I believe this decision really puts the United States of America on the spot. Ever since almost if not all South American countries were forced to endure the milton friedman economic fiasco and through those experiences came to the reality that that is NOT they way they want their countries to be based on economically and other wise, now they have become the western hemisphere’s more progressive continent. Certainly Brazil is become more rational.
But as mentioned in the post and other comments, stopping the ‘cowboys’ for slaughtering the indians to still steal their land and natural resources, it will take a very close vigilance to prevent that from happening because as has been demonstrated, cowboys are their own law to themselves. Which really exposes cowboys for what a lot of them really are, terrorists.

Thank-you CJ for articulating what so many of us must feel.

The problem remains, how can we protect our livelihoods and bio-diversity from the steam-roller of population pressure? I would hate to think of the great Amazon forest (where I grew up) as little more than “responsibly managed” for its pharmacological and timber harvests. We have such tame and insipid things already here in Europe.

Back when we Europeans were tearing ourselves apart over religion and popular sovereignty (early 17th century) we figured out that the centralisation of authority and the use of state terror were viable strategies for creating wealth and channeling our destructive energies.

The door for conquest and world domination was open and we channeled our energies into the colonisation and conquest of less populous spaces.

Just look where the “avoidance strategy” got us: Not only are we not better off, but we have yet to resolve the over-poulation problem.

I’m not sure the problem can be solved. But a decision such as this one is one small step in the right direction, toward the preservation of Mother Nature’s biodiversity and her ability to survive and regenerate after we are long gone.

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, twenty five years in the making, was passed in 2007.  Although it did not have the force of law behind it, the Declaration is having an impact.  Well before passage Indigenous South American’s were striving to reclaim their culture, their land, and their wealth and to weaken the choke hold that had been held on them by the Europeans since the Age of Discovery.  It has been five hundred years since Colombus and the Indigenous Peoples of South America are finally realizing results from their historic struggles, witness Venezuela and Bolivia among others.  Western propaganda does not identify the changes in South America in these terms, but there is no more central reason for the changes there than the reclamation of Indigenous cultures and land from the occupying Euro’s.  This is heartening.

Best news I’ve read or heard this year, maybe in many, many years. To think that a state judiciary finally adjudicated in accordance with innate human reason—according to what’s naturally given.

This kind of news is very rare, and allows for some reason to hope. Good to hear of a little justice finally delivered. Especially in the case of rather more-deserving indigenous people.

I was amused to read of how some think that the court’s decision might result in undermining of (so-called) “economic development.” That ridiculous fear could only have been issued by the most indoctrinated of blithering idiots. As though indigenous peoples haven’t known for millennia how to sustain themselves in what are no doubt sometimes hostile environments, though not so hostile most of the time. Not so hostile when generations have learned and then passed down ways and means by which to cope with and then live in accordance with a variety of planetary environments, the Amazon being but one among many.

Environments where people lived pretty much free of mental disorders requiring medications, which is to say not the New York Stock Exchange, and not Neiman Marcus or Wal-Mart, the first or the second depending on social status. And without newspapers and TV, never mind internet dating.

I don’t Romanticize in the least since it’s only we who are more “advanced” who do that, not they who do that. Indigenous peoples never think and never thought Romantically, only really. What we’ve long thought “progress” has resulted only in ruin. Much of that the result of passed-down ideology that promotes and celebrates individual ego, as more “advanced” cultures failed and keep on failing to understand that there could never be the individual outside of the collective. Collective is home, stomping ground. Place where to be and to live. Not where to be to indoctrinated and then incur debt.

Western idea of “economic development” has only ever amounted to fascist enslavement, not to mention ongoing, also fascistic, exploitation of the planet. By now to the point of no turning back. Damage has already been done. Is still being done. “Civilized” humankind has treated and still regards the planet the same as themselves—as means to just slightly squeaky ends. Not too much all at once. But chisel away at a piece of stone a little at a time for long enough…? Stone disappears no less than had it been blown to pieces all at once right upfront.

We are such CHISELERS! Recall Say’s Law. We chisel and chisel, forever thinking that it’s just a little chiseling. Just a little cheating. Then locate a big-time chiseler so that small-time chiseling appears even less. Lately, the Governor of Illinois, more decried for his stupidity in committing crime than for committing crime.

But for this little piece of Amazon paradise reported on here. Apparently (hopefully when decision is finalized), for now spared the ravages of capitalist-individualist, chiseling savagery, compared to which minor skirmishes that always happened too among indigenous peoples were quaint. Perfection is unattainable, which is no reason to forego trying altogether. Please, no mention of how all is a function of “human nature.” Such belief is part and parcel of ideology that justifies such belief.

I love this good-news story because living proof that what is believed “human nature,” and then circularly used to bolster belief in that notion of “human nature,” ain’t (human nature).

A final act of bravery that could save something important but the silence is mighty deafening as it appears to be a case of ‘you gave the native indians what?!’ as if they don’t deserve anything. Hope it holds up.