Inside Alto Turiaçu, people are sceptical that the police and government are willing to look after indigenous interests.
They talk of a pervading deep inequity in power relationships between Indigenous interests and planning bodies, even though authorities do have ways of recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Native Canadian interests.
They not only convey the persistent Zen fascination with spiritual force found in personality but also contain lush patterning and detail, as if a rugged eremitic type is slowly being enveloped in indigenous interests.
Plans for a huge commercial development that would transform a tiny town near the edge of the Grand Canyon have been thrown out by federal officials in a surprise victory for conservation and indigenous interests – but campaigners warn that the world famous natural wonder remains in peril.
When the federal government ordered a temporary halt to construction on the pipeline, a little over a week ago, Iron Eyes said the issue went beyond indigenous interests over threats to water supplies and implicated "systems that assume the Earth's resources are limitless".
Water planners are presently equipped with a very limited number of engagement tools tailored to the water resource management context to redress the historical neglect of Indigenous interests.
"The government is walking away from its key environmental and health research program in northern Canada," asserts Terry Fenge, research director for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which promotes indigenous interests.
However, feared adverse social impacts may be coming to pass; researchers from Griffith University in Queensland found governments trading "with little regard or knowledge of Indigenous interests, and many Indigenous people believe that contemporary water resource management is amplifying inequities".
Indigenous groups withdrew from the process and the independent lawyer appointed to represent indigenous interests following the withdrawals later quit, saying that while a disproportionate number of missing murdered women were aboriginal, she regretted that she "could not find a way to bring the voices of the missing and murdered aboriginal women before the commissioner".
"In this context of peace and inaction, problems are 'resolved' legally, but justice remains in the hands of those who have colonized the Mapuche and have a deplorable record since before the dictatorship era at least—of ruling against indigenous interests".
