UNPFIP Network: Declaration of IV Continental Indigenous Summit Abya Yala

The Mama Quta Titijaja Declaration

IV Continental Indigenous Summit Abya Yala
Puno, Peru May 28-31, 2009

October 12-16, 2009

Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and Her Peoples!

Gathered at the Main Paqarina of the Mama Qota Titijaja Lake, Lake of the Grey Stone Puma, 6500 delegates from organizations representing the Indigenous Peoples from the 22 countries of Abya Yala along with our relatives of peoples of Africa, United States, Canada, the Polar Circle and other parts of the world, with the participation of 500 observers from various social movements, we resolve:

To proclaim that we are witness to a deep crisis of Western capitalist civilization that superimposes upon itself to encompass the environmental, energy and cultural dimensions, the policies of social exclusion and even famines, and that as an expression of the failure of Euro-centrism and a colonialist definition of modernity that was born from ethnocide is now carrying the whole of humanity to slaughter.

To offer an alternative of life to the civilization of death, regenerating our roots as Peoples of the Earth in order to project ourselves to our future, guided by our principles and practices of equilibrium between men and women, Mother Earth and spirituality, cultures and peoples, all of which we call Good Living / Living with Wellness. We are a diversity of thousands of civilizations with over 40 thousand years of history, which were invaded and colonized by those who, just five centuries later, are leading us now to a planetary suicide. We are called to defend our food sovereignty by giving priority to native crops, domestic consumption and communitarian economies. Our mandate is to empower our organizations so that they can improve our strategies for Living Well, and to exercise these strategies through our community governments.

We shall build Communitarian and Pluri-National States based on the principles of Self-governance and the Self-determination of all Peoples and the reconstitution of the original nations and their territories. Such states must implement legislative, judicial and electoral systems and public intercultural policies which empower the political representation of the Indigenous Peoples without intervention from political parties. We must continue to fight for new Constitutions in all those countries that still do not recognize the plural nationality of states. The Pluri-National States shall be not only for Indigenous peoples but also for all excluded peoples. With Everything for Everyone, we make an open call to all social movements and social leaders for an intercultural dialogue, conducted with respect and horizontally structured, in order to overcome verticality and invisibility.

We shall reconstitute our ancestral territories as a source of our identity, our spirituality, history and our future. We the Indigenous Peoples and our territories are a single complementary entity. We reject all forms of land division, privatization, concession, predation and pollution from extractive industries. We demand the Free, Prior and Informed Consent, in public and in our own languages, conducted in good faith, and through representative organizations of our peoples, not only regarding specific projects but also development policy and plans. We demand the decriminalization of the coca leaf.

We ratify the organization of the Minga (traditional indigenous collective communal organization) of the Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and Her Peoples against the commercialization of life (including land, forests, water, seas, agro-fuels, external debt) and environmental pollution (extractive transnational, international financial institutions, GMOs, pesticides, toxic consumption), as well as the criminalization of the Indigenous and social movements - which will to be implemented from October 12 to 16, 2009.

We shall construct a Climate Justice Tribunal to place on trial the transnational corporations and the complicit governments that are predators of Mother Nature, plundering our natural resources and violating our rights, as the first step towards an International Court of Environmental Crimes.

We shall organize an Alternative Summit in Defense of the Mother Earth during the Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen of December 2009, in order to push for effective actions to address the reality of climate disaster, such as the linking of Indigenous territorial rights with the Good Living model and the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent as necessary strategies to save the planet.

We shall confront the criminalization of the practice of our indigenous rights, militarization, imposition of foreign military bases, forced displacement and genocide among our peoples, through social alliances that must generate broad mobilization for the amnesty of all our leaders and authorities on trial and imprisoned, especially for the fighters for freedom and for life who are in prisons of the United States (Leonard Peltier) and around the world. We affirm our support and shall expand on the demands presented before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Western Shoshone). We support the call promote the international trial of the governments of Colombia, Peru and Chile.

We demand an immediate International Tribunal to try of the government of Alvaro Uribe Velez, for committing genocide against Colombian Indigenous peoples; the Chilean State for enforcing an antiterrorism law resulting in the persecution and prosecution of the Mapuche peoples just demands and for crimes against Mapuche leaders and the militarization of the Wallmapu territory. We call for Trial of Alan Garcia for the legislative auto-coup that included 102 pro-FTA legislative decrees, which privatize Indigenous territories resulting in the prosecution and persecuting over a thousand innocent community leaders.

We determine to implement our rights, demanding that all member states of the UN to legislate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with the status of national law, following the leadership from Bolivia, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, among other countries. Such implementation policies must include as well the Right of Communication of the Indigenous Peoples. If President Barack Obama truly wants to make changes to avert the disaster of imperialism, he should start at home - and pass into law the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United States.

We resolve to mobilize our organizations in defense of the struggle of the Amazon Indigenous Peoples in Peru against the externally imposed rules that privatize their collective territories and natural resources. Their struggle is our struggle. We call to organize strikes during the first week of June 2009 in front of every Embassy of Peru in each of our countries, demanding peaceful resolution and not repression for our brothers and sisters. In that regards the Indigenous and Campesino (farm worker) organizations of Peru agree to hold an immediate National Uprising of the Peoples of Peru in June 2009 demanding the repeal of the anti Indigenous decrees resulting from the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement.

We reject the Free Trade Agreements with United States, Europe, Canada, China and other countries which have destroyed our economies, as new instruments of subjugation of our Peoples and plunder of Mother Earth. We reject the tactics of the European Union along with the dictators of Peru and Colombia that would destroy the Andean Community in order to impose their Free Trade Agreement.

We resolve to mobilize our organizations and the social movements of our countries in defense of the liberation process initiated in Bolivia, and reject any coup, separatist movement, racist acts and assassination attempts from the local Euro-American oligarchy supported by the U.S. empire. We reject as illegitimate the political asylum granted by the Peruvian government to Bolivian accomplices of genocide. With this in mind, we now agree to hold the V Summit of Indigenous Peoples of the Abya Yala in 2011, in the Qollasuyu region of Bolivia.

We commit to strengthen our own bilingual and intercultural education systems and Indigenous health care models, to advance in the decolonization of cognition, in particular to stop the practice of biopiracy by defending the special status of our intellectual heritage as Indigenous Peoples within a collective and transgenerational natural framework.

We support of the struggle of the peoples of the world against imperial powers, including calling for the end of the embargo against Cuba, the de-occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel, and on behalf of the collective rights of the Masai, Mohawk, Shoshone, Same, Kurdish, Catalan and Basque peoples among others.

We determine to construct paradigms of alternative living to address the crises facing Western civilization and its schema of colonial modernity, initiating a Forum on the Crisis of Western Civilization, Decolonization, Good Living among others topics, to be held in Cusco, Peru on March 26 to 28, 2010.

We shall globalize our struggles through the organization of the First Summit of Indigenous Communications in 2011, in Cauca, Colombia; the First Indigenous Summit on Water; the Summit of Indigenous Communicators, and the II Continental Summit of Indigenous Women by 2011, within the trajectory of the V Summit of Indigenous Peoples.

We shall constitute a Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of the Abya Yala, in order to continue the process of conformation from the bottom up, creating organizing committees of Indigenous women, adolescents, children, youth and communicators, with particular focus on the regional integration of Abya Yala North [North America]. This Coordinating Body of Abya Yala shall monitor the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations, in order to overcome their domination by imperial powers, and to realize the formation of the United Nations of the Abya Yala and the World.

The Land does not belong to us, we belong to the Land!

The Condor and the Eagle fly together again!

Mama Quta Titijaja, May 31, 2009