply today to attend the convening April 20-23 with diverse social change leaders from across North America & the world.
 

Additional News from Dd & Partners

• Encouraging news from Peru, where an indigenous group won a lawsuit to block three new oil lots in Loreto, near the Brazilian border.
• We’re paying close attention to the land rights struggle happening in British Columbia, where the Wet'suwet'en people are defending their territory against pipeline construction. 
• What’s the link between how women & ecosystems are marginalized by modern society? Read this powerful essay from our partners at Amazon Frontlines.
• (En Español) Our partners ECA-RCA are using Mapeo, drones & other tools to defend Peru's Amarakaeri Reserve against illegal logging & mining.

Coming Soon! The Earth Defenders'' Toolkit

Today, in tandem with the 2020 Indigenous Mapping Workshop, the Digital Democracy team is excited to announce the Earth Defenders' Toolkit (EDT), a collection of open-source tools and training materials for communities on the frontlines of the struggle to defend critical ecosystems around the world.

How does it work?

The toolkit will contain mapping, monitoring and digital-storytelling tools that can be used by communities to:

• Document & understand rapid changes & threats to territory
• Create maps to communicate history & connection to land
• Document human rights & environmental abuses
• Reinforce local advocacy with concrete evidence
• Tell their story to the world

Our Approach

While distinct in functionality, all of the tools are value-aligned and have the following in common:

• built in partnership with frontline communities,
• entirely open-source,
• work offline,
• allow communities to own & manage their own data.

In the coming months, we will use tried and tested approaches to develop training materials that leverage technology to support local autonomy and ownership over data, and avoid creating dependencies on outside support.

In addition to providing a channel for tool access and training support, EDT will also build a collaborative platform for local community organizations and their allies and partners to co-create the toolkit and share digital knowledge. Join the EDT community by signing up for the mailing list, and we'll keep you posted on how to get involved.

Why Now?

EDT is the result of over 15 years of work with communities facing urgent threats of environmental and political abuses. The comprehensive toolkit will collect critical tools and connect users with the appropriate technology for their particular needs. The collaborative platform will cultivate knowledge sharing and ensure ongoing improvements to the toolkit.

The toolkit was conceived long before the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the rapidly changing global context has made the need for such a resource all the more evident. While travel has been restricted and many projects have been halted, unchecked resource extraction continues to threaten the lives of Indigenous peoples and the future of the entire planet. EDT is a critical channel for ensuring that frontline communities have access to effective tools to defend their homes.

To learn more, visit: https://earthdefenderstoolkit.com/

The Ogiek people of Mount Elgon in Kenya

This month a long anticipated collaboration with the Ogiek people of Mount Elgon in Kenya and the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) got underway. FPP have been working with the Ogiek, and the organisation CIPDP for many years, running trainings in GIS methods and supporting the communities to defend their ancestral lands from poachers and other encroachments. We began developing a project with them in early 2020 to use Mapeo to gather data on customary land use, and enable more Ogiek to be involved in the land defense work.
Earlier this month the CIPDP received confirmation of funding from "VOICE: From Open to Inclusive Governance" to begin this work with a six month pilot grant. We are looking forward to implementing our workplan with the OGIEK and FPP, albeit made more challenging with current impossibility of travel and we are building off lessons learned over the last few months on remote trainings to create a training syllabus and methodology for them which we can implement from afar. 

We hope that Mapeo can support the Ogiek of Mount Elgon to gain greater autonomy over their lands, and that we can also learn from their needs to broaden the use-cases of Mapeo and introduce features and localisations to make it more accessible and relevant to them and other peoples world-wide. 

Nemonte Nenquimo one of Top 100 Most Influential People in the world

We are thrilled to celebrate alongside our long-term partners Alianza Ceibo, Amazon Frontlines and the Waorani people of Ecuador as the Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo from Ecuador has been named to TIME's 2020 list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the world. Nemonte has been fighting to protect her people's lands and cultures for the future for many years, and played a central role in setting up the Waorani territory mapping project five years ago.

