The United States has consistently ignored the rights of American Indians, and in recent years, has any progress been made toward treating indigenous people with a modicum of dignity and respect? This modicum is still far too little to balance against the genocide, Indian schools and relocation programs of past decades, but when Uncle Sam gives an inch, you have to stand up and salute it or get no more inches in the future. Thank you, Great White Father, for the inch. Now if you can get Leonard Peltier the pardon he deserves, you might earn that salute, but one issue at a time. Step outside the United States and all bets are off especially where corporate America is concerned. Big Business is truly color blind. They don’t care if you are black, white, Indian or Asian, when you have something they want, they will make it theirs. Such is the case with Occidental Petroleum, one of the United States many oil companies. Right now, Occidental is perched like a hawk over the U’wa tribe of Colombia. The U’wa have the misfortune of being in the way of oil. In spite of the fact that the drilling site is on the sacred ancestral territory of the U’wa, Occidental and the Colombian government want in. It seems easy for many Americans to ignore such claims, after all, most Americans don’t see what is sacred about land unless it has a church or a football stadium on it. But to the indigenous population of the Western hemisphere, sacred is not a matter of development, but quite the opposite. The U’wa are prepared to give their lives in a suicide pact to save their land from devastation and it is time the world took their tongues out of their cheeks and noticed.Editorial Board: Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Amie Van Overmeer and Andrea Hauser