[Indigsol] Reminder - Tuesday THE BUSINESS OF GOLD IN GUATEMALA

[Indigenous Peoples' Solidarity Movement -Ottawa]

Please help spread the word!


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"THE BUSINESS OF GOLD IN GUATEMALA”
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Please join us for a public event with Grahame Russell, co-director of
Rights Action - a grassroots organization working together with indigenous
grassroots communities in Central America in resistance to human rights
violations and in support of struggles for democracy, justice and Mother
Earth:

CRACKS IN THE WALLS OF IMPUNITY & CORRUPTION
IN GUATEMALA & HONDURAS, &
WITH GLOBAL RESOURCE EXTRACTION COMPANIES

6:30 pm
Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010
Agora, Ground Floor of Jock Turcot University Centre, University of Ottawa
(map - http://www.uottawa.ca/maps/)


In this event, we will present the documentary "THE BUSINESS OF GOLD in
Guatemala: Tale of a Conflict Foretold" followed by a Q&A session by
Grahame Russell.

“The Business of Gold in Guatemala”, a 50-minute film, documents one
struggle – the resistance of the Mayan-Mam people of San Miguel Ixtahuacan
(in Guatemala) against the Canadian company Goldcorp Inc.

In May 2007, former chairman of the Vancouver-based mining company
Goldcorp Inc - Ian Telfer - donated $25 million to the School of
Management of the University of Ottawa.  In honour of his donation, the
School of Management was renamed the Telfer School of Management, ignoring
environmental and health harms, and other human rights violations, caused
by the mines operated by Goldcorp in Guatemala, Honduras and else-where in
the world.


During the presentation, Grahame will focus particular attention on:


How "northern actors" - the USA and Canadian governments, businesses,
investors, the World Bank, etc. - contribute to and benefit from the
unjust economic model and resultant exploitation and poverty,
environmental harms, and repression; and, from there, how North Americans,
from all walks of life, can get more involved in these and other struggles
to help achieve "another world is possible and necessary".


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RIGHTS ACTION (www.rightsaction.org)

With tax charitable status in Canada and the USA, Rights Action funds and
works to eliminate poverty and the underlying causes of poverty.  RA
supports community-based development, environmental, disaster relief and
human rights projects and organizations in Guatemala and Honduras, as well
as in Chiapas [Mexico], El Salvador and Haiti.  RA educates about and is
involved in other work aimed at critically understanding unjust
north-south relations and global development, environmental and human
rights issues and the challenges of poverty eradication.


GRAHAME RUSSELL

Grahame - a Canadian - lives in Connecticut with his two children.  He is
a graduate of the University of Guelph (Latin American studies) and the
Faculty of Law, Ottawa University.  From 1984-1995, Grahame worked with a
range of development, environmental and human rights solidarity and NGO
groups in Mexico and Central America, living for 8 years in the region. 
With Rights Action since 1995, Grahame has led Rights Action's work in the
USA and Canada.  Grahame's work has taken him throughout Guatemala,
Honduras, Chiapas and Oaxaca, as well as to El Salvador and Haiti. 
Grahame speaks and publishes regularly about the wide range of issues
referred to above.  He is the author of: "The Never Ending" (1992) and
"Code Z59.5: There is Only One People Here" (2010).


THE BUSINESS OF GOLD in Guatemala: Tale of a Conflict Foretold

Even as the government of Guatemala was signing the 1996 “Peace Accords”,
it was – unbeknownst to the Guatemala population – giving out hundreds of
mining concessions to international (mainly Canadian) mining companies. 
Since the early 2000s, serious conflicts have broken out in Guatemala – as
well as else-where in Central America – due to the environmental and
health harms and other violations of human and indigenous rights being
caused by mainly Canadian mining companies.


For more information, please visit http://www.ipsmo.org.

Hope to see you there!


In Solidarity,
Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement Ottawa
on unceded Algonquin Territory

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