Hey everyone and welcome to Episode 6 of The Indigenous Rights Report. I’m your host, John Ahniwanika Schertow.
For over two decades I’ve been telling stories that the media ignores–stories of Indigenous resistance, resilience, and renewal that keeps moving forward.
Now I’m bringing these crucial stories to your ears—so you can stay even more connected to the movement that is reshaping our world from the ground up. Some stories speak of victory. Others, of urgent alarm. All of them remind us what it means to protect land, life, and law no matter the consequences.
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Now Let’s get into it.
First we head to Peru, where indigenous communities who have only recently established contact with the outside world—have forged a new federation to declare an immediate halt to REDD+ programs and other large-scale conservation initiatives on or near their territories. The newly formed federation, representing 12 communities in the Ucayali Basin, argues that conservation efforts have restricted access to ancestral lands, hindered subsistence activities, and imposed boundaries on their traditional, nomadic ways of life.
They insist that decisions about their lands must be made with them, not for them, that funding should go directly to local communities, and that they should not be paraded around as symbols for other people’s agendas.
In Kalumpang, Malaysia, the Dayak community finds itself confronting the resurgence of a failed development initiative. The government’s “Cetak Sawah Rakyat” (CSR) program—purportedly a food security solution—echoes the disastrous Peatland Development Project (PLG) of the 1990s, which disrupted the Dayak people’s food sovereignty.
Instead of accepting the project, the community has equipped itself with new tools and agency—to chart a better, self-determined future. After a transformative four-day training course, 23 Dayak participants learned everything from setting research priorities to field-survey techniques, ultimately mobilizing into four distinct teams to carry out surveys and interviews locally. This grassroots initiative shines as a powerful act of resistance and self-representation that is allowing the Dayak to contest the CSR.
Thailand’s parliament has passed the Protection and Promotion of the Way of Life of Ethnic Groups bill, clearing the final hurdle with 421 votes in favour and none against. The landmark law pledges to safeguard cultural rights, promote community potential, and ensure equality in Thailand.
However, the bill has faced criticism for replacing the term “Indigenous peoples” with “ethnic groups,” which advocates say weakens recognition under international law. Lawmakers also removed Article 27, which would have exempted cultural protection areas from national forestry and conservation laws—a move that sparked public backlash and led some civil society groups to withdraw their support.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva has signed the so-called “Devastation Bill” into law but vetoed 63 out of its nearly 400 provisions. These vetoes remove dangerous shortcuts—like allowing mid-impact projects to bypass environmental review—and preserve critical protections for vulnerable ecosystems. They also safeguard the rights of Indigenous and Quilombola communities, and limit the fast-tracking of projects solely to those with minimal environmental impact.
Yet, concerns remain. The legislation still allows a new “special environmental license” for so-called “strategic” projects, which could fast-track development regardless of environmental cost. Critics—including Amazon Watch—warn the remaining loopholes could still enable significant ecological harm if Congress overrides the vetoes or adopts new legislation.
In southern Brazil, Guarani Kaiowá communities have turned to retaking their ancestral lands after waiting a decade for their land rights to be recognized. However, the act of reclaiming territories near Panambi-Lagoa Rica Indigenous Land has been met with fierce opposition: farmers armed themselves and fired at Indigenous residents, injuring at least one person in the leg, even as settlers encircled the occupation with trucks and threats.
This violence springs from a broader context of the stalled “time-frame” debate—a contested legal doctrine that would limit Indigenous land claims to areas occupied as of 1988. Although Brazil’s Supreme Court has deemed this doctrine unconstitutional, its political echoes continue to embolden agribusiness aggressors, leaving Indigenous communities exposed to escalating conflicts, threats, and egregious attacks in their struggle for ecological and cultural survival.
Meanwhile, in the heart of Brazil’s remote Amazon, evangelical missionaries are using sophisticated technology—including computers, radios, drones, and solar-powered audio devices—to evangelize some of the world’s most isolated Indigenous communities, raising serious concerns about the health and security of these vulnerable peoples.
While missionaries may intend to merely share religious solace, they are bypassing the consent of the very communities they claim to serve—and in doing so, they are bypassing Brazil’s no-contact policy which aims to protect isolated peoples from cultural disruption and the high risk of disease transmission.
Contact with outsiders in the Greater Amazon Basin area has historically resulted in numerous outbreaks of influenza, measles and malaria. A total of 117 epidemics have been documented between 1875 and 2008, causing more than 11,000 deaths.
200 Indigenous Penan from Sarawak’s Lower Baram region are calling on the Government of Japan to immediately ban timber imports by the Malaysian Shin Yang Group. The communities allege that Shin Yang has violated their harvesting agreements and failed to compensate them as previously promised. Moreover, the company continues logging on their ancestral lands without consent, prompting the Penan to establish a blockade to resist further encroachment.
