Last Updated on April 10, 2025
When what you do is anathema to environmental protection and human rights, your best bet is perpetuating misperceptions through public relations, press releases and slanted news stories. When you happen to be the World Bank, financing your own news service is no problem. In fact, as this story illustrates, you can even fund the NGOs interviewed by your reporters–a closed loop of information, hermetically sealed from unfavorable facts or objective criticism.
As a system of propaganda, it is hard to beat; it creates a false but favorable image for PR purposes, it disarms potential critics, and it plays well in mainstream corporate media. As an example of psychological warfare, it shows that human rights activists need to stay on message, despite corruption of the moral theatrics industry, or the occasional buy-off of tribal communities or indigenous leaders.
After all, it’s the Free-Market planetary bureaucracy and its cohorts in media who are the enemies of truly sustainable development and human rights, not desperate indigenous societies, who, like the rest of us, sometimes make poor choices or benefit from a corrosive system.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
That is exactly why IC Magazine exists..
For more than 20 years, IC has reported on Indigenous struggles worldwide — consistently, independently, and without compromise.
We don’t follow news cycles; we trace patterns. We don’t sensationalize; we provide context.
And when the world looks away, we stay focused.
But this work is increasingly difficult to sustain.
We refuse to lock our reporting behind a paywall. We don’t sell access through subscriptions.
And we don’t answer to advertisers. IC Magazine survives solely because readers like you choose to
support independent Indigenous journalism.
Please donate today if you can. Every contribution helps us to continue this crucial work.
Thank you,
John Ahni Schertow
Founder and Editor in Chief
