Global Indigenous Peoples News Bulletin #2 (March 2025)

This newly launched bulletin focused on Global Indigenous Peoples News, part of the Glocal Exchange project of Weave News, seeks to highlight some of the current issues from Indigenous communities in different parts of the world. Issue #1 of the bulletin was published in Weave Notes, our Weave News newsletter. The focus of the bulletin is aligned with the overall purpose of the Glocal Exchange project, which examines globalization through its impact from the perspective of local communities. It also supports the Weave News mission to “investigate and report about contemporary issues that are either underreported by establishment and other corporate media or reported in a way that excludes essential context, perspectives, and voices.” These are “issues that have a strong justice component and that reveal connections across communities, borders, struggles, and experiences.”

Environmental Personhood, from New Zealand to the Amazon

New Zealand’s approach to environmental personhood is gaining global attention as a model for both Indigenous rights and ecological conservation. The “Māori rights and environmental protection: Taranaki Mounga gains legal personhood” article discusses how New Zealand’s North Island took a step in recognizing Indigenous rights and environmental stewardship. Taranaki Mounga (also spelled Maunga), a volcanic peak revered by the Taranaki Māori, has been granted legal personhood, following the granting of personhood to Te Urewera in 2014 and the Whanganui River in 2017. The new law, which officially names the mountain Te Kāhui Tupua, acknowledges its status as an ancestor to the Taranaki Māori, finally severing ties with its colonial-era name, Mount Egmont. By recognizing landscapes as living entities with rights and protections, the country is reshaping how the law interacts with the natural world. 

“[A]mong the 2025 Academy Awards nominees, the documentary “Sugarcane” tells the story of American Indian boarding schools in Canada and the U.S., shedding light on a painful history, as many children faced immense trauma from being stripped of their culture, language, and identity. The film follows one family’s journey as they continue to grapple with the long-lasting effects of this history.”

In their new book A Story Dies When No One Tells It, Indigenous rights activists Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson talk about their journey towards activism in the Amazon. Nemonte Nenquimo gained international attention when she led an Indigenous campaign and legal battle that successfully protected half a million acres of Amazonian rainforest and Waorani territory in Ecuador from oil extraction, setting a legal precedent to protect millions more. She recently released a new book, We Will Be Jaguars, which she co-wrote with Mitch Anderson. In the book, Nenquimo shares the story of her childhood — growing up in Waorani territory amid the harms caused by oil companies and Christian missionaries — as well as her journey toward activism. It outlines the ongoing fight to save the forest and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, one of our planet’s most crucial carbon sinks and a storehouse of biodiversity.

On the same topic of activism in the Amazon, Yanomami youth turn to drones to watch their Amazon territory discusses how, as the Yanomami Indigenous land, the largest in Brazil, located in the Amazon between the states of Roraima and Amazonas, has faced a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis with the invasion of around 20,000 illegal miners in search of gold and cassiterite, the youths are employing their skills to maintain their ancestors’ legacy and safeguard the future of their territory by drone monitoring and watching the land against new invasions.

Indigenous Health and Sovereignty in Brazil

Also in Brazil, mining giant Vale is sued over metal contamination found in Indigenous peoples. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office, responsible for protecting Indigenous rights, is suing the giant mining company Vale, the Brazilian government, and the Amazon state of Para over heavy metal contamination in the bodies of Xikrin Indigenous people.  

“An article on ‘The Náhuatl and Mayan Language Renaissance Occurring in Mexico’ explains how in order to preserve Mexico’s rich linguistic heritage, Mexican authorities have kick-started an initiative to offer Indigenous language classes, and, in some cases, fully bilingual curricula. The broader initiative includes efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous culture by recognizing the importance of Mexico’s Prehispanic heritage and how it connects with its cultural and historical significance. ”

The Rivers of Resistance: Black and Indigenous Solidarity Against Colonial Extractivism article explains how the corporate extractivism, industrial agribusiness, and destructive infrastructure and development projects also threaten the ancestral ways of life and socio-ecological health of Indigenous and Quilombola communities of the Tapajós River Basin (one of the largest clear-water rivers in the world flowing through the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, with immense biodiversity and essential to the health of the rainforest.) Understanding that their historical struggles for self-determination and sovereignty are intimately intertwined, Indigenous and Quilombola land defenders are organizing to integrate their land protections with river protections and shut down the project through the #NoFerrogrão Alliance. 

