Cultural Survival Youth Fellow, Fermín Morales Hilario (Nahuatl), 22, is from Kalman Nimos in the mountains of Mexico, where his family grows corn, beans, and squash. His family is Náhuatl but his mother tongue was not passed down to him as his grandparents did not teach his father and mother to speak it. Fermin has five siblings and is the only one in his family to attend university. He aspires to finish his studies.
In the Northeastern Coastal Algoquin language, our word for dugout canoe is “mishoon.” Our coastal Tribes have utilized the waterways as ancient highways for thousands of years traveling in mishoon which are considered carbon neutral water vessels. As the original population of the American northeastern region, we have faced European assimilation.
The defeat of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro by President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s October 30, 2022 presidential election is a victory for democracy. Democracy for Indigenous Peoples is a democracy of all species and living beings: a democracy that brings hope to biomes, trees, rivers, and animals, big and small,
By John McPhaul
On October 19, 2022, the Constitutional Chamber of the Costa Rican Supreme Court rejected a request of unconstitutionality brought against Article 3 of the country's Indigenous Law that prohibits non-Indigenous people from acquiring or selling land inside any of the country’s 24 Indigenous Territories.
On Sunday, October 23, 2022, Paĩ Tavyterã Guaraní Indigenous leaders Alcides Romero Morilla and Rodrigo Gómez González were assassinated during a confrontation between security forces from the Paraguayan state and the EPP (Paraguayan People's Army), a non-state armed group. Other people from the community were also injured, including Leonardo Gómez Riquelme, who is still being hospitalized.
The A'i Cofán community of Dureno is located on the Aguarico River in the province of Sucumbios in the northeastern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon. For thousands of years, the A'i Cofán people have tended this territory, living in balance with their environment. During the last several decades this region has suffered oil exploitation and currently faces a threat from the State oil company, Petroecuador, a situation that is generating an internal division among community members.
Officially, there are only two types of frequencies for radio broadcasting in Guatemala: radio frequencies for private stations and for public or State radio. There is no category for Indigenous community radio and no frequencies are assigned to them, despite the commitment in the 1996 Peace Accords to reform the law to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ access to radio frequencies and to be able to operate them.
The smell of the cempaxuchitl (marigold) flower can be confused with the smell of chocolate that my mother makes at this time of year for breakfast and as an offering to the dead. In my community, the Day of the Dead celebrations begin on October 31 each year. When I was a child, my mother, my father, and my four brothers got up at five in the morning to make the fire, while I, still lying in a corner of my wooden house, listened to the noises that came from outside.
Cultural Survival and First Peoples Worldwide consider it necessary to address a growing international position that combines and equates Indigenous Peoples–and in particular, their affirmed rights to lands and territories and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)–with local communities within the term “Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities” or “IPLC.” The combination of these two different entities disregards the collective rights to which Indigenous Peoples are entitled as distinct, self-determining Peoples.
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.
