Just came upon these two films from al-Jazeera's english language site, and they are worth watching. The first is about Native Americans and loosely revolves around the question of the Lakota and Navaho relationship with the US political system. There's a telling moment in the "limo lobby", when a grassroots activist and rep from the Navaho president's office are discussing the lack of accountability around massive coal projects and the reporter tells the pro-coal govt rep that he should be making his argument to his fellow citizen, not the camera. Telling because he's caught in the historically standard approach of presenting these seriously destructive projects as being in the best interests of the tribe, end of story.
The second video is from a demonstration of native peoples in Malaysia, a bit dated at 3 months but no matter. The interesting aspect of al-Jazeera doing this is that it's a no holes barred expose on the authoritarian nature of a Muslim state. The police come down quite hard on the demonstrators, no justification at all for it. You can read more about the struggle between native rights and the Muslim government's stealing of their resources here and here. If you check the links, you'll see that this is the same battle found in all tropical forests, where illegal logging is going on for extensive profit with either govt complicity or total lack of oversight, OR, where indigenous people are being stripped of their rights to life, livelihood and peaceful resistance in the name of progress, national development (for the few) and open markets (for the foreign-based companies). The people of Sarawak have been defending their lands for a long, long time now. Kudos to al-Jazeera for some excellent media coverage that the rest of the corporate media continues to ignore or misrepresent.
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