This week on the Mongabay Newscast, Samantha Murray, CEO of the Indigenous Desert Alliance, joins the program to discuss the IDA’s recent nomination for an Earthshot Prize. The alliance is a network of 70 ranger teams across the Australian desert, covering 270 million hectares (667 million acres), an area almost as large as Argentina. This makes it the largest Indigenous-led conservation corridor on the planet.

Murray and her network of 885 rangers have helped restore biodiversity to 140 million hectares (346 million acres) of land over the past four years using the practice of cultural burning, a cultural and ecological management practice that has been present in Aboriginal culture for millennia. The IDA administers this through its “Right Way Desert Fire” program.

“I have always tried to look at ways that the Cherokee Nation could bridge gaps, and this is something that I feel like not a lot of people talk about,” Glory said. “Period poverty is a very real thing that affects students and women alike. It’s something that we don’t talk about enough, and I also think that this will help students bring this into a conversation more.”

“Our language is one of the biggest things that most First Nations across the country are losing,” said Wiikwemkoong Chief Tim Ominika. “We will have our knowledge keepers, our language speakers who may be moving on to the spirit world, but their legacy is still going to be protected for many years to come by having our own data systems in place and protecting that.”

The idea of digital sovereignty has gained momentum in places like Europe, where leaders are wary of the widespread influence of American Big Tech. For the Wiikwemkoong First Nation and other Indigenous communities, it is also about asserting authority over their own information after historically being excluded from its collection and use by colonizers.

“Some of these might be catchable by the end of next year,” Leask said. “I don’t know what their growth will look like in the wild.”

That’s because Arctic grayling haven’t been seen in Michigan waters for almost a century. By the 1930s, industrial activity like logging and overfishing, along with competition from non-native fish, had decimated their numbers. But three northern Michigan tribes and the state are trying to change that by reintroducing the fish to local waters.

“Our taking care of them and helping them to reestablish their population helps us to reestablish ourselves, our culture, and our traditions,” said Tina Frankenberger, the Grand Traverse Band’s tribal environmental resiliency lead.

Their work joins broader efforts by tribes around the country to restore native species — from salmon to oysters to condors — that are culturally and economically important, while also strengthening the ecosystems that these species depend on against threats like climate change.

https://osiyo.tv/

Gunter was born in October 1789 near present-day Guntersville, Alabama, the son of John Gunter, a white trader, and Catherine, a Cherokee woman. He died at his home northwest of Tahlequah on April 17, 1842, after a prolonged illness. He was only fifty-two years old and had lived in the new Cherokee Nation for just over three years. He was laid to rest in the family cemetery.

Heather Vanderzee traveled from Columbus, Ohio, to honor her fourth great-grandfather.

“He helped lead during a very painful turning point in the Cherokee Nation. I’m grateful for the opportunity to honor him today,” she said. “My great-grandmother was very proud of her Cherokee heritage, and she wrote lots of letters, so we always heard her stories, and I grew up reading them, and it caught on with my mother and I. It’s a passion of ours too.”

‘One of the most important lessons that everybody should understand is the word 'enough'.’

Indigenous cultures have a lot to teach the world, says Indonesian rainforest activist Bustar-Maitar. And the first thing is to respect nature by taking from it only what you need.

Maitar enjoyed a successful career with Greenpeace, winning ‘zero deforestation’ pledges from major multinationals. But he was drawn back to Papua to fight for forests there - and also, through his EcoNusa-foundation, to defend the rights, culture and livelihoods of Indigenous communities, from which will emerge the next generation of forest stewards.

The World Economic Forum’s Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Leadership Network aims to bring generations of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship into global decision-making. Learn more.

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we feature a conversation with one of the world’s most prominent champions for Indigenous rights, Leonard Peltier. “Indigenous Day is a day that’s been long overdue for any type of recognition,” says Peltier. “I am not going to give up, because we are not free yet. We are in danger. Trump and these organizations, they’re talking about doing away with our reservations and our treaties and everything else. … We’re going to stay here. You’re not going to get rid of us.”

