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International human rights groups are concerned about growing violence against Indigenous environmental defenders in Honduras – where four killings have taken place since the start of this year.
Many people are comparing the wave of killings of Indigenous environmental activists to the infamous 2016 assassination of Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Caceres.
Maria Martin reports.
On the Caribbean Coast, members of Honduras’ Garifuna ethnic community of Black and Indigenous origin say it’s strange that rights activist Ricardo Arnaul Montero was declared drowned with no autopsy.
Montero had been receiving death threats for months related to a long-running land dispute in his Triunfo De La Cruz community.
This incident comes on the heels of the killings of other Indigenous Honduran environmental activists, like Aly Dominguez and Jairo Bonilla, whom founded the Guapinol water defenders movement and fought against river contamination by a controversial open-pit iron oxide mine.
They were killed in January in broad daylight.
Police say they died in a robbery attempt, but their families are pressuring the government of President Xiomara Castro for an independent investigation.
Supporters like attorney Yolanda Gonzalez of El Progreso say local authorities have criminalized these environmental defenders for too long to be objective.
Gonzalez says one of President Xiomara Castro’s promises when she took office a year ago was to defend Honduras’ highly at-risk environmental activists.
But so far, she says there’s little political will and nothing’s been done.
The Department of the Interior recently announced additional Biden administration appointees who will join the agency, including Lynn Trujillo.
She’ll serve as senior counselor to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo).
Trujillo is from Sandia Pueblo, and is also Acoma and Taos Pueblo.
She most recently served as cabinet secretary for the Department of Indian Affairs in New Mexico.
After taking her position as cabinet secretary in 2019, Trujillo talked about the importance of Native women in leadership roles, and working with then-Rep. Haaland on the campaign trail.
“I hope that we inspire other women to envision themselves in these roles. I would have never foreseen myself in this position, but I’m here now and I know now all my life experiences in terms of my career, but also who I am as a Pueblo woman has prepared me for this.”
As Indian Affairs cabinet secretary, Trujillo worked closely with tribes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She also made it a priority to address missing and murdered Indigenous people, which included working closely with a task force, and focused on Native youth issues with an Indigenous youth council.
Sec. Haaland is also a Pueblo woman from Laguna.
She made history becoming the first Native American cabinet secretary of the Interior, and also as a Native American woman elected to Congress.
The Biden administration’s newly-created job of Arctic Ambassador goes to an Alaskan, as Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports.
Michael Sfraga currently chairs the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, a President Joe Biden appointment in 2021.
Sfraga, who is considered an expert on Arctic geography and policy, has been a longtime advocate of using Indigenous knowledge to better understand the science of the Arctic.
He has served in a number of national leadership roles that involve the Arctic and helped to found the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Sfraga was also a Vice Chancellor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a faculty member.
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