LifeMosaic has produced an excellent new series of 10 videos, sharing “stories of resistance, resilience and hope with communities on the frontline of the global rush for land”. The video series is titled, “Territories of Life: A video toolkit for indigenous peoples about land and rights”.
The videos were filmed in Indonesia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, Tanzania and Cameroon.
In a press release, LifeMosaic explains that,
The Territories of Life toolkit is being released at a time when many of the world’s indigenous peoples face unprecedented pressures and threats to their territories, especially from large‐scale land acquisitions and the extractive and agro-industries. Some of the videos in the toolkit examine global land grabbing, detailing how companies and governments use a variety of tactics to gain control of community land.
Watch the Introduction to the series:
Topics covered in the series include: land grabs, company tactics, and using the law. But the videos are far from being all doom and gloom. In Benefits of Territory, for example, different Indigenous Peoples explain what territory means to them and its importance. And the videos include inspirational stories of communities successfully defending their territories: Maasai indigenous women in Tanzania; the Misak indigenous people in Colombia; and one of the largest community managed forests in the world in Guatemala, covering 500,000 hectares of forest.
Organise a screening
LifeMosaic is working with hundreds of local partners to distribute the Territories of Life toolkit and is encouraging communities and supporting organisations to organising screenings of the videos. The photograph above is of a screening with the Secoya community in Ecuador in August 2015. You can learn more about organising a screening on LifeMosaic’s website.
The videos are available in Indonesia, Spanish, English, and will soon be available in Swahili and French. The videos can be watched (and downloaded) on LifeMosaic’s website, and copies of DVDs are available free for indigenous communities and supporting organisations. To request a copy, please contact LifeMosaic. (Other groups are requested to pay a donation of £10 for the DVDs.)
Over the next few weeks, REDD-Monitor will post each of the videos in the series. To receive an alert from LifeMosaic when the next video is available, sign up to LifeMosaic’s mailing list.