God, grant that colonial peoples may overcome their indoctrination to discount indigenous knowledge and wisdom. Open minds, hearts and spirits in North America to face and overcome patterns of domination and fossil fuel addiction. Give your church determination to turn from destroying your earth.

A week ago, on 30 May 2013, we got word from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) Colombia that Tito, one of the members of Las Pavas community in Colombia, had been attacked with machetes by workers for Aportes San Isidro, the palm oil company that has been trying to push the community of Las Pavas off their land for many years…

Tito (yellow and green shirt) taking picture of security guard who had ordered his men to shoot out tires of Las Pavas's tractor.

This attack is an escalation of the pressure on this community that is deeply committed to nonviolence.  The Las Pavas leadership asked CPT to provide increased accompaniment for community members as they walk to and from their fields.  Our team on the ground is already stretched thin and they have made an appeal to CPT reservists to support them.  We have people ready to go to Colombia if we can raise the funds. Can you contribute $10 now to make this possible?…

This request is just one of four that CPT has received in the last week.  On 8 June 2013, our Aboriginal Justice team sent a group of reservists to New Brunswick, Canada in response to an invitation 48 hours earlier from Elsipogtog First Nation. Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples have been using creative Nonviolent Direct Action to stop shale gas exploration on their traditional lands, including peacefully blockading a truck hired by the exploration company, SWN Resources Canada.

Victories are for celebrating.  They are moments that give us the satisfaction of a job well done.  That the fight we undertook was worth it.  Why then in Colombia does a victory for so many communities who struggle for something as basic as a piece of land to farm to provide food for their families, become a nightmare and for some a death sentence? 

This sounds sad and discouraging and I wish I didn’t have to paint such a bleak picture but to hide the truth would be worse.  In fact for the past months, we as a team have (not intentionally) hidden the truth by announcing several victories.  We did it because in fact there have been several victories that fully deserve a celebration.  Also for our own emotional health we needed to enjoy these moments.  Communities affected by the violence of the ongoing economic, political, and armed conflict of Colombia don’t often have victories, tangible successes to grab on to.   We even used them as a fundraising strategy because hey, everyone wants to support a winning team.

Great victories happened for Garzal/Nueva Esperanza and Las Pavas, two communities that CPT Colombia accompanies and under normal circumstances we would all still be celebrating.  But as I said earlier these victories have become hard-to-imagine tragedies that could dishearten the happiest soul. 

“The role of the warrior chief is to protect the land, the water and the people.  Our only weapons are our drums, our sweetgrasses, our pipes, and our ceremonies.  We are nonviolent.”

This description was how John Levi, warrior chief of the Elsipogtog First Nation, explained his role to an emergency CPT exploratory delegation to his New Brunswick Mi’kmaq community located north of Moncton.

The Elsipogtog First Nation and non-Aboriginal landowners in Kent County, New Brunswick are fighting to stop shale gas exploration by SWN Resources.  They are concerned fracking will lead to the depletion of groundwater and widespread water contamination.

Fracking is a slang term for the process of digging deep wells (up to two miles) into the earth and injecting water under high pressure laden with industrial chemicals to fracture shale.  The procedure releases otherwise inaccessible deposits of natural gas.

Each frack uses millions of gallons of water laden with hundreds of different chemicals.  Resource companies have not had to disclose the types of chemicals they are using because of patent protections.  Scientists have identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.

 At 7:00 p.m. on 16 June 2013, CPT received a phone call telling them that Israeli soldiers were questioning children whom they believed had been throwing rocks at the soldier on the roof near the CPT office.  CPTers entered the street near their apartment saw the soldiers questioning two boys. The soldiers then left those two, saying that they were looking for another boy.  The soldiers went around through the tunnels in the old city and returned to the area near the CPT offices.  They then questioned another boy and demanded he go with them.  The boy started to cry and an older man intervened, removing the boy from the custody of the soldiers.  The soldiers then started to re-question the two boys that they had been talking to earlier…

The soldiers then sat the boy on the pavement behind the gate as they continued to question him.  More than an hour after they had detained him, the soldiers released him into the custody of the Palestinian Authority (PA) through Checkpoint 56.  During the whole time that they held the boy, he did not have a parent, guardian, lawyer, or any sympathetic adult with him.  CPTers asked the soldiers why the boy had been taken and if he was going to be released. The soldiers said that they had taken the boy, because he had thrown stones at the soldiers and that they had given the boy a glass of water.  The soldiers said that it is Israeli procedure to take children accused of throwing stones and question them before handing the children over to the PA.  The Palestinian Authority released him into the custody of his parents.

