Tomorrow will be too late

Partner With the Oakland Institute by Midnight Tonight

Time is running out to make your tax-deductible donation to support land rights around the world

Underlying our work is our commitment to elevate the voices of farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, and communities who are ignored, marginalized, and repressed as they face the theft of their lands, livelihoods and culture.

This past year, support from individual donors like you helped elevate struggles of the Indigenous from Tanzania and Kenya to Nicaragua.

Exposing Land Grab & Human Rights Abuses in the Name of Conservation in Kenya

Our November 2021 report, Stealth Game: “Community” Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya, laid bare the devastating impact on Indigenous pastoralist communities of privatized wildlife conservation by Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT).

One of Kenya’s largest conservation agencies, NRT is a recipient of millions in funding from donors such as USAID, the European Union, Danish and French development agencies and large environmental NGOs. Impacted communities have held protests, signed petitions, and initiated legal action against NRT’s presence on their lands. But their pleas for justice remain ignored by the Kenyan government and the police — even when reporting killings of family members and other human rights abuses. Our research exposed the reality of NRT’s “community” conservancies. Your support will now power our advocacy in the new year — providing a bullhorn to our Indigenous partners in their struggle to hold NRT and its donors accountable.

Challenging the Threat of “Fortress Conservation” and Safari Tourism on the Maasai in Tanzania

In June 2021 we unveiled plans of the Tanzanian government and UNESCO World Heritage Committee to evict tens of thousands of Indigenous Maasai pastoralists from their ancestral land. Smashing the lies used to justify the dispossession, we have hammered the irrefutable fact at the government and international conservation agencies that a top-down colonial approach to “conservation” does not protect the environment. Impacted communities must have a say in the decisions that affect their lives!

We mobilized over 100,000 signatures to the Tanzanian government and UNESCO — successfully gaining the attention of the UN Rapporteurs. But more needs to be done. We remain tenacious in the struggle to ensure the rights of the Maasai are recognized as essential to conserving nature.

Taking on the Drivers of Violence Against Indigenous in Nicaragua

Following the findings of Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution which garnered international media attention — bringing to daylight the land rights struggle of the Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities in Nicaragua, our advocacy resulted in a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in March 2021. Alongside partners, the Institute brought attention to the causes, magnitude, and impacts of colonization of Indigenous lands and the drivers of this violence in the presence of the Nicaraguan government.

Our work is fueled by people-power. It is this rigorous and courageous research and advocacy that policy makers, journalists, impacted communities, and YOU have come to expect from us. Costing many thousands of dollars, and endless hours of research to bring to light, this work is impossible without your support.

As 2021 comes to an end, I am asking you to help amplify our work by making the most generous tax-deductible donation you can today. Because the Oakland Institute never takes corporate money or government funding, we’re depending on you — and so grateful you are at our side!