Global Indigenous Peoples News Bulletin #4 (May 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.”

Ongoing Indigenous struggles in the Amazon

In “Colombia Makes History: Legal Protection for Isolated Indigenous peoples in Colombia”, Antonio Peluso from the Amazon Conservation Team discusses how the Colombian government has taken an unprecedented step to protect Indigenous Peoples Living in Isolation by defining their territory. With the signing of Resolution 244 by Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior, the country has, for the first time ever, formally defined the territoriality of Indigenous communities living in isolation. Specifically, the Yuri-Passé peoples, who inhabit a remote area between the Caquetá and Putumayo Rivers in the Colombian Amazon, now have their ancestral territory legally defined and protected. This protection of over 2.7 million acres of rainforest was made possible by years of work from Indigenous associations, government institutions, civil society groups, and international donors. “This is more than a symbolic act—it is a legal and environmental milestone that ensures the land they depend on remains untouched and safeguarded from outside threats,” writes Peluso. “It also creates a replicable framework for safeguarding other isolated Indigenous communities throughout the Amazon.”

Aerial photo of Isolated Peoples’ settlement in the Brazilian Amazon. (Photo: Gleison Miranda of FUNAI via Amazon Conservation Team)

Meanwhile, in a first for an international court, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that a government violated the rights of uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The landmark ruling against the state of Ecuador was issued at the court based in Costa Rica on March 13, 2025. According to an April 14 published by Survival International, “It creates a worldwide precedent for upholding the rights of uncontacted peoples. The state of Ecuador is responsible for violating the rights of the uncontacted Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous peoples – including their rights to collective property, self-determination, a dignified life, health, food, cultural identity, a healthy environment, housing, life, judicial guarantees, and judicial protection, according to the ruling.” This judgment, the article continues, “underlines the importance of taking into account uncontacted peoples’ choice to be uncontacted and emphasizes that this choice must be guaranteed. It affirms that the human rights of uncontacted peoples should be underpinned by the principle of no contact, and that their right to self-determination includes being uncontacted.”

Writing for Mongabay, Karla Mendez reports on how Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, following intense outcry nationwide and abroad, has removed the proposal to open up Indigenous territories to mining and economic activities from a controversial bill that critics say violates the Constitution. However, Mendez notes that other contentious points remain, including compensation for non-Indigenous settlers, which advocates say could make the land demarcation process unfeasible.

Munduruku Indigenous People blocked a road on March 25, 2025, protesting against the conciliation table at the Supreme Court and for the repeal of law 14.701. (Photo: Pariri Association via Mongabay)

Following a landmark ruling in Peru, Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, an Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood. Writing for The Guardian, Dan Collyns reports that after three years, judges in Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, ruled in March 2024 that the Marañon had the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination, respecting an Indigenous worldview that regards a river as a living entity.

Dialogue and determination at the UN

In an April 25 video report, APTN News highlights discussions held during the first week of the 24th UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was a “hot topic” at the Forum along with the challenges of ensuring that member states who signed onto the UNDRIP are held accountable for their commitments.

Screenshot from APTN News report on the UN Forum.

In remarks made at the opening of the Forum, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasized that Indigenous peoples are “pre-eminent stewards of the world’s biodiversity and of the environment, whose knowledge and traditional practices are leading models of conservation and sustainable use.” At the same time, he cautioned:

The difficulties facing Indigenous Peoples around the world are an affront to dignity and justice. And a source of deep sorrow for me personally.Indigenous women face particular challenges – including barriers to political participation, economic opportunities, and essential services…Everywhere, Indigenous Peoples are on the frontline of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss – despite having done nothing to create these crises and everything to try to stop them. Eviction and illegal exploitation continue to harm your people and grossly violate your rights. You face marginalisation, discrimination, unemployment, economic disadvantage and horrendous violence – particularly as you seek to defend our common home. 

The Secretary-General urged governments and institutions to ensure that the leadership, rights and needs of Indigenous Peoples are recognized and acted upon across the board and that governments honor their obligations in the UNDRIP without delay.

During the Forum, Indigenous women from across the world discussed their struggles against the pollution of their ancestral lands and the displacement of their communities. Lauren Dalban’s April 25 article for Inside Climate News notes that many speakers highlighted that Indigenous knowledge is essential for the conservation of these lands. Meanwhile, Indigenous rights are central to climate resilience and environmental protection, as the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network said in a policy brief on Earth Day.

From left: Cindy Kobei, Aimee Roberson and Whitney Gravelle sit on a panel hosted by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network during the United Nations Permanent Forum on April 22 in New York. (Photo: Katherine Quaid/WECAN via Inside Climate News)

Also at the Forum, the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) announced that it was partnering with the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a new financing mechanism that recognizes the central role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting tropical forests. In “Indigenous forest peoples can finally control nature finance,” Sonia Guajajara, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, and Juan Carlos Jintiach, Executive Secretary Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC), explain that the TFFF “aims to mobilize and invest $125 billion from public, private and philanthropic sources, and from its returns, reward forest countries for keeping forests standing. Crucially, it commits at least 20% of these reward payments to Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

Finally, in an article for Grist, Taylar Dawn Stagner writes about the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), which is the largest global gathering of Indigenous peoples and a forum that provides space for participants to bring their issues to international authorities, often when their own governments have refused to take action. The article addresses this year’s UN Forum focus on how U.N. member states’ have, or have not, protected the rights of Indigenous peoples. Conversations range from the environmental effects of extractive industries to climate change and violence against women. Stagner emphasizes that the Forum is an intergenerational space where young people in attendance often work alongside elders and leaders to come up with solutions and address ongoing challenges. The article includes interviews with seven Indigenous youth attending UNPFII this year hailing from Africa, the Pacific, North and South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Arctic. As one of the young interviewees concluded, “No matter what happens we will stand, and we will fight, and we will keep pushing for solutions.”