U.S. tribes file climate complaint against government in U.N.
Four coastal Louisiana tribes and one in Alaska that say the U.S. government violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change have submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in Switzerland. The complaint was filed Wednesday, The Advocate reported. Sea-level rise ...
Seven slain, 14 tortured in Panama sect exorcism terror rituals
Prosecutors in Panama said Thursday they have found the corpses of six children and one adult in a clandestine burial pit where a religious sect was found torturing indigenous people in exorcism rituals. Prosecutors said the dead minors found in the pit ranged in age ...
Brazilian government may open up indigenous lands for oil and gas exploration
The Brazilian government will propose legalizing oil and gas exploration as well as hydroelectric dam construction on indigenous land, a report said Saturday, citing a draft of a bill to be sent to Congress. Opening up protected native territory was a key campaign pledge for ...
In the Lapland home of Santa Claus — and the Sami people — tourism brings gifts and woes
In Finland's remote Lapland region, the Santa Claus Village amusement park is a snowy wonderland of reindeer rides, ice castles, snowmobiles and igloo hotels where Christmas holds sway 365 days a year. At its center, a wooden, fairy-tale cabin houses Santa's grotto — since the ...
National Ainu Museum in Hokkaido to exhibit over 700 artifacts
A national museum dedicated to the Ainu ethnic minority in northern Japan will exhibit more than 700 artifacts, an official said Thursday, as the facility offered a preview to the press ahead of its official opening in April. The museum, which together with a park ...
Guatemala indicts fourth former top military official for Maya genocide
Guatemala's human rights prosecutor on Friday indicted another former top military official for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the bloodiest phase of the Central American country's 36-year civil war. A military operations chief under deceased Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, Luis Enrique Mendoza ...
After protests, India drops plan to let officials use force to evict tribes from forests
India has dropped plans to give forest officials the right to use force against indigenous people and open up more land for commercial plantations after nationwide protests. Proposed amendments to a century-old Indian Forest Act aimed to give officials the power to arrest and shoot ...
Hokkaido Ainu association sues University of Tokyo to have remains returned
An Ainu indigenous rights association in Hokkaido has filed a lawsuit against the University of Tokyo, seeking the return of remains of their ancestors stored at the university. In the suit filed Friday at the Kushiro District Court, the Urahoro branch of the Ainu Association ...
Japan's shrine meant to celebrate Hokkaido's Ainu divides them
On a wooded lake shore in southwest Hokkaido, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate. At a cost so far of ¥20 billion, the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony is ...
Australians grow angry as mighty Darling River runs dry
Reduced to a string of stagnant mustard-colored pools, fouled in places with pesticide runoff and stinking with the rotting carcasses of cattle and fish, the Darling River is running dry. The parched earth of Australia's longest waterway, if tributaries are included, is in the grip ...
Vatican condemns 'defiance' after indigenous Amazon statues are thrown into river
The Vatican on Monday spoke of an "act of defiance" after some indigenous Amazonian statues were taken from a Rome church and dumped into the Tiber River following criticism from ultra-conservative Catholics. Anonymous individuals filmed themselves taking the five statues of a naked, pregnant woman ...
Indigenous protesters hold police after five are killed in Ecuador clashes
Indigenous groups in Ecuador seized eight police officers Thursday amid protests over fuel price hikes that officials said have so far killed five people, including an indigenous leader. The uniformed officers, including a woman, were seized during a tense standoff in Quito and put on ...