Local Indigenous leaders report that their peaceful resistance has been met with intimidation and criminalization, including the arrest of two community members despite no evidence of wrongdoing. They argue that Shin Yang’s actions contradict Japan’s revised Clean Wood Act, deeming the timber illegally obtained.
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Now, let’s get back to the show…
Next we head to Canada, where the B.C. Supreme Court has recognized Aboriginal title for the Cowichan Tribes over a section of Richmond’s Lulu Island and adjoining waters of the Fraser River. It’s a ruling legal experts say could have far-reaching implications for private land ownership in Canada.
This landmark judgment is the culmination of a 513-day trial—the longest in Canadian history. In her ruling, Justice Young rejected the argument that existing Crown-granted fee-simple titles automatically override Aboriginal title. Instead, she found that fee-simple interests are invalid if they unjustifiably infringe upon constitutionally protected Indigenous rights.
Meanwhile, Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories are at the centre of one of the world’s largest land protection efforts, following the signing of a landmark $375 million agreement.
The “Our Land for the Future” grant will put about 30 per cent of the territory — or two per cent of the entire country of Canada, under Indigenous care. Out of the $375 million, $285 million will be spent over the next 10 years to support Indigenous Guardians, create new conserved areas, enable climate research and provide land and language programming, jobs and local research opportunities. The remaining $90 million will go into a fund to help cover future costs of running and managing these protected areas.
The Philippines’ island of Palawan has become a frontline in the global surge for critical minerals like cobalt, lithium, nickel—fuelling the green energy transition. Despite a moratorium on new mining permits imposed in 2025, preexisting operations have been allowed to continue under grandfathered rights, casting long shadows over Indigenous territories and fragile ecosystems.
Nearly half of all mining projects and critical mineral deposits in the Philippines are located on Indigenous lands. With the global demand for nickel alone projected to triple by 2030, Palawan stands poised to bear an outsized share of environmental and cultural disruption.
Now we turn to Colombia, where Indigenous Guardians are confronting guerrilla groups to rescue community children that have been recruited into armed conflict.
This threat is widespread: since the 2016 peace deal, FARC dissidents, along with ELN and the Clan del Golfo, have increasingly recruited Indigenous youth—lured by promises of cash, food, or belonging. Some were targeted online, with studies documenting over 915 cases of forced recruitment since 2016, some as young as nine. Indigenous-led Guardian patrols and local schools are doing what they can to push back against this violence, though the Colombian state’s response has been described as “ineffective and untimely.”
Finland’s Parliament passed a landmark amendment to the Sámi Parliament Act with a decisive 150–27 vote. This long-awaited reform—decades in the making—replaces the controversial “Lapp criterion” with language-based voter eligibility, which ensures that only those with Sami language heritage can vote in or stand for Sámi Parliament elections. Indigenous leaders hailed the day as a historic moment thirty years in the making.
The reform also institutes independent appeals for disputes over the electoral roll and strengthens the Finnish government’s duty to consult the Sámi—though it stops short of granting the Sami veto power.
In the United States, nearly half of all households on Native American reservations lack access to clean water, reliable sanitation, or even a dependable water source—an unacceptable disparity in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
In response, lawmakers along with government Representatives have introduced the Tribal Access to Clean Water Act. This legislation would dramatically increase funding for water and sanitation infrastructure via the Indian Health Service, USDA, and Bureau of Reclamation—targeting the root of longstanding neglect.
For years, Kenya’s Indigenous communities—such as the Ogiek and Sengwer—have been forcibly evicted from ancestral forest lands, often justified by conservation goals. In the Mau Forest, around 100,000 people were displaced between 2004 and 2006, with many homes burned and families cast into makeshift shelters.
And the legacy continues. A recent report reveals that conservancies overseen by the Northern Rangelands Trust—which gets funding from tech giants like Meta and Netflix —have become zones of exclusion and dispossession with Pastoralist communities facing harassment, abductions, restricted land access, and obstacles to justice.
In a groundbreaking project funded by Penn State’s Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE), researchers are collaborating with Indigenous communities in Ecuador’s Amazon to merge traditional ecological knowledge with modern environmental science. By using “body-territory” mapping—an Indigenous worldview that sees human bodies as deeply connected with land, the project will map contamination from oil extraction, specifically targeting hydrocarbon and PFAS pollution in Yasuní National Park.
This first-of-its-kind, holistic approach offers a powerful tool for local communities to document environmental harms and fight back against destructive development.
That’s it for this episode of The Indigenous Rights Report. Thank you for listening—and for staying informed about the struggles and victories shaping Indigenous lives around the world.
If you want to dig deeper, visit icmagazine.org, where you’ll find thousands of articles covering Indigenous resistance, renewal, and rights. And if you’d like to support this work, you can do so at patreon.com/icmagazine.
Until next time, take care—and keep listening.
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.
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