SEED SOVEREIGNTY DOCUMENTS | Declaration of Ek Balam

Indigenous Corn Farmers Issue
Declaration at 13^th COP of the Convention on Biological Diversity in
Cancún, Mexico

NATIVE
GROWERS EXPOUND PRINCIPLES TO PROTECT THE SACRED IN CORN

Devon G.
Peña | Seattle, WA | January 3, 2017

The world’s
indigenous corn growers gathered together in the Mayan village of Ek Balam this
past December 1-3 (2016) for a spiritual and political retreat to address the
threats posed to native maize. The group of native corn farmers addressed a
wide set of threats ranging from dispossession of farmers from their ancestral
lands, the decline of corn culture among younger generations, and the
introduction of genetically engineered (GE) crops that can damage the genetic
integrity of land races and damage ecosystems and wildlife including vital
pollinators.

 

Corn spiral.
The gathering centered around this spiral consisting of all the varieties of
native corn brought to the meeting by all 54 participants. Photo by Devon G. Peña.

The
participants included native corn farmers from Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico,
Peru, and China (Yunan Province). Also present at the gathering were indigenous
farmers from the United States and Canada including farmers from Onondaga,
Seneca, Tesuque Pueblo, and representatives of the South Central Farmers (California)
and acequia farmers from Colorado’s San Luis Valley. I was a delegate from the
acequia communities of southern Colorado and participated on behalf of The
Acequia Institute.

I am
posting the text of the Declaration of Ek Balam in its entirety here and will
follow with more posts offering detailed discussion of the context and
background that shaped our collective work to protect the sacred in corn.

 

Alejandro Argumedo of Asociación
ANDES (Cuzco, Peru) addressed the group of corn producers at the start of our
meeting. Photo by Devon G. Peña.

DECLARATION
OF EK BALAM

Gathered
together in Ek Balam, Yucatan, Mexico, in the center or origin of maize, 50
members from indigenous communities, First Nations, and peasant farmers from
across the world, representing organizations and thousands of sons and
daughters of this plant, declare the following:

1.    
That indigenous and peasant communities are the legitimate
possessors, conservators and improvers of corn and all of its associated
biodiversity, that we have created and protected in our territories over
centuries the biological and cultural wealth of the world, which serves to
remind us that we are a diversity of colors, forms, smells, tastes, and
different ways of knowing.

2.   
We visualize the biocultural heritage of indigenous people
and of humanity through four different contexts — life, community, food
sovereignty, and wholeness.

3.   
We did not domesticate maize, maize domesticated us, it
forms part of mother earth – the water, the wind, the trees, the animals, and
we form part of this collective and we recognize that it was woman who created
agriculture and this sacred plant.

4.   
Maize is the center of life with sacred value for original
peoples, and together with biological diversity and it can never be treated as
a commodity.

5.   
As original people, we have conserved, maintained, and
improved, day to day, until the present, all of the varieties of maize and the
biodiversity that linked to the use of nature.

The participants
of this encounter declare the following to all those who are meeting in Cancun
during the development of COP-13 the following:

1.    
Respect for the cosmovisions, uses and customs of indigenous
people and peasant communities and their territories.

2.   
Respect for and recognition of the traditional collective
practices of work and solidarity between our communities, which have permitted
us to exercise conviviality.

3.   
Any law applicable to seeds and biological diversity should
be discussed and agreed to in a representative consensus manner through free, prior,
and informed consent.

4.   
No law will criminalize the free exchange and caring flow of
seeds among indigenous peoples and peasant farmers.

5.   
Prohibition of the introduction, planting, and legal or
illegal sale of transgenic maize seeds in all the countries whose indigenous
peoples, through present times, have conserved and diversified this plant and
its associated cultigens.

6.  
That the national governments will prohibit national and
transnational corporations from placing at risk, destroying, appropriating or
patenting the natural resources of our territories, agroecosystems, biocultural
landscapes, and biodiversity in all of its expression.

7.   
Promote initiatives in agroecological production exercising
the right to healthy, sound, and adequate food, in accord with the cultural
identity of each indigenous community, as a political strategy for food
sovereignty in each locality.

8.  
Promote and reinforce the direct participation of women of
indigenous and peasant communities, in decision-making related to the
regulation of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge.

9.  
An end to discrimination based our traditional ways of
dress, forms of speech, and skin color.

10.
Widen, reinforce, and articulate the networks of production
and preservation of native seeds at the national level.

11. 
Create and distribute educational materials, in the
languages of indigenous peoples, appropriate to the reality of our indigenous
and peasant communities, to assist in socializing laws, treaties, and
conventions that are negotiated on the basis of the backs of these communities.

12.
That the institutions of higher education design educational
programs based on the needs and demands of indigenous communities, arising from
dialogue of knowledge and intercultural exchange.

13.
Any result emanating from COP13 of the CBD must respect the
international accords on human rights, particularly the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Convention 169 of
the International Labor Organization, without superseding this framework or
agreements at the national and sub-national levels; only in this way, with
binding juridical orders that respect our rights can guarantee that the CBD
will not result in violations of these inherent rights. Recognize that
indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination, which includes
maintaining, controlling, protecting, and developing our cultural heritage,
traditional knowledge, sciences, technologies, and cultures, understood to
include human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, as well as
understandings of the properties of fauna and flora.

This declaration was drafted by a group of 54 indigenous
corn producers from across Canada, China (Yunan), Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru,
and the United States.