Grand Chief Greg Desjarlais of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations says no referendum can overturn the treaty that encompasses most of central Alberta.

"We're tired of seeing the government pass these bills where you don't see two sentences of Indigenous inclusion, and that has to stop," Desjarlais told the media at an anti-separatist rally on the steps of the Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton, amiskwaciwaskahikan, on Thursday.

About 600 people were at the demonstration, many with flags and signs protesting Alberta's separation from Canada and the controversial Bill 54, proposed by Premier Danielle Smith's government.

"I think we're tired of being pushed around," Desjarlais said.

"Maybe she thinks First Nations people are in the way, and it's about time that we rise and stand up, in a peaceful way."

Bill 54, the Election Statutes Amendment Act, has sparked resistance from many Indigenous leaders in the province since it was tabled two weeks ago.

The bill wou

The recent attack on April 23, 2025, on ancestral Indigenous institutions in Guatemala through the criminalization of two of their former leaders is illegal and contrary to national and international law. Cultural Survival demands respect for ancestral Indigenous mayoral offices and the immediate release of those detained.

As an organization whose mission is to defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Survival supports communities' self-determination, cultures, livelihoods, and political resilience. Cultural Survival strongly denounces the attack by the Corrupt Pact in Guatemala, carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office, against ancestral K'iche' Indigenous institutions through the arbitrary detention of two of its former leaders, Luis Pacheco (K'iche') and Héctor Chaclán (K'iche'), on terrorism charges for having participated in 106 days of peaceful pro-democracy protests in Guatemala. The arrest of these comrades violates fundamental rights enshrined in both the Guat

But in Gaza today, cash has all but disappeared. Aside from the brief ceasefire interlude that started in January and Israel ended on 19 March, when some cash aid was delivered by international organizations, no cash had entered Gaza for 15 months prior and none since.

In the first three months alone after October 2023, according to the World Bank, Israel destroyed or damaged 93 percent of all bank branches.

With no banks and only the cash that was already there – so overused by now that it is starting to disintegrate – Palestinians in Gaza have had to improvise.

Digital transactions have eased some of the pressure, while bartering has become common.

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Since entering office in January, Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, a critical passage for global freight traffic, have dominated headlines around the world. But two hours west of Panama City, 12,000 locals have a more pressing concern: their government plans to flood their lands and relocate them to create an artificial lake to ensure water supply to the canal.

“Tell the president to leave us alone. Does he know everything we are going to lose: the land, the crops, the homes? We are worried,” says Elizabeth Delgado, a resident of Limón de Chagres, a community on the banks of the Indio River that is the focus of the planned damming project. Along the river, the Delgados and roughly 500 other families face seeing their homes submerged.

The Panama Canal is a artificial waterway that cuts across the Central American country to connect the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Proposals for the reservoir project have come after decades of gradually

Four years ago, Harvard University moved a long-planned solar geoengineering project from Arizona to Sápmi, the homelands of Sámi peoples across what is now Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The Sámi had no idea it was coming.

“We did not know about the plans until we got alerted by the [Indigenous Environmental Network] and they were saying, ‘You should be aware of this,'” said Sámi council member Åsa Larsson Blind.

Blind said that it’s unlikely Harvard deliberately ignored consulting the Sámi about the project before moving it to Kiruna, Sweden. More likely, she thinks, they weren’t aware that they needed to.

“But at the same time, you don’t need to do much research to know that Kiruna is in Sápmi, and that there is an Indigenous people,” Blind said. “There is one Indigenous people in Europe, and that’s the Sámi people, and we are not unknown.”

The idea behind solar geoengineering is that it combats global warming by reflecting sun rays back into space with chemical par

About 10,000 people — descendants of 12 Indigenous tribes — make up the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation today. They like to call their land “God’s Country,” a place of near-divine beauty where sheer cliffs descend from dense timberlands and plunge into the Columbia River. Rugged alpine mountains bisect the reservation, opening onto windswept plains with stands of towering trees on its western edge. Junipers and huckleberries dot the woods along with other culturally significant plants.

The Colville Reservation is one of the many Indigenous tribal communities protected by its own tribal wildfire fighters with funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). In 2019, about 80% of tribal forests were managed in part or fully by tribal programs funded directly by the BIA. Tribal communities that lack their own programs can opt for direct management by the BIA.

However, these tribal wildfire fighters, who protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable communities, are

“It was 5 in the morning, and my wife and children were still sleeping when I saw three bulldozers coming from a distance on the village’s main road,” said Raed Srour, 45. “When they approached, I could see that they were accompanied by several military jeeps, and I understood that it was an occupation demolition mission on its way to the village. I wondered where they might be headed. It didn’t occur to me that they were coming for my house.”

A father of four, Raed Srour didn’t know that on Monday morning, he and his family had just spent their last night in their home in the village of Ni’lin, west of Ramallah. Srour’s family had been living in that house for seven years after almost ten years of hard work, building it stone by stone.

