The Bribris are a native people of about 11,500 in total, established in Costa Rica for centuries, some think for 5,000 years. They live on the Indian reserves of Salitre and Cabagra and speak the only indigenous language of Costa Rica taught at the university. They practice a form of religion related to shamanism and…

Money is what hurts the most. Popovic, the founder of Otpor (Enough), a student movement that played a key role in toppling Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, in 2004 created the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). In his Blueprint for revolution, a book that Popovic has just presented at the Freedom Forum in Oslo, he…

Seventy-year-old Father Michael Bossano’s solemn declaration sounds resolute. His streaks of white hair tell tales of many years spent travelling the world. For now, however, the soft-spoken Catholic priest has found his place in Malakal, a long way from the comforts of the city he used to call home, New York. “I always felt I…

An Amerindian legend says that one day, there was a huge wildfire. All the animals gazed at the disaster terrified, distressed and helpless. Only the little hummingbird was hurrying, going to find a few drops of water with his beak to extinguish the fire. After a moment, the armadillo, flustered with all the agitation, said,…

In Oruro, few months ago, there took place an exchange of knowledge among women from ten communities on the defense of their rights: it was an initiative of the Itinerant School of Mother Earth’s Defenders promoted by RENAMAT and the CASA Collective of Bolivia, and after a tour in the Huanuni mining center and in…

Hunger and homelessness continued to rise in major North American cities. Unemployment, employment-related problems, and low-paying jobs are likely contributing to hunger. High housing costs cause lack of affordable housing and are a source of mental illness. Social problems arise from substance abuse while emergency shelters turned away many from family life. The millions who…

“We are the ‘No’ that God scrawls on the wall,” said Cardinal Joseph Tobin, addressing a gathering of Faith leaders in Newark. He had first voiced that it is “the little person who goes into the square in the middle of town in the dark of the night and scrawls on the wall, ‘No’ ” that…

There is, in Scotland, a little island called Ulva, one of 790 Scottish islands, almost all very beautiful. Most are situated in four archipelagos, but there are also groups of islands in the estuaries and in the many fresh water lochs (the Scottish word for ‘lakes’). Only about 100 are inhabited, because of the lack…

Since President Trump, announced US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the United States Catholic Church affirmed its agreement and a commitment to climate action.  Now a campaign is launched with a declaration on Climate Change. The declaration starts saying: “As Catholic communities, organizations, and institutions in the United States, we join with state, tribal, and…

Indigenous peoples’ views of nature are incompatible with the extractive model, which is based on excess and limitless profit-seeking that drives to prey on natural resources and threatens the future of all human kind. There is a real philosophical conflict between the western worldview and the cosmo-vision of indigenous peoples. Their cosmo-vision is often based…

It all started when someone stood up saying, “In Liberia there is private land, public land, community’s land and Government’s land”. Surprised I investigated and I found an amazing answer. I was brought back to when “The statutory tenure system was introduced in the early 1800s by the American Colonization Society (ACS), which purchased land…