Additional News from Dd & Partners

• Alianza Ceibo is getting the Ecuator Prize. The Equator Initiative provides opportunities for indigenous peoples and local communities around the world to address the challenges of land degradation, biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement in a socially equitable manner.
• Native Land is hiring a part-time research directo
• The Indigenous Mapping Workship will take place November 16-18, 2020 and Digital Democracy will be presenting. Learn more and mark your calendar.
• Two articles on how genocide against Native Californians and the suppression of their traditional land management have increased fire danger.
• Every Place is Under Threat: an interactive map story from the New York Times about what threatens the Amazon Basin.

Our growing team

This week, we are feeling extra grateful for the ways in which the Dd team has  expanded over the past few months. From former team members returning to lead novel programs, new recruits bringing fresh perspectives, and board members with global experience and past partnership with Dd, we are thrilled to welcome our new team and board members.

Launch of Earth Defenders Toolkit

News from Dd & Partners

• This is a great week to think about decolonizing mapmaking. First, read this overview of last week's Indigenous Mapping Workshop, Maps are stories made visual. Then, read Dd executive director Emily's article on Indigenous Cartography.

• "This is my message to the western world - your civilization is killing life on Earth." Powerful testimony from our partner Nemonte Nenquimo in The Guardian.

• Gorgeous storymaps from Matawai communities in Suriname, from the Amazon Conservation Team (and new Dd team member Rudo!). 

• The annual Minority Rights report was published last month. Read our friend Simon Hoyt's chapter on working with Baka communities to monitor forest threats in Cameroon. 

• In Vietnam, our partners PanNature and Open Development Initiative have been leading workshops on the use of Mapeo for forest-dwelling communities. Read their blog, and watch this video (in Vietnamese.) 

Things we're watching/reading 

• ThanksTaking or ThanksGiving? A podcast on the real history of Thanksgiving, from Wampanoag scholars Paula Peters and Linda Coombs.

• The Stories of the Amazon, a beautiful short video.

• Indigenous wisdom as a model for software design and development, blog post by Amelia Winger Bearskin on Mozilla.

• On Oceanic Fugitivity, a gorgeous essay on tidal relations from Hi?ilei Julia Hobart.

The thoughts of our team remain with our local partners in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia - and marginalized peoples across the world - whose lives continue to be impacted by the affects of Covid-19, including sickness and medical emergencies, local lockdowns, food shortages and increased difficulties in communications.

We are thrilled to announce our newest funding partner, Good Energies

With a mission to help prevent climate change and mitigate its harm, especially to people who live in poverty, we are proud to add this like-minded funder to our list of key supporters. Good Energies' generous partnership will directly support our work with 150 communities from 12 indigenous nations living in biodiversity hotspots in the Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Colombian Amazon. It will also enable us to add new features into Mapeo and expand its User Guide. Together we will work to stop illegal activities on indigenous lands and to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.
Read more about Good Energies.

5 ways a Recent Ecuadorian Constitutional Court Victory Boosts Indigenous Peoples'' Fight For the Amazon

Additional News from Dd & Partners

• Partners in Northern Peru formally submit a report to the authorities of environmental oversight  in Peru, identifying 1,209 oil spills documented over the last 14 years.
  See the full report in Spanish
   

• August 25 was the official release of the award-winning documentary ''Yasuni Man'', a film about the Waorani people's battle against extractive industries in Ecuador's Amazon, a struggle we recently supported during the Waorani Mapping Project.
  Yasuni Man is streaming now on most major platforms
   

• Read the 21st edition of La Voz de la Confeniae in Spanish, the periodic publication of the indigenous organization that represents 1,500 communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

  Read the publication in Spanish

"The time for action is now, people are taking to the streets, flooding social media, calling local officials and demanding justice for those who have been killed by the police all over the county and now is the time to join them."
- Movement for Black Lives
 

We are inspired by the skilled and passionate organizing that is responding quickly and with deep knowledge to build stronger connections and mobilize diverse communities to take immediate action to address systemic racism. We see community-based work being leveraged by the power of relationships and solidarity. We know there is much more work to be done.  We stand in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.

