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.
At different times throughout the year, we feel the effects of universal changes and shifts in more ways than we realize. Those shifts occur during the winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice, and the autumn equinox. For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples around the world have understood and acknowledged their interconnection with the universe, from how traditions are practiced to the effects the seasonal shifts have on us.
With 50 years of experience, Cultural Survival believes that it is essential to listen and respond to the self-determined needs of communities to provide support that is sustainable and, most importantly, relevant to the needs of the communities we serve. We aim to increase and strengthen Indigenous communities' leadership, technical, organizational, advocacy, and sustainability capacities to exercise their rights to freedom of expression, self-determination, and ways of living and elevate their cultures and languages.
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.
Cultural Survival is pleased to announce a call for applications for Indigenous Writers in Residence 2023 based on Turtle Island (United States and Canada).
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.
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.
