Indigenous Rights

When Branded as a Born Criminal: The Plight of India’s De-Notified Tribes

By Mariya Salim
Branded as being born ‘criminal’ 150 years ago under British colonial rule, De-Notified Tribes (DNTs) continue to bear the brunt of the various laws that stigmatised them since 1871.

Bangladesh’s Indigenous Forest Dwellers Fear Losing Ancestral Land as Officials Grapple with Land Grabs

By Rafiqul Islam
When the Bangladesh Forest Department felled Basanti Rema’s banana orchard, Rema, a Garo indigenous forest-dweller of Madhupur Forest, felt she was living a nightmare. Rema, from Pegmari village in Madhupur, Tangail district, had cultivated the banana plants on half an acre in the Madhupur Forest. But the Forest Department claimed that the land on which the bananas were cultivated belonged to the department. 

Weaponizing Science in Global Food Policy

By Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles
In July, the United Nations will convene “Science Days”, a high-profile event in preparation for the UN Food Systems Summit later this year. Over the course of two days, the world will be treated to a parade of Zoom sessions aimed at “highlighting the centrality of science, technology and innovation for food systems transformation.”

Agro-industry Surrounds Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil

By Flávia Milhorance
Watatakalu Yawalapiti is 40 years old. She was born in the Amakapuku village, surrounded by a large preserved forest in the heart of Brazil. She spent part of her childhood on the white sands and clear waters of the Tuatuari river. At other times, she would sit in a circle listening to her great-grandfather telling stories, like the one about how the white man would arrive with a huge blade and cut down the trees as one shaves one's body hair.

I Entered My Country’s House of Justice and Found a Snake Charmer’s Temple

By Vijay Prashad
On a Sunday night on 21 March 2021, gunmen stopped Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante (age 41) as he walked from this mother’s home to his own in the village of Nueva Granada near San Antonio de Cortés (Honduras). The gunmen opened fire in front of a catholic church, killing this leader of United Communities in front of his children. Forty bullets were found at the scene.

Indigenous Communities in Mexico Fight Energy Projects

By Emilio Godoy
Indigenous farmers on communally owned lands have blocked since 2016 a private solar farm in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan by means of legal action, due to the company’s failure to hold consultations with local native communities and the risk of environmental damage.

SACRED FUTURES – The NESFAS Story

Here is a glance at our journey as a non-profit organisation, like all successful endeavors strong relationships stem from time, effort and patience.

Why Incarceration further Disadvantages Australia’s Indigenous

By Neena Bhandari
Keenan Mundine grew up in the Aboriginal community social housing called The Block, infamous for poor living conditions, alcohol and drug use, and violence, in Sydney’s Redfern suburb. At the age of about seven, soon after losing his parents to drugs and suicide, he was separated from his siblings and placed in kinship care.

Learning From Indigenous Peoples: My Morocco Diary

By Heike Kuhn
Once a year, on 9 August, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, celebrating their unique culture and knowledge. This is done mostly from a distance, from our homes in (nominally) developed countries. But are we as developed as we pretend to be? On this question, I reflected for a while, still remembering a special and personal experience of having spent several days with an indigenous Berber family in Morocco.

Mining giant Rio Tinto Face Environmental, Human Rights Complaint in Papua New Guinea

By Catherine Wilson
Local communities in the vicinity of the abandoned Panguna copper mine, have taken decisive action to hold the global mining multinational, Rio Tinto, accountable for alleged environmental and human rights violations during the mine’s operations between 1972 and 1989.

Belo Monte Dam: Electricity or Life in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest

By Mario Osava
"We are no longer familiar with the Xingú River," whose waters govern "our way of life, our income, our food and our navigation," lamented Bel Juruna, a young indigenous leader from Brazil´s Amazon rainforest.

Reclaim Your Rights: Defend Indigenous People’s Lands

By Beverly L. Longid
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.

Q&A: Mro Indigenous Community Plea for Halt of Construction of 5-Star Hotel

By Samira Sadeque
The construction of a five-star hotel in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, could lead to the forced eviction of the Mro indigenous community from their ancestral lands and destroy “the social, economic, traditional and cultural fabric of the community”, warns Amnesty International.

But local activist Reng Young Mro told IPS that the international community must rally behind the Mro indigenous community to halt the construction.

Could the Finance Sector Hold the Key to Ending Deforestation?

By Sarah Rogerson
At the beginning of 2020, there were hopes that this would be a ’super year for nature’. It has not turned out that way. Tropical forests, so crucial for biodiversity, the climate and the indigenous communities who live in them, have continued to be destroyed at alarming rates. In fact, despite the shutdown of large parts of the global economy, rates of deforestation globally have increased since last year.

African Languages Matter: Is There Still Time to Prevent Cultural Genocide?

By Victor Oladokun
As a 10 year-old newly arrived in Lagos from England, I recall listening intently to how the Yoruba language - my father's language - was spoken. I would constantly repeat in my head or verbally repeat what I thought I had heard. I was not always successful. Many times, what would come out of my mouth would throw my friends into fits of laughter.

Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past

By Siddharth Akali
This week, 450 public development banks from around the world met for the Finance in Common Summit at the Paris Peace Forum. They gathered to discuss how they can direct their combined investments of over USD 2 trillion - 10% of total investments in the world - “to support the transformation or the global economy” and “build new forms of prosperity that take care of people and the planet.”

Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities Offer Best Hope for Our Planetary Emergency

By Yoko Watanabe and Nina Kantcheva
Indigenous peoples and local communities offer the best hope for solutions to our planetary emergency. These solutions are grounded in traditional, time-tested practices and knowledge.

Can Colonialism be Reversed? The UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Provides Some Answers

Can a state built upon the “taking of another people’s lands, lives and power” ever really be just?  Colonialism can’t be reversed, so at a simple level the answer is no.

Covid-19 Pandemic Another Threat to Indigenous Communities

By Angel Mendoza
The voices of indigenous people worldwide are being silenced and their lives made invisible. Stewards of the earth, they are left at the fringes of public discourse in countries around the globe. Indigenous people are not “extinct”, they exist, and they are building innovative networks and solutions, that could be the key to many of our world’s problems.

Mayan Train Threatens to Alter the Environment and Communities in Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
Mayan anthropologist Ezer May fears that the tourism development and real estate construction boom that will be unleashed by the Mayan Train, the main infrastructure project of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will disrupt his community.

Indigenous Best Amazon Stewards, but Only When Property Rights Assured: Study

By Sue Branford
“The xapiri [shamanic spirits] have defended the forest since it first came into being. Our ancestors have never devastated it because they kept the spirits by their side,” declares Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who belongs to the 27,000-strong Yanomami people living in the very north of Brazil.
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