Tools for improving community safety while taking action:

• The People's Database for Community-based Police Accountability: A Berkeley Copwatch + WITNESS initiative
• How to Film Policy Safely

Emergency COVID-19 fundraising on behalf of our partners in the Peruvian Amazon

We are raising funds to send directly to ECA Amarakaeri and PUINAMUDT, two Indigenous-led organizations in the Peruvian Amazon, to support communities affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus has now reached many indigenous communities in the Amazon, where there is minimal healthcare provision, often inadequate health information, and where families are suffering from food insecurity due to impacts of the lockdown. Additionally, the negative impact of extractive industries caused by a lack of regulation now includes a devastating increase in exposure to Covid-19.

• We are almost to our $5,000 goal. Help us raise the last $1000 needed for concrete support, including medical kits, emergency food parcels, and communications devices.  
• Please consider making a donation today

News from Digital Democracy

• Our team produced a research paper, partnering with Simply Secure to study the 7 obstacles for trustable and usable decentralized technologies.
• Executive Director Emily Jacobi gave a keynote talk at the CSV Conference about Data Solidarity, Lessons from co-building open source tools with Indigenous Peoples. 
• Learn more about our theory of software development by watching the recent class Building Peer-to-Peer Applications, with Karissa McKelvey

News from Our Partners

• The Waorani won the case they had taken against the Ecuadorian Government, demanding measures be put in place to protect them given the enormous risks to their people of Covid-19. "With a population of only five thousand, the Waorani nation has already registered at least 188 confirmed cases of COVID-19 to date. Extractive activity on their territory has increased their risk of COVID-19 exposure since the onset of the pandemic."
• Watch the latest talk from about Mapping and safeguarding indigenous oral histories using an open source tool (csv,conf) by Rudo Kemper of Amazon Conservation Team.
• Happening this Friday, June 26th, at 10am and 5pm PT support the Amazon Emergency Fund for a special global premiere with artists, Indigenous leaders and advocates to raise money for rapid-responses against Covid-19.

"Wherever Indigenous people are dependent on money to feed themselves, this contamination is happening."

We received this chilling update from a colleague in Peru this week. It's not just Peru - across the Amazon, Indigenous peoples are facing grave challenges from the Coronavirus pandemic.

For some of our partners, the same threats that they have been fighting for years - like mining & logging operations - are now the vectors where the disease is transmitted. For others whose land has been devastated by oil drilling, they are dependent on outside help for food and even clean water, and the disease is being spread where communities are unable to self isolate.

We Are Hiring!

We are very excited to be looking for three wonderful people to join our remote and diverse team. All the roles will be either helping to design, develop or share cutting-edge open-source mobile and desktop mapping apps for remote and marginalized communities to document, map, monitor, manage and report information on environmental and human rights issues around the world.
Front-end Developer
User Experience Designer
Project Coordinator

Mapeo v5 Released!

Over the past year, we've focused on critical and fundamental improvements to Mapeo, and are pleased to announce the release of Mapeo v5. Introducing Mapeo Mobile in 2018 brought user-centered offline GIS technology to the fingertips of our local partners in the Amazon. In the last two years, we have heard valuable input and experiences from community monitors and local technicians working to protect territories across the Amazon and SE Asia. We have learned so much about how the tools can be used and what barriers we need to knock down to make MAPEO work for the people who need it most.  This release brings easier loading of configuration files, MAPEO Mobile stability, and better editing and filtering for Observations in Desktop.

Read more about the latest Mapeo release.

• Our own Aliya Ryan joined the amazing panelists in a web session at RightsCon this week. Watch the video archive here: Strengthening indigenous data governance and sovereignty: lessons learned from mobile data collection apps
• PUINAMUDT organizes with the four river basin federations  in Northern Peru to propose a new law for formal recognition and legal legitimacy of Indigenous community monitoring data for environmental monitoring and surveillance at the state level. Read the article by Resumen Latinoamericano in Spanish.
• Mongabay Series on Amazon Conservation highlights broader ecological impacts of deforestation. Scientists measure Amazon drought and deforestation feedback loop: Study