Elsewhere in the West Bank on that same day, Israeli forces moved to demolish several more Palestinian homes: in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, a seven-floor residential building was demolished, and in Anata, north of Jerusalem, 14 Palestinian prope

Oglala Sioux Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out says U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum should deny a major media request to reveal the Black Hills Claim accounting record. Speculation is that interest earnings are worth over $1 billion on the $102 million land payment that federal courts adjudged to the Sioux Nation 50 years ago.

The Oglala and their six fellow Teton Sioux bands never took the 1974 federal claim money offer for the theft of their Black Hills treaty-guaranteed territory. So, the Interior Department, as their legal trustee, invested the nations’ behalf through its Bureau of Trust Funds Administration.

CNN Investigative Unit reporter Casey Tolan, a data journalist, filed the request under Freedom of Information Act terms. He asked the Interior Department for “the most recent statement available listing the total amount of money held in trust by the department.” Oglala leaders recently rejected the idea after being notified by the department.

When Interior off

The first time Jennifer Simard saw lake sturgeon, she was as a teenager visiting the Moose Cree Homeland with her family. They stumbled on a group of the fish, namew in Moose Cree dialect, stranded in a spillway, designed to help prevent dams from overflowing but often dangerous to aquatic species.

“They were in these little pools, and their dorsal fins were sticking out of the water. They wouldn’t have lived there long — and it was hot too, because it was July,” Simard said. “Something would have eaten them eventually, or they would have died there.”

Simard and her family began to move the fish, each about three or four feet long, back to the river. They used bins they had in the truck at the time, usually meant for moving wood and harvesting other animals and fish. She remembers returning about 10 fish to the river that day. Her family knew what they were doing, but moving these massive fish isn’t recommended for the average person.

“[The species] was really explained to me b

The last time Pope Francis called the Palestinians of Gaza and gave them his blessings was two days before he passed away on 21 April. His funeral was held on Saturday in St Peter's Basilica, drawing mourners from around the world.

Ever since Israel embarked on its extermination campaign in Gaza in October 2023, the Pope - unlike the majority of western leaders complicit in the genocide - maintained close and consistent video contact with the colonised Palestinians.

He offered prayers, encouragement and solidarity to Gaza's small Christian community and to the besieged population more broadly.

A lone western voice in their defence, he is being mourned in Gaza with deep sorrow - even as some in Israel celebrate his death.

In his final months, the Argentinian Pope became increasingly condemnatory of Israel's war on the Palestinian people. He decried its extermination of Gaza's civilians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed, describing its crimes bluntly: "This is cruelty,

At the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — the world’s largest convening of Indigenous peoples — Indigenous leaders from South America are taking the chance to spotlight threats facing isolated peoples, also known as uncontacted people.

Deforestation is closing in on some communities in the Amazon and many lack official recognition of records of their existence, say representatives at the 10-day gathering in the U.N. headquarters in New York City. They are holding multiple events in the city, including launching a book with strategies to recognize their presence and sharing solutions to protect the lands they depend on.

“There needs to be greater respect, protection and land demarcation for these peoples,” said Bushe Matis, general coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale do Javari. “It’s important for us Indigenous peoples who came to New York to raise our voices for them.”

The rights of isolated Indigenous peoples are guaranteed in internati

Established in 1885, almost 30 years before Arizona was a state, UArizona was one of 52 land-grant universities supported by the Morrill Act. Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, the act used land taken from Indigenous nations to fund a network of colleges across the fledgling United States.

By the early 20th century, grants issued under the Morrill Act had produced the modern equivalent of a half a billion dollars for land-grant institutions from the redistribution of nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous lands. While most land-grant universities ignore this colonial legacy, UArizona’s Native scholars program appeared to be an effort to exorcise it.

But the Morrill Act is only one piece of legislation that connects land expropriated from Indigenous communities to these universities.

In combination with other land-grant laws, UArizona still retains rights to nearly 689,000 acres of land — an area more than twice the size of Los Angeles. The university also has rights

Jason Baldes drove down a dusty, sagebrush highway earlier this month, pulling 11 young buffalo in a trailer up from Colorado to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. His blue truck has painted on the side a drawing of buffalo and a calf. As the executive director of the Wind River Buffalo Initiative and Eastern Shoshone tribal member, he’s helped grow the number of buffalo on the reservation for the last decade. The latest count: the Northern Arapaho tribe have 97 and the Eastern Shoshone have 118.

“Tribes have an important role in restoring buffalo for food sovereignty, culture and nutrition, but also for overall bison recovery,” he said.

