SANTIAGO: With songs like “We’ll Beat the State,” Chilean rappers Wechekeche Ni Trawun are on a mission to support the Mapuche indigenous people’s fight for justice and land rights.
Before the Spanish arrived in 1541, the Mapuche – or “people of the earth” in the Mapudungun language – controlled a territory that stretched 500km south of central Chile’s Biobio River.
Ecuador's Waorani indigenous tribe won their first victory Friday against big oil companies in a ruling that blocks the companies' entry onto ancestral Amazonian lands for oil exploration activities.
After two weeks of deliberations, a criminal court in Puyo, central Ecuador, accepted a Waorani bid for court protection in Pastaza province to stop an oil bidding process after the government moved to open up around 180,000 hectares for exploration.
Escalation of violence against indigenous groups in Brazil pushes growing number of native women to lead the movement.
Sao Paulo, Brazil - Celia Xakriaba was 13 years old when she joined the fight for indigenous rights. Her indigenous Xakriaba community is one of the few who survived the advancement of colonisers and missionaries in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais during the 18th century.
This week, thousands of Indigenous People from all over Brazil are gathering in the capital to demand their human rights and changes to political decisions that threaten their survival
Since the new Brazilian government came to power under President Bolsonaro, commitments to dismantle the rights of Indigenous People have accelerated.
Systematic racism and the failure of governments to recognize and respect land rights are at the root of violence leading to the murder of Indigenous peoples around the world, said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples on Tuesday.
For Ashton Janvier, land and water are the portals to teaching and preserving the Denesuline language, which he says originates from the environment.
“In my culture, everything that we talk about and everything that we teach one another has to do with the land,” said Janvier, an educator and filmmaker from La Loche community near the Clearwater River Dene Nation in Canada’s province of Saskatchewan.
A recently ended six-month occupation of a public square in central Asunción by the Tacuara'i community has brought attention to systemic violations of the land rights of indigenous groups in Paraguay. Español.
For Indigenous peoples across the Americas, urgent threats imposed by the industrial extraction of natural resources has characterized the 21st century. The expansion of industry has threatened Indigenous territories, cultures and sovereignty.
The Kayapó war cry resounds deep in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. Four dozen warriors, their headdresses made of yellow and red macaw feathers, stand in the village clearing, carrying shotguns and war clubs. Warrior women, the crowns of their heads shaved, sing high-pitched war cries and wave machetes in the air.
Japan enacted legislation Friday aimed at protecting and promoting the culture of the Ainu ethnic minority through financial assistance, while at the same time stipulating for the first time that they are an “indigenous” people.
The law requires the central and local governments to promote Ainu culture and industry, including tourism, in order to correct long-standing socioeconomic disparities faced by the group. But some Ainu have criticized the legislation, saying it will not do enough to reverse historical discrimination.