In response to a request from the Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way) International Justice Project, Christian Peacemaker Teams is renewing a relationship with Lakota communities by sending a pair of peacemakers to support a nonviolent direct action training on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota 14-16 June.

	posted by Debra White Plume March 2013

Alberta-based TransCanada Corporation has proposed building the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands bitumen from Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf coast. The pipeline's proposed path crosses treaty lands of Lakota nations that have pronounced themselves solidly against the pipeline.  It also runs over the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest, and crosses more than 1,700 other bodies of water. Pipeline ruptures often occur near water crossings since these lowest points subject pipes to the highest internal pressures.  Bitumen spills have poisoned portions of the Kalamazoo River (Michigan), Lake Conway (Arkansas), the Des Plaines River (Illinois) and many other waterways.

Tar sands bitumen, produced through a scorched-earth process, sinks in water and is impossible to clean up. The thick goo is diluted with benzene and other "proprietary" chemicals to allow it to flow through pipes. Those lighter volatile compounds go airborne after a spill, harming humans and animals. A pipeline proposal similar to Keystone XL through Vancouver, British Columbia, was rejected by Band and City Councils, which in turn forced the provincial government to nix the project on 31 May 2013.

Pray for Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people and their allies in New Brunswick, protesting
seismic testing and plans for fracking with its threat of contaminated land, water
and air.  Pray for courage among supporters, safety for activists, and a good mind
for police.

In the news this week, the negotiations between the leftist guerilla group FARC, and the U.S.-allied right-wing Colombian government have seen some progress.  After more than six months of discussions, the opposing factions have come to a decision regarding land reform, the first of six points they planned to address in Havana.

This first agenda item is one of the most contentious, and the root cause of much of the violence here in Colombia.  The factions have not publicized the agreement in detail but most believe it will include land restitution through the creation of a land bank where displaced farmers will receive the rights to their land previously seized by paramilitaries, drug traffickers, multinational corporations, and guerilla groups.

“This is the first time in over thirty years of negotiations that significant progress has been made on the issue of land,” notes Camilo Gonzales Posso, the director for Centre for Peace in an interview with Al Jazeera, and “for the first time there is recognition of farmer’s rights and a plan to redistribute the land.”

A podcast interview with linguist, cognitive scientist, philosopher, and radical truth-teller Noam Chomsky is now available from a link on CPT’s website.  CPT interim assistant director Tim Nafziger and Herald Press’s Widening the Circle editor, Joanna Shenk conduct the interview, which is followed by a discussion that includes Nafziger, Shenk and editor of Jesusradicals.com Mark Van Steenwyck.

At the beginning of the interview, Chomsky and Nafziger discuss the 2005-2006 CPT hostage crisis.  Chomsky was among the first internationally known personalities to sign a petition calling for the release of the Tom Fox, James Loney, Harmeet Singh Sooden and Norman Kember when Iraqi militants kidnapped them in 2005.  He has said in the past that CPT’s work gives him hope.

Christian Peacemaker Teams has received an urgent invitation to send a team to the Elsipogtog Reserve in New Brunswick following arrests of Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists, who are protesting the threat of the environmentally destructive “fracking” process.  Please share the following prayer with your faith communities and contacts. Follow the CPT Aboriginal Justice Facebook Page for more information as this situation develops.

Pray for Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people and their allies in New Brunswick, protesting seismic testing and plans for fracking that threatens to contaminate land and water.  Pray for all involved in the conflict, for courage among supporters, safety for activists, and what our indigenous partners call “a good mind” for police.