By Reynaldo A. Morales and Diana K. Elhard

In October 2023, Cultural Survival and our partner organization Qhana Pukara Kurmi submitted a joint alternative stakeholder report on the situation of Indigenous rights in Bolivia for the 111th session of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which will take place in Geneva from November 20-December 8, 2023. 

By CS Staff 

On September 20-24, 2023, overlooking Hoerikwaggoa (Table Mountain) in Cape Town, South Africa, Indigenous people from Africa and abroad gathered to exchange experiences about implementing the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in the context of mineral extraction. 

By Dev Kumar Sunuwar (Koĩts-Sunuwar) CS staff

UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, concluded his four-day visit to Nepal on November 1, where he highlighted the urgent need for global attention to the climate crisis in the Himalayas. Despite the war in the Middle East, he chose to visit Nepal, perhaps to draw attention to another catastrophe—the climate crisis—a month before UNFCCC COP28 is set to take place in Dubai. 

By Tia-Alexi Roberts (Narragansett, CS Staff) 

Quienes conformamos Cultural Survival expresamos nuestro profundo dolor por los miles de palestinos e israelíes muertos en las últimas semanas tras el horrible ataque y la toma de rehenes de civiles israelíes inocentes por parte de Hamás el 7 de octubre y el por bombardeo en curso de Gaza por parte del ejército israelí.

After nearly nine years in preventive detention, on September 28, 2023, Herminio Monfil (Mazatec) and Jaime Betanzos (Mazatec), political prisoners from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, were released from prison. In 2014, 40 people from the municipality were criminalized and some of them imprisoned accused of the murder of Manuel Zepeda Lagunas.

Cultural Survival expresses our profound grief for the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis killed in recent weeks after Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack and taking hostage of innocent Israeli civilians and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli military. We repudiate the current and decades-long genocidal violence against the Palestinian people. We add our voices to those of millions of people around the world demanding a safe corridor for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip and demanding an immediate ceasefire.

By Polina Shulbaeva (Selkup), Bryan Bixcul (Maya Tz'utujil), Edson Krenak (Krenak), CS Staff

On Sunday night, October 22, 2023, Arnaldo Benítez Vargas, one of the spiritual leaders (tekoaruvicha) of Yvy Pyte, suffered an attack by people linked to the conflict of invasion of their ancestral territories and the advance of systematic genocide against the Paĩ Tavyterã Peoples in Paraguay.

The leaders of Yvy Pyte have been denouncing a series of violent acts and abuses in their territories before the corresponding judicial and governmental bodies, seeking a definitive solution to the conflict, since the lives of the members of the community are at risk. 

Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Community Media Fund provides funding opportunities, accompaniment, and training to Indigenous community media platforms to carry out their crucial informational, documentary, and cultural work within and outside their communities. Since 2017, the Indigenous Community Media Fund has awarded 298 grants, supporting community media projects in 29 countries across 3 continents, totaling $1,772,361.

Les Malezer (Gubbi Gubbi and Butchulla) is a retired chairperson of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) and a longtime advocate for the promotion of human rights of Indigenous Peoples. Malezer worked with the Global Indigenous Peoples Caucus to advance the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples through the final stages to the UN General Assembly in 2007.