Over the last two months, millions of people around the world have had the chance to sit before an immense flat screen with hundreds of others for three and a half hours, gazing through color-filtering lenses that trick your mind into an experience of enhanced visual depth and perspective, to witness the sequel to a film that its director, James Cameron, has described as a retelling of the colonization of the Americas. 

Shocking images have been released over the past few days showing the suffering of Yanomami Peoples in the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazon. In the third week of January 2023, Yanomami people in Roraima, northern Brazil, were found with severe malnutrition, especially in children. According to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, nearly 100 children between the ages of 1 and 4 died in 2022 from malnutrition, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea.

Maya Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Peoples from southern Belize have always fought for their right to live peacefully in their own lands.

Cultural Survival’s Keepers of the Earth Fund grant partners, the A’i Cofán de Dureno community in Ecuador, have been mobilizing to defend their ancestral lands against oil exploitation by the national oil company Petroecuador for six months.

The participation of Indigenous Peoples from Brazil and their representatives at 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27), was visible in almost every space. It was encouraging to see a majority of women and youth participating as leaders and representatives. All of them would repeatedly mention one word: “demarcação,” demarcation of Indigenous Lands, bringing international attention to the grave need to demarcate Indigenous lands in Brazil.

In 2022, a Brazilian Indigenous activist joined the list of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world when she received an award in the Pioneers category. Her name is Sonia Bone de Souza Silva Santos (Guajajara), also known as Sonia Guajajara. Guajajara was born March 6, 1974, in the Arariboia Indigenous land Maranhão in northeastern Brazil. She is the mother of three children: Yaponã, 22, Mahkai, 20, and Ywara, 16.

By Dev Kumar Sunuwar (Koĩts-Sunuwar, CS Staff) 

On November 10, 2022, UN member states reviewed India’s human rights record during the 41st Session of the Universal Periodic Review, a process carried out by the UN Human Rights Council. This was India’s fourth cycle of review since 2008. The final outcome of the 41^st session will be adopted by the plenary of the Human Rights Council at its 52^nd regular session in March 2023.

After more than four years of preparations and negotiations, the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) has come to a close in Montreal, Canada. On December 19, 2022, the COP15 presidency adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

In the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile, the mountains turn purple at sunset, and when the sky is dark, a shooting star can be traced across the entire arc of the night sky.

As the 15th Conference of Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) came to a close in Montreal, Canada, on December 19, 2022, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity

Montreal, 10 December 2022

The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) underscores the importance of ensuring a rights-based approach in the implementation of Target 3 of the global biodiversity framework, specifically including “protecting and respecting” our rights.