“The exercise of self-determination is a necessary task prior to the consultation because we have seen that many consultation exercises begin as a reaction to someone who wants to set up a project or a mine. Part of the community becomes active, but since the community is not consulted as a People, internal conflicts begin there.
For 51 years, Cultural Survival has partnered with Indigenous communities to advance Indigenous Peoples' rights and cultures worldwide. We envision a future that respects and honors Indigenous Peoples' inherent rights and dynamic cultures, deeply and richly interwoven in lands, languages, spiritual traditions, and artistic expression and rooted in self-determination and self-governance.
In 2022, The Zienzele Foundation identified the need for a communal space in the Chiware region of Zimbabwe for Shona women’s cooperatives to host their organizational meetings, health clinics, and marketing of traditional handicraft work. In collaboration with Cultural Survival’s Keepers of the Earth Fund, they have since built a community center complex near the village of Mupagamuri to serve the five surrounding villages.
While the power groups and bureaucratic machinery label anyone who protests against the transitional civic-military government as terrorists, Indigenous Peoples and campesinos in Peru only respond loudly, Kachkaykuraqmi! (We continue to exist!) The current situation in Peru describes not a sporadic scene of emotional turmoil, as many believe and attribute, but rather the opening and bleeding of a never-healed historical wound that divides Peru into two worlds: those above and those below, the visible an
As an Indigenous-led organization that advocates for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Survival condemns the vile murder of Eduardo Mendúa (A’i Cofán), land and environmental defender and Head of International Relations of the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (
In March 2021, the National Garifuna Council launched their initiative, "Food Sovereignty for the Garifuna people of Belize." The project’s mission was to create productive, small-scale green spaces to enhance food security and build community health for the Garifuna Peoples in Dangriga and the larger Stann Creek District of Southern Belize.
On February 27 - March 2, 2023, three Indigenous leaders are meeting with European Union Parliamentarians in Brussels, Belgium, to bring attention to the impacts the extractive industries including oil, gas, and mining have on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, lands, and environments globally.
To President Biden and Vice President Harris,
On the occasion of World Radio Day 2023, the Community Radio Movement in Guatemala makes it known that the right to freedom of expression of Indigenous Peoples is a human right that unfortunately the State of Guatemala violates and denies Indigenous Peoples. Since the Peace Accords, the State has promised to provide frequencies without a positive response to date.
Today, February 14, 2023, Valentine's Day, marks the 32nd Annual Women’s Memorial March which is held every year in Vancouver on February 14 to commemorate the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and all women and underrepresented genders whose lives have been taken due to colonial systemic violence, poverty, racism, displacement, physical, mental, emotional, and spirit
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
