

'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
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(openDemocracy)* — While all eyes were focused on elections in the US, few noticed that a new government was to be sworn in in Montenegro. Shepherds and villagers of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor mountain range, the biggest mountain grassland in the Balkans and second biggest in Europe, looked with hope to the new government as they are fighting to preserve their traditional lands and ways of life.
A military training ground supported and fueled by NATO has been operating since 2019 on their lands, which for millennia have served as pasture to local communities living in the area.
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Beverly L. Longid is the Global Coordinator of International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL). Beverly is an indigenous Igorot belonging to the Bontok-Kankanaeys tribe from Sagada, Mountain Province in the Philippines. She is also the International Officer of Katribu – National Alliance of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, and Co-Chair of CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness. The IPMSDL Global Secretariat is currently based in Quezon City, Philippines.
Indigenous Peoples, advocates and members of IPMSDL call for continuing struggle for self-determination to combat imperialist plunder and state-terror. Credit: Carlo Manalansan, International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL)
– Rights are earned through hard-fought struggles. And for Indigenous Peoples (IP), its fulfillment comes from the collective and continuous defense of ancestral land and territory, and assertion of their ways of life and the right to self-determination.