While the New Zealand government removes reference to the Treaty in the Oranga Tamariki Act, Canada and even Australia are taking steps in the opposite direction on Indigenous children’s rights.
Uluru Dialogues leader Megan Davis, right, during a recent community forum about the Indigenous voice referendum.
Con Chronis/AAP
A new book sheds light on the moral frameworks of human governance among our First Nations, showing how we can heal as a nation by living with each other and the natural world.
The Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina. Indigenous leaders have criticized the province’s updated consultation framework saying it excludes Indigenous nations.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Taylor
Saskatchewan’s provincial government must work with Indigenous nations on a shared vision for the future that is more likely to withstand the tests of time and litigation.
Indigenous communities can be involved in renewable energy projects in a number of ways. The benefits of revenues to communities can be important to improving their self-determination and economic reconciliation.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Indigenous economic development corporations can generate income for communities and support the transition to clean energy.
Establishing Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, like the Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories, while respecting original treaties can help Canada meet its international conservation commitments.
(Iris Catholique)
To address the climate and biodiversity crises, we must stop criminalizing Indigenous Peoples for exercising their treaty rights and start upholding them instead.
Watch 30 years since Mabo, a live-streamed event hosted by State Library of Queensland and The Conversation honouring the activism of Eddie Mabo.
Prince Misuzulu, second from the left, attends the provincial memorial service for his mother, the late Mantfombi Dlamini, at the Khangelakamankegane Royal Palace in Nongoma, in May 2021.
AFP via Getty Images
When judges, legislators, and policymakers neglect the foundational dynamics of indigenous customs, they worsen conflict between indigenous laws and state laws.
Former Gov. Gen. Julie Payette invests Jeanette Corbiere Lavell, from Wikwemikong First Nation, Ont., as a Member of the Order of Canada outside Rideau Hall in Ottawa in September 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Canada’s new governor general will have to fuse the British, French, American and Indigenous elements of Canada that together are the core of the country.
Supporters of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who oppose the Coastal GasLink pipeline set up a support station at kilometre 39, just outside of Gidimt'en checkpoint near Houston B.C., on January 8, 2020. The Wet'suwet'en peoples are occupying their land and trying to prevent a pipeline from going through it.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Two new coins released by the Royal Australian Mint celebrate Indigenous astronomers, who have used the stars to map changing seasons, inform the behaviours of plants and animals, and encode Law.
Supporters of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who oppose the Coastal GasLink pipeline set up a support station near Gidimt'en checkpoint near Houston B.C., in January 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
The fact that so many Canadian pension funds are tied to oil and gas companies is a deeply structural form of racialized oppression and a denial of Indigenous rights.
A man carries an eagle feather as police prepare to enforce an injunction against protesters who were blocking a road used to access to the Port of Vancouver during a demonstration in support of Wet'suwet'en Nation hereditary chiefs on Feb. 25, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Laws in other countries recognise ‘rights of nature’. But even trees sacred to Indigenous Australian communities have no special protection.
The system of ‘birth alerts’ across Canada perpetuates the removal of children from Indigenous families begun by residential schools. Pictured here: a historical report on residential schools released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
To make meaningful progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, all provinces and territories should promptly follow B.C. and ban discriminatory ‘birth alerts.’
The sacred site of Uluru. In our Law we know that rocks are sentient and contain spirit.
Dan peled/AAP
There are memorial stones scattered along songlines throughout the Australian landscape, victims and transgressors transformed into rock following epic struggles to stand as cautionary tales.
The Bomvana say the global development agenda has created division because it sees people as individuals rather than primarily as members of a collective.
The government intends to destroy Djab Wurrung sacred trees and sites to upgrade the Western Highway at the same time as it seeks heritage status for the Eastern Freeway.
Allies Decolonising/gofundme
The Victorian government plans to destroy trees and sites sacred to Djab Warrung people to make way for the Western Highway at the same time as it seeks heritage listing for the Eastern Freeway.
A wildfire burns on a logging road in central British Columbia in August 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University