Global Indigenous Peoples News Bulletin #3 (April 2025)

This bulletin devoted to 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. 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.”

Indigenous struggles in the Arctic

In “The Race for the Arctic Is Undermining Indigenous Rights,” Huw Paige explains how in the Arctic region there is a competition between states over its resources and geopolitical advantages. This has a harmful impact on the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, whose way of life doesn’t fit in with state borders. As Eirik Larsen, the head of the human rights unit of the Sámi Council (a nongovernmental organization that works across Sámi territory in Russia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden), states in the article, “We are actually asking for climate solutions, and we are asking to contribute to finding solutions concerning our lands…in a way that harms the natural and traditional areas, and true sustainable areas, as little as possible.” The author also offers a recommendation: “Even if state-level cooperation through the Arctic Council has been diminished, governments must engage with Indigenous peoples in good faith. They must also recognize that these communities contain diverse opinions, just like any other group of people.”

Sámi people herd reindeer in Lapland, Finland. (In Pictures Ltd. / Corbis via Getty Images)

Also in relation to the Arctic region, Laura Dehaibi’s article “What a landmark ruling for the Sámi people in Finland means for the protection of Indigenous rights globally” discusses how in October 2024, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) issued a landmark decision stating that Finland had violated the rights of the Sámi Indigenous people to their culture and land. This decision, unprecedented in Europe, signals a potential paradigm shift in the protection of Indigenous rights globally. It does this by creating “a shift in how we approach human rights generally — recognizing the collective nature of certain rights as opposed to mere individual entitlements. The decision also encourages us to embrace Indigenous conceptions of land, beyond traditional property rights.”

Fighting for land rights in the Amazon

Writing for The Loop, Camila Montero in “Indigenous women defending land and democracy in the Amazon rainforest” emphasizes that across the Amazon, “Indigenous women are leading the fight for democracy, environmental justice, and human rights. In countries where extractivist policies dominate, these women are not only resisting the destruction of their territories, they are redefining political participation.”

Aerial view of an Indigenous community in Ecuador, South America. (Photo: © Jhwhverdonk | Dreamstime)

Meanwhile, One Earth reports that a groundbreaking new conservation project has been launched in Brazil. This marks a major step forward in the protection of Indigenous territories and the promotion of sustainable land stewardship. The initiative, called Ywy Ipuranguete—which means “beautiful land” in the Tupi-Guarani language—will support Indigenous-led management across fifteen Indigenous Lands spanning six million hectares and five vital biomes: the Amazon, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Caatinga, and Pantanal. These lands are home to more than 57,000 Indigenous people and encompass ecological treasures critical to Brazil’s environmental health and climate stability.

Indigenous protesters march in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, in June 2022. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, CC BY 4.0)

In “Canada-Ecuador free trade agreement threatens Indigenous rights and territories in the Amazon,” Martina Jakubchick-Paloheimo presents how these are some of the concerns being brought forward by the National Confederation of Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador and other civil rights organizations in the country. The free-trade agreement signed on February 4, 2025 is increasing social and environmental conflicts across the country as Indigenous communities across Ecuador reject the agreement. Mining Watch Canada, a non-governmental watchdog of Canada’s mining industry, also argues the deal has come without proper consent and that the agreement will have implications for human rights and the environment in Ecuador.

From Turtle Island to West Papua

A newly updated article at History.com provides an overview of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “Originally an urban-focused movement formed in response to police brutality and racial profiling, AIM grew rapidly in the 1970s and became the driving force behind the Indigenous civil rights movement,” the article notes. “AIM members and their allies have conducted some of the highest-profile protests and acts of civil disobedience in American Indian history. Although AIM split in two in 1993, its successors continue its legacy of fighting for Native American rights, holding the United States responsible for the dozens of treaties it has broken and drawing attention to the cause of Indigenous peoples around the world.”

Wounded Knee AIM Veterans in 2013. (Photo: Neeta Lind, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Damien Gayle’s “West Papuan Indigenous people call for KitKat boycott over alleged ecocide” presents how more than 90 West Papuan tribes, political organizations and religious groups have endorsed the call for this boycott, which they say should continue until the people of West Papua are given the right to self-determination. Thousands of acres of rainforest are being cleared to produce palm oil, used in popular products like Nestlé and Mondelēz, KitKat, Smarties and Aero chocolate, Oreo biscuits and Ritz crackers, and the cosmetics brands Pantene and Herbal Essences. 

Representing Indigenous people online

Finally, from the tech world, “How AI images are ‘flattening’ Indigenous cultures – creating a new form of tech colonialism” discusses how Adobe has come under fire for hosting AI-generated stock images that claim to depict “Indigenous Australians”, but don’t resemble Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The authors argue that this is an example of “technological colonialism, wherein tech corporations contribute to the homogenization and/or misrepresentation of diverse Indigenous cultures.”