Environmentalists and activists with posters “peace in the forest and an end to indigenous genocide” in protest of the rights of indigenous people, in São Paulo, Brazil, January, 2019.
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Indigenous peoples safeguard biodiversity better than any other group. But in 2018, 164 were killed defending the environment. It’s time for us to heed their knowledge, and protect their future.
Prosecutors should be required to consult forensic linguistic experts on cases involving voice evidence, rather than solely relying on ‘ad hoc’ experts.
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Researchers have warned about the reliability of voice evidence in criminal cases. Yet, there are few legal guidelines on the use of such evidence in court.
The Treaty of Waitangi obliges the state to ensure that public policy is as effective for Māori as it is for everybody else.
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A report on primary health care found New Zealand fails to deliver good outcomes for Māori because the state does not stand aside to allow Māori to take charge of their own affairs.
The Northern Territory is the only Australian jurisdiction where the media can identify juvenile offenders. The government now wants to end the practice.
Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP
Support for Māori and Pasifika communities was a funding priority in New Zealand’s well-being budget, but a change in values may have greater impact than more money.
In 2018, the rate at which Māori babies were removed from their families was four times the rate for the rest of the New Zealand population.
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Last week’s attempted removal of a newborn Māori baby from his family highlights the issue that indigenous children are much more likely to be taken into state care, in New Zealand and other countries.
Many remote Indigenous communities are not connected to the electrical grid and produce their own electricity using diesel generators.
Ocean Networks Canada/Flickr
A new federal program aims to reduce diesel-dependency in remote Indigenous communities. But are these communities able to do this on their own terms?
The Coalition government has rejected the Uluru Statement’s call for an Indigenous voice to Parliament, just one of many disappointments for Indigenous peoples.
Jeremy Ng/AAP
The U.S-Mexico border runs through Native American territories. A wall would further divide these communities, separating children from schools, farmers from water and families from each other.
The challenge on Indigenous rights is to achieve reform that goes beyond limited understandings of these issues as being symbolic or practical.
AAP/Dan Peled
Instead of paying lip service to promoting Indigenous Australians’ rights as First Nations, the next federal government should be guided by the Uluru Statement from the Heart to make real progress.
Neither of the two federal investigations into fish deaths in the Darling River include any Indigenous representation.
Rio Tinto’s mineral sands mine near Richards Bay, north of Durban. Plans for similar operation in the Xolobeni region south of Durban have been resisted by the local community.
Mathias Rittgerott/Rettet den Regenwald
The We'suwet'en First Nation is fighting the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which would stretch nearly 700 kilometres across northern B.C. through their unceded land.
It is a national shame that Indigenous people make up 2% of the general population, but 28% of the prison population.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Indigenous Australians are vastly over-represented in the prison population, but the success of a new program is offering hope that it can be turned around.
Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, receive a “hongi,” a traditional Māori welcome, from Māori elders on the lawns of Government House in Wellington, New Zealand in October 2018. In New Zealand, Māori elect members to parliament from designated Māori constituencies – and the right to participate offers more than the ‘duty to consult’ in Canada.
(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
In New Zealand, sovereignty is disputed, but the Maori case for sharing it with settlers underscores the limits of First Nations consultation in Canada.
An elder speaks at a rally against black deaths in custody in Sydney in May 2018.
Jeremy Ng/AAP
It was a week that saw the ABC’s managing director and the chair of its board go, with many questions still to be answered; meanwhile Scott Morrison gave the ongoing controversy over Australia Day a new lease of life.
Protestors rally in Sydney after a court rejected a possible retrial bid in the Bowraville murder case.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal ruled that a man cannot be retried for the murders of two Indigenous children – a major blow to families of the victims in a nearly 30-year-old case.
A river dike on the Rio Nil near El Asintal, Guatemala.
(Consejo de Comunidades en Defensa del Ambiente del Municipio de El Asintal)
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University
Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, and Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Chair and Member from North America of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) and Professor in Political Science, Public Policy and Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia