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Indigenous Issues (International)
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Female Coffee Growers Find New Freedoms in Peru |
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Female Coffee Growers Find New Freedoms in Peru
Article
By Sadie Hoagland - Feb 08 2006
In Peru, female coffee growers have partnered with a U.S. import
company to market their own brand of organic, fair-trade coffee. In
addition to gaining more economic control, the women are finding their
work is changing their culture as well.
NUEVO YORK, Peru (WOMENSENEWS)--Her hands move methodically down the
branch, raking the red coffee cherries into the basket around her neck.
She moves to the next branch, demonstrating the work of harvesting
coffee. Watching her dexterity and strength, one would never guess that
Rosa Cantalina Sanchez is 66 years old.
Glades Valencia, 14, is doing the same thing, running her hands down the branches as if she were braiding hair.
Sanchez and Valencia represent a life's work of coffee growing in
northern Peru. Even though many of the region's farmers have attained
"Fair Trade and Organic" certification in order to grow higher premium
beans, the most a coffee-farming family can hope to make is $1,200 a
year, and only $400 in poorer areas.
The average annual per-capita income for this region is about
$1,300, according to the Organic Products Trading Company, an import
company based in Vancouver, Wash., that works with the growers. That
level of poverty describes about 68,600 families in northern Peru who
together produce 49 percent of Peru's coffee--about 273.2 million
pounds--almost all of it grown for export.
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Job surge leaves Aborigines behind |
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Job surge leaves Aborigines behind
By Tim Colebatch, Canberra
January 26, 2006
Most Aborigines of working age have no job, official figures
reveal - and the proportion with a job fell in the two years to
2004, despite huge growth in employment.
Experimental estimates of indigenous employment, published for
the first time by the Bureau of Statistics, show massive exclusion
of Aboriginal people from the workforce, despite efforts by
government to close the gap. The bureau estimates that in 2004 just 47 per cent of Aborigines
and Torres Strait Islanders aged 15 to 64 had a job. By contrast,
71 per cent of non-indigenous Australians the same age were in work
- half as many again.
Close to half of all indigenous people of working age were not
looking for a job, the bureau said. Of those in the labour market,
17 per cent were unemployed, three times the rate of other
Australians (5.4 per cent). |
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Canadian natives win £1bn for 70 years' abuse |
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Canadian natives win £1bn for 70 years' abuse
From David Charter in Washington
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| CANADA
announced yesterday that it will pay Can$2 billion (£1 billion) to
former pupils of government boarding schools that were set up to
“Christianise” the children of native Indians but which are blamed for
decades of physical and emotional abuse. About 80,000 Canadian aborigines will qualify for a share of the
biggest pay-out in the country’s history, which marks a fresh attempt
by the Government to atone for systematically trying to strip native
children of their language and culture over a period of 70 years. Native
leaders said that the money should be just the first step towards
redressing a national tragedy that had left generations spiritually
bereft and fuelled deep and continuing social problems. Canada’s 700,000-strong indigenous communities, known as the
First Nations, suffer epidemic rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and
sexual abuse.
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Jobless Aborigines in Tiawan at risk |
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Jobless Aborigines at risk
SURVIVAL:
The government is working to reduce the unemployment rate among Aboriginals, and has set aside more than NT$6 billion in funding to do so
By Jenny Chou
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Dec 11, 2005,Page 2
The consistently higher rates of unemployment among the Aboriginal population compared with the rest of the population puts their survival at risk, officials said yesterday.
A panel discussion involving the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA), the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), and the Council of Indigenous People (COIP) was held yesterday to discuss government initiatives to resolve the issue.
Deputy head of the Katagalan Institute Lin Hsiang-kai (林向愷) said that while the trend toward export trade in the 1960s had boosted the labor market, globalization in the 1990s had led to the closure of many industries in Taiwan, decreasing demand for laborers.
This, in addition to the legalization of the import of foreign laborers in 1992, had reduced job opportunities for indigenous people, a majority of whom are laborers.
"The economic development of Taiwan cannot be deemed fruitful if the economic survival of even a portion of the nation's citizen's isn't accounted for. Taiwan cannot call itself a democratic society if indigenous peoples' right to survive isn't protected," Lin said.
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Credit card anger in far north Queensland, New Zealand |
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Credit card anger in far north Queensland
17 December 2005
SYDNEY: A move by American Express to provide Aborigines in remote communities with credit cards has angered one town's mayor.
The company has issued some residents of Hopevale community, 300km north of Cairns of Cape York, with cards.
But many of them are on world-for-dole programmes, Hopevale mayor Greg McLean says.
He
said the people being given cards had limited ability to repay or
understand fully the implications of running up thousands of dollars in
credit purchases.
"It
was always my understanding that credit cards would only be given to
people with jobs and assets, yet the people I know on Hopevale with
cards have no assets or permanent employment," he told The Australian
newspaper.
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