Category Archives: Indigenous Peoples

Climate change imperils Indigenous ecosystems, food security, knowledge bases and ways of life

Inside Climate News reports: As world leaders gather in Dubai for the 28th United Nations climate talks, Indigenous representatives from seven socio-cultural regions are calling for a moratorium on “false solutions” that ignore the roots of the climate crisis and urging a drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The Indigenous peoples’ caucus, called the International… Read More »

As men told hunting stories, women hunted

The New York Times reports: It’s often viewed as a given: Men hunted, women gathered. After all, the anthropological reasoning went, men were naturally more aggressive, whereas the slower pace of gathering was ideal for women, who were mainly focused on caretaking. “It’s not something I questioned,” said Sophia Chilczuk, a recent graduate of Seattle… Read More »

We must not forget what happened to the world’s indigenous children

Steve Minton writes: Between 1890 and 1978, at Kamloops Indian Residential School in the Canadian province of British Columbia, thousands of Indigenous children were taught to ‘forget’. Separated from their families, these children were compelled to forget their languages, their identities and their cultures. Through separation and forgetting, settler governments and teachers believed they were… Read More »

Lula faces powerful opposition as he seeks to protect the Amazon and recognize Indigenous rights

Farai Shawn Matiashe writes: Surrounded by thousands of supporters, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known simply as “Lula”) was sworn into office on Jan. 1, 2023, at a colorful inauguration ceremony held at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. It was not Lula’s first time assuming the highest office of Latin America’s… Read More »

The surprising reason Neil Gorsuch has been so good on Native rights

Mark Joseph Stern writes: How did an archconservative justice on an archconservative bench become the best friend Native Americans have ever had at the Supreme Court? That is the question court observers are once again asking ourselves in light of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s role in Thursday’s hugely consequential decision protecting Native rights. Oddly, the answer may lie… Read More »

Brazilian Amazon at risk of being taken over by mafia, ex-police chief warns

The Guardian reports: The rapid advance of organised crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon risks turning the region into a vast, conflict-stricken hinterland plagued by heavily armed “criminal insurgents”, a former senior federal police chief has warned. Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021, said he feared the growing footprint of… Read More »

Forced assimilation of Native American children: ‘Our history has been hidden — the attempted genocide of our people’

Brandi Morin writes: “The U.S. has some internal searching inside that we have to do as a collective,” says Deborah Parker. The CEO of the Native American Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) — a network of Native academics, researchers, tribal leaders, boarding school survivors and their descendants working to establish a Congressional Truth Commission… Read More »

Archaeology and genomics together with Indigenous knowledge revise the human-horse story in the American West

Horses are an active part of life for the Lakota and many other Plains nations today. Jacquelyn Córdova/Northern Vision Productions By William Taylor, University of Colorado Boulder and Yvette Running Horse Collin, Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier Few places in the world are more closely linked with horses in the popular imagination than… Read More »

Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s environment minister

The Guardian reports: Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land. In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series… Read More »