Also in the Brazilian Amazon, the newly inaugurated Kapai and Aretina Guardians of Knowledge Center is a community-driven initiative aiming to preserve Indigenous plant medicine and cultural heritage, fostering Indigenous health sovereignty in the Amazon, as presented in Indigenous Health Sovereignty in the Amazon.  

In The Multiethnic Indigenous University of Aldeia Maracanã: Indigenous Knowledge and Forest Education in the Heart of Rio de Janeiro, Mônica Lima Mura Manaú Arawak, PhD, a professor at the Maracanã Village Multiethnic Indigenous University (UIPAM), who belongs to the Mura people and speaks Arawak as her first language, and is the founder of the Ancestral Matriarchal Collective, states that forest education can be the solution to the problems generated by coloniality and modernity. She describes the importance of the Maracanã Village Multiethnic Indigenous University for the city, but above all for those who live and resist in Aldeia Maracanã (Maracanã Village), an Indigenous village in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, by stating: 

Life unfolds at the Multiethnic University, as we are a multiethnic village, and each ethnic group is a university: a territory that generates ethnoknowledge [knowledge systems of traditional peoples, deeply rooted in their cosmologies, ways of life, and resistance to colonial structures]. UIPAM has influenced and redefined the perception of Indigenous cultures in the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro. Every day, it welcomes universities, schools, and other national and international institutions for debates, collective action, classes, workshops, and immersive experiences, promoting critical intercultural education.

Mother Language

To mark the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, a date proclaimed by UNESCO and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to celebrate the richness and diversity of Indigenous languages, a group of Indigenous researchers share the importance of higher education in revitalizing the use of mother tongues and promoting linguistic diversity.

As a celebration of language diversity and its power to foster a more inclusive and sustainable world, International Mother Language Day joins the global celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2025, which guides policies and measures to support multilingualism and the endurance of languages at risk of disappearing around the globe, recalling “that linguistic diversity is a fundamental element of cultural diversity” (as presented in On International Mother Language Day, the IFCD celebrates its projects supporting linguistic diversity around the world).

An article on The Náhuatl and Mayan Language Renaissance Occurring in Mexico explains how in order to preserve Mexico’s rich linguistic heritage, Mexican authorities have kick-started an initiative to offer Indigenous language classes, and, in some cases, fully bilingual curricula. The broader initiative includes efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous culture by recognizing the importance of Mexico’s Prehispanic heritage and how it connects with its cultural and historical significance. 

In Meet the third generation of Mayan languages digital activism fellows!, we learn about the Mayan Languages Digital Activism (ADLM, for its initials in Spanish), a program that promotes community digital activism projects in Mayan language-speaking communities, mainly in the states of Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. 

Indigenous Knowledge 

The Indigenous intelligence in the digital age: 5 lessons from Davos article presents how at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025, experts explored how Indigenous intelligence can be leveraged to drive innovation, sustainability and integrative global solutions. The five key lessons they shared are: 1. Rethinking our relationship with nature; 2. Restoring land, restoring balance; 3. Protecting data ownership; 4. AI and Indigenous data, a unique opportunity for Indigenous communities to reclaim agency over their own knowledge systems; 5. Charting a path towards Indigenous-powered innovation.

Also, Indigenous Groups Are Safeguarding Culture with Their Own ChatGPT discusses how “artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technologies are helping the Amazon’s Indigenous communities protect their land and traditions.”

New Mexico locals bring Indigenous stories to Oscar noms talks about how among the 2025 Academy Awards nominees, the documentary “Sugarcane” tells the story of American Indian boarding schools in Canada and the U.S., shedding light on a painful history, as many children faced immense trauma from being stripped of their culture, language, and identity. The film follows one family’s journey as they continue to grapple with the long-lasting effects of this history. According to one of the impact producers, Amber Morning Star Byars, it’s crucial that people understand what happened to Native American people in these schools: “It's really not an easy thing to talk about, especially in Indigenous communities, because we still carry a lot of the trauma that was inflicted on our people, our elders.”