Peltier is a longtime political prisoner who spent nearly half a century behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit — the 1975 fatal shooting of two FBI agents. In the final hours of his administration last year, President Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence, but his conviction has not been overturned, and he remains under home confinement on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

Considering that the global value of the ecosystem services kelp provides is estimated at around $500 billion annually, these losses are significant. Kelp forests provide food and shelter for marine mammals, fish and invertebrates; they buffer wave energy along the shoreline and sequester carbon. Remove kelp, and the system unravels.

According to Masso, one of the reasons the Tla-o-qui-aht chose to join this project was because sea otters (Enhydra lutris) were returning to the region. “The otter played a big role in establishing our kelp forest,” Masso said. Historically, the Tla-o-qui-aht didn’t hunt the otter because they knew it ate the sea urchin, which fed on the kelp.

But European fur traders did.

The observed taxonomic diversity highlights the potential contribution of Wild Edible Plants to food security, climate resilience, and sustainable livelihoods. A diverse wild food resource base can reduce dependence on a limited number of cultivated crops and provide alternative food sources during environmental stress, seasonal shortages, and crop failure64–67. Furthermore, the presence of edible species across multiple families and ecological niches increases resource availability across different habitats and seasons.

The findings also demonstrate the important role of indigenous knowledge in the identification, utilization, and conservation of WEP resources. The recognition and utilization of 50 edible species by local communities reflect a welldeveloped ecological knowledge system developed through long-term interactions with the surrounding environment.

Similar indigenous knowledge systems have been documented in other parts of Ethiopia and among indigenous communities worldwide68–72. However, increasing agricultural expansion, urbanization, market-oriented livelihood changes, and changing food preferences may threaten both WEP resources and associated traditional knowledge, emphasizing the importance of continued documentation and integration of indigenous knowledge into conservation and rural development strategies.

Among the most important findings in the study was the interconnectedness between reef and mangrove ecosystems for sustaining fisheries — an aspect long recognized in Bardi Jawi traditional ecological knowledge. The overall project and its findings also guided the design of both the IPA and marine park.

Federal prosecutors and the Public Defender’s Office have warned of an imminent risk of violent confrontation and possible genocide against the isolated Igarapé Ipiaçava people.

Since 2011, a series of temporary land-use restriction orders, which prohibit unauthorized individuals from entering Ituna/Itatá, protected the vulnerable population. Brazil’s Indigenous Affairs Agency, Funai, renewed the precautionary measure in 2025.

by Michelle Cyca

Introduction:

Over the August long weekend in Alberta, a banner appeared on a fence northwest of Edmonton, proclaiming “The Indians have done nothing in 100 years and now they wanna tell us how to run Alberta.” No one was sure who put it up—a local separatist group contacted by APTN denied responsibility—or which “Indians” were supposedly giving the province unwanted advice. But the sentiment was clear, and emblematic of current attitudes toward Indigenous people across this country.

A decade ago, in the salad days of Justin Trudeau’s reign, truth and reconciliation were embraced as a necessary step toward a brighter future; understanding Canada’s shameful treatment of Indigenous people was key to addressing the persistent inequities facing First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities. In 2021, there was a global outpouring of grief as several communities, beginning with Tḱemlúps te Secwépemc, announced they had identified hundreds of probable graves at former residential school sites. A new federal holiday was created to honour residential school survivors; Canadians bought orange shirts and began acknowledging that “every child matters.”

But today, many Canadians feel the pendulum has swung too far; acknowledgement of residential school history is one thing, but concrete measures to address injustices are quite another. It seems many Canadians believed residential schools were the only federal crime to atone for, perhaps because we don’t have a holiday commemorating illegal land expropriation or underpayment of treaty annuities.

Of course, there have always been Canadians who bristle at Indigenous people exercising their legal rights, but a wider shift is underway. A combination of factors—the flagging economy, the brain-rotting fumes of disinformation permeating social media, rising extremism in Canadian politics—are tipping the scales when it comes to public discourse on Indigenous issues. Many Canadians are aggrieved and anxious, and everywhere they look, they see reasons to blame Indigenous people for their problems. There’s a sense that the sputtering national project of reconciliation has taken something away from them and that Indigenous rights must be quashed to restore their sense of security and prosperity.