You may have seen some of our past posts on our work with Maya communities in southern Belize, but either way, the State is repealing the recent Supreme Court decision to grant over 30 Maya communities land rights. From the Petition:
We are calling upon the Belize government to withdraw its appeal of the Supreme Court's ruling on June 28, 2010 that reaffirmed the Constitutional Land Rights of the Maya People.
The entire Indigenous population of Belize has depended on the land since time immemorial for food, shelter and clothing, as well as their culture and religious practices. However, in recent generations, that dependency has been under constant threat of unsustainable large scale logging, oil and gas explorers, hydro-electric companies and commercial resort developers
As a consequence of this, the Maya are increasingly faced with the possibly of displacement from their lands and the irrevocable loss of their identity, economic well-being and way of life.
We believe Justice Conteh, an acting representative of the Crown, was correct to assert that the Maya hold communal land rights and enjoy the same Constitutional protections as the rest the country.
Without this protection, the Maya's future as Indigenous Peoples is grim at best.
We also note that these same land rights have been recognized by the Supreme Courts of more than a dozen countries, and meet the standards of international law, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, to which Belize is a signatory.
We further Encourage the Government to accept the Maya's invitation for a peaceful dialogue.
No matter how the Courts have ruled in the past or may rule in the future, dialogue is essential for building a sustainable, mutually beneficial relationship with the Maya People.
It is also understood that the Maya do not truely wish to break off from the State or undermine the country's economic security. These are tragic mischaracterizations. Rather, they are seeking only to secure their own future, and preserve their land and way of life for future generations.
Follow this link to sign the petition and support indigenous rights>>>
Click on the Photo to Enlarge
We thought this would complement our recent piece on the appropriation of the Native American through images - this one taking an activist/political stance as Bansky's work typically does. Click the photo to enlarge.
What if the pollinator crisis was not so much a mysterious global phenomenon wrought by inscrutable worker bees called "Colony Collapse Disorder" but instead a very clear result of economic forces? Well, according to an interesting article, "Raspberries, Pears and Chocolate: A Fresh Understanding of the Bee Crisis," we came across on The Guardian, the big picture of the crisis tells a very different story than the one we have been reading. As one scientist states, "At least for honeybees, the pollinator crisis is not happening." This is because the key to the crisis is not viewing it strictly in terms of a decrease in U.S. hives, but instead in terms of outsourced honeybees, and the replacement of small, diverse crops with luxury crops and monoculture farms. As author Nathanael Johnson explains, 
