Indigenous Peoples Summit Anchorage - Wednesday 2

Actually, this is from Tuesday night's film festival. Here is a taste of the second Australian film they should where people from the film then addressed the audience. They talked about how the rising ocean tides were going further inland and the salt water was killing the plants and fouling the fresh water there. This was eating into the habitat of traditional plants and animals use for food and medicine.

After watching about ten of these short films I was struck by a couple of things:

1. How similar the stories were. The weather changes affecting the environment where indigenous people live, threatening their ability to continue their own way of life. In the case of Carderets Islands, the sea water is literally destroying all arable land on the island forcing them to leave because there was nothing left to eat except fish and coconuts.

2. There was also concern about international corporations - timber, mining, energy particularly - reaching into their environment and adversely affecting the life in that environment on which they depend.

3. In some cases problems with other people - including indigenous peoples - who had been induced to 'sell' natural resources - animals they shot for food, timber to multinational companies, etc. And so their own neighbors were causing problems.

4. A high level of historic awareness of their natural environment which enables them to document changes that otherwise would go unnoticed.

A skeptic might argue the similarities are due to the film makers who have packaged these stories from different locations to all tell the same story. Certainly this plays probably a minor role and that is inevitable. But my experiences in Thailand last year and this was replete with similar stories that I wasn't packaging. This is a universal phenomenon. And those who still believe that global warming is a myth concocted by liberals, or that it is just a natural swing like the earth has experienced forever, well, there's a link on the right for global warming skeptics.

I'm sitting out in the lobby while people are meeting closed off to media. I'm not sure I mentioned that I got in here as press, covering this on my blog. I assumed that an organization that is made up of 'marginalized people' would be inclusive for marginalized media types. And I was right. So I'm taking advantage of the time to catch up a bit and I'm waiting for the video to upload to viddler so I can embed it here. OK, it's done. This is not great video, but it gives you a sense of things.

Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change (click link for all the posts on the summit)