In the hills of northern Sikkim in northeast India, the Drokpa community live peaceful yet difficult lives. The hills resound with the songs the Drokpas have for every activity. These are not your usual villagers who reside in the same place for decades and have a set source of livelihood. Rather, the Drokpas, as their name suggests are nomads—“drokpa” is a Tibetan word that can be roughly translated as “nomad” or “high pastoral people”. For the last several generations, however, the Drokpas have followed an occupation that might soon disappear from Sikkim: herding yak.

In January 2016, a decade after the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was passed by Parliament, 60 gram sabhas in Khutgaon, Gadchiroli, became the first forest-dwelling people in Maharashtra to file a claim for habitat rights. These people are part of a community called Madia Gond, classified as a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG). Almost three years since their claims were submitted, since also approved by the authorised body, they are yet to receive their legal titles.

Mexico, one of Latin America’s big economic power houses, held presidential elections on 1 July 2018. The newly elected president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was elected with 53% of the national vote for his left-wing progressive agenda, defeating the party of the outgoing president, Mr Peña Nieto. López Obrador promised the country’s indigenous peoples significant change, including recognition of land rights. Only time will tell whether his promises will turn reality.

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos spoke out on Monday to condemn the nation’s soaring violence against human rights leaders amid growing pressure that the government act more forcefully to end the bloodshed.

Activists are being gunned down at a rate of one every three days in the Latin American country, rights groups say, and last Friday thousands of Colombians held protests and candlelight vigils to call for the killings to stop.

“We feel as if we’re combatting an organized criminal gang,” said Everton Barros Dias, head of forest monitoring for the Environment and Sustainability Secretariat (SEMAS) in the Amazonian state of Pará. He explained how “impotent” he feels, as his agency engages in an “unequal fight” to combat a rising wave of illegal deforestation in this key Amazonian state.

OSLO, Norway — Indigenous peoples and local communities conserve lands and forests for a quarter of the cost of public and private investments in protected areas, according to new findings released at the Oslo Tropical Forest Forum last week, yet “fortress conservation” strategies often see indigenous peoples driven from their land in an effort to protect it from human activity.

As NT marks 40 years of self-government, former Labor MLA Ken Parish says the system has been problematic

The Northern Territory should become the “test bed” for reforms proposed in the Uluru statement and establish a formal Indigenous voice to parliament, a former Labor parliamentarian and political analyst says.

Tropical forest loss is at an all-time high, fomenting the global climate crisis. The result is rising seas, threats to global food security, and conflict across the globe. Along with this violence against the earth, there is growing violence against the people who defend it.

Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon have united and created the Wampis Nation – an autonomous territorial government – in order to defend their livelihood from the increasing pressure from extractive industries. Their autonomous government covers nearly an area the size of one-third of the Netherlands and more than 15,000 people are part of this one-of-a-kind initiative.

Up in the highlands of Guatemala, a dark history haunts the mist-covered treelines. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a raging civil war claimed the lives of some 200,000 people, most of whom were indigenous. Across the country, 626 massacre sites have been identified.

Ironically, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s rejection of the 2017 Statement from the Heart, proposing more meaningful national engagement with Indigenous peoples, has accelerated demands for a treaty process across the country. Victoria and the