The Eastern Shoshone this month voted to classify buffalo as wildlife instead of livestock as a way to treat them more like elk or deer rather than like cattle. Because the two tribes share the same land base, the Northern Arapaho are expected to vote on the distinction as well. The vote indicates a growing interest to both restore buffalo o

The Trump administration signaled last week it intends to approve a land transfer that will allow a foreign company to mine a sacred Indigenous site in Arizona, where local tribes and environmentalists have fought the project for decades and before federal courts rule on lawsuits over the project.

Western Apache have gathered at Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel in Apache, since time immemorial for sacred ceremonies that cannot be held anywhere else, as tribal beliefs are inextricably tied to the land. The tribe believes the landscape located outside present-day Superior, Arizona, is a direct corridor to the Creator, where Gaan — called spirit dancers in English, and akin to angels — reside. The site allows the Western Apache to connect to their religion, history, culture, and environment, tribal members told Inside Climate News.

But beneath the ground at the site of Oak Flat lies one of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits. Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of two of the b

NEW DELHI: An international Indigenous tribal rights organization has reported that India's ambitious 'New Hong Kong project', valued at Rs 75000 crore, on Great Nicobar Island could potentially threaten the existence of one of the oldest and most isolated tribes.

The report, titled "Crushed: How India Plans to Sacrifice One of the World’s Most Isolated Tribes to Create 'the New Hong Kong'," by Survival International, indicates that this mega-development project may lead to the destruction of the uncontacted Shompens.

Survival International (SI) is a London-based charity that advocates for the collective rights of Indigenous, tribal, and uncontacted peoples.

The Great Nicobar project, often referred to as 'the new Hong Kong', includes plans to construct a mega-port, a defence base, a power station, and a new city to accommodate 650,000 residents. This project is expected to attract around one million tourists and other visitors to the small island each year.

The report warns t

First Nations representatives denounced Quebec’s inaction regarding the implementation of Indigenous rights at the 24th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), taking place this week at UN headquarters in New York.

On Monday afternoon, former Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL), Ghislain Picard, spoke at UN headquarters to denounce “Quebec’s lack of respect for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)” particularly in the caribou issue.

The former Chief of the AFNQL spoke on behalf of the Innu Nation at a side event at the 24th session of the UNPFII.

“Despite Canada’s adoption of UNDRIPDA, our communities must continually fight to assert what the declaration already clearly recognizes: our inherent right to self-determination, the protection of our territories, and the obligation to be consulted, listened to, and respected. In court, representatives of the (Quebec) governmen

Palestinian Christians in Gaza remember Pope Francis and his daily calls to the Catholic church in Gaza. “Gaza was among his last words,” one member of the parish told Mondoweiss. "His voice made us forget the sound of the planes and the bombs."

Christians around the world are mourning the death of Pope Francis, who passed away on April 21. But in the Gaza Strip, the local Christian community is not just mourning the loss of a religious leader, but the loss of a friend – someone they called “a true father.”

Universally hailed as a champion of the oppressed and the marginalized, the late Pope demonstrated his commitment to this reputation during the past 18 months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It has been widely reported that he made regular and near-daily calls to the Holy Family Church in Gaza and that he roundly condemned Israel’s actions, describing them as “terrorism” with “the characteristics of a genocide.”

“The death of Pope Francis is a great loss to the world and

Delegates to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – one of the largest annual gatherings at UN headquarters in New York City – may decide to move future meetings outside the United States because of the current political climate.

Fears about treatment of international visitors and difficulty or delays in gaining visas to travel into the U.S. are already reducing attendance at this year’s meeting, which is set to start Monday and run through May 2.

Now members are considering moving the event altogether.

“We're concerned about the ability of Indigenous people from around the world to actually make it in the country and not be harassed,” Geoffrey Roth, Standing Rock Sioux, one of 16 members of the Permanent Forum, told ICT Friday.

“Considering the safety of Indigenous peoples and their ability to actually make it to meetings and participate in a meaningful way,” he said, “I think it's time to move, and that's my personal opinion.”

Roth has heard from delegat

Mary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, “before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own”.

A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took.

“My mother kind of put me on this quest from my earliest memory,” Pember said. “I’ve always known I would somehow tell her story.”

More than 400 Indian boarding schools operated on US soil. Vehicles for policies of assimilation, perhaps better described as cultural annihilation, the schools were brutal by design. Children were not allowed to speak their own language or practice r

• Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was in Washington earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an order aimed at revitalizing the coal industry.
• Coal mines and coal-fired power plants were once steady income sources for the Navajo Nation, but the money dried up with the closure of a key plant and the mines that supplied it.
• Some Navajo organizers say Nygren's support for coal ignores the effects of fossil fuels on the climate and on human health. One expert said Nygren exaggerated the importance of coal.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an executive order aimed at deregulating coal production on federal lands and revitalizing the mining industry, signaling what appears to be the tribal leader's support for coal.

In the executive order, Trump asserted that coal is vital to the nation’s economic and national security. He declared that removing federal regulatory barriers to co