Idle No More and Human Rights Defenders

Last summer Niila, Saara-Maria and Aslak visited Zürich, Switzerland to plan a Youth in Action program. Now, 7 months from that our hard work paid off and we can now see the results. 27 youngsters from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy and Romania (and of course Switzerland and Germany) gathered together for a week long training on several issues considering human rights. In our group we have people from various youth organizations but also students.

Our second training day was quite full of activities, for example we learned about the ongoing struggle of Native Americans of Canada when our trainer Roy came to tell us about Idle No More. This was of course especially interesting for our several Sámi participants since many Sámi had their own Idle No More support events.
We were reminded how much media can affect public opinion and how important it is to think with your own brain. We learned also about the backgrounds of the movement, and that it is not ”just an Indian thing”, but a movement concearning human rights in general.

We also had two human rights activists telling us about the most well-known human rights organization, Amnesty International.  Victoria and Andri told us a brief history and then we got to do some actual ”field work”,  when we organized our own flash mob in support of Yolanda Oquelí, Guatemalan woman who was attacked because of her activism against gold-mining companies. We will post pictures and a video from the flash mob later on.

All in all, our day was hard but very rewarding. If we go on like this, it is going to be a perfect week!