"Walls have never solved problems, whether that's in terms of immigration, in terms of militarization"

EL PASO, Texas - To the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Indians, the water of the Rio Grande that divides the United States and Mexico sanctifies religious rites and purifies their hunts.

Indian communities living miles away use the river to send messages to fellow tribes downstream, tribal chief Jose Sierra told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We are the original inhabitants of this island...this regulation denies us what is rightfully ours"

TAIPEI - Taipei's Peace Memorial Park is an oasis of calm in the bustling city, home to morning walkers and lunchtime strollers - along with a camp of indigenous protesters demanding justice.

For several months, the small group has lived in tents in a corner of the park, with a makeshift kitchen and a cluster of painted rocks, photographs and posters tracing Taiwan's indigenous history and their fight for land rights.

Maasai from four villages on the outskirts of the Serengeti sued Tanzania for the right to return to their villages which have become part of a park

NAIROBI - Maasai herders near Tanzania's famous Serengeti wildlife park have asked a regional court to stop the government intimidating witnesses supporting their legal bid to return to their ancestral land, a lawyer for the community said on Thursday.

As logging and palm oil industries continue to decimate the Amazonian rainforest, the people who live in it are taking tech into their own hands to fight back.

A recent report by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General had some tough criticisms for the country’s International Forests and Climate Initiative (NICFI), one of the chief funders of REDD+ initiatives around the world.

LOKOLAMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Sometime in March, I found myself trudging forward in a remote swamp in the heart of the Congo rainforest. As I worriedly tried to keep my boots from getting sucked in by the soft, brown mud, I wondered how far we could go on. It was our final day. In the two weeks prior, our team of British and Congolese researchers, together with men from the local village of Lokolama, had cut a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) trail into this dense, swampy forest. It had proved to be painstakingly slow work.

Kenya’s Ogiek people are optimistic of returning to their ancestral forests as the government has pledged to honour a landmark ruling ordering reparations for forced eviction.

Evictions have ceased and the Ogiek are rehabilitating parts of the Rift Valley’s Mau Forest one year after Africa’s highest human rights court told Kenya to compensate the forest-dwellers for violating their land rights, an Ogiek campaigner said.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is inviting indigenous peoples’ organizations and communities, and organizations that work with them, to apply for grants that fund projects and partnerships to promote the self-driven development of indigenous peoples and their unique cultural identity. 

Deadline: 08/06/2018

This new IPAF cycle will focus on indigenous youth.

"While agricultural output and exports are growing in the Mekong as a result of the concessions, the benefits have not reached smallholders and indigenous people"

BANGKOK - Companies acquired concessions amounting to the size of a small European country, while rural residents of Southeast Asia's Mekong region saw their landholdings shrink or disappear over the past two decades, according to researchers.

It was a letter of unity and solidarity. “Our forest, our rivers, our land are sacred to us,” wrote the Ka’apor tribe, from Maranhão in north-eastern Brazil, to the Munduruku, who live hundreds of miles away on the Tapajós river deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Samuel-Richard Bogobley is wearing a bright orange life vest and leaning precariously over the edge of a fishing canoe on the Volta River estuary, a gorgeous wildlife refuge where Ghana's biggest river meets the Gulf of Guinea.

He's looking for a bamboo rod poking a couple feet above the surface. When he finds it, he holds out a computer tablet and taps the screen. Then he motions for the captain to move the boat forward as he scans the water for the next rod.

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Thousands of indigenous Brazilians from across the country have rallied in the capital, Brasilia, to call authorities to protect their land rights.

Organisers of the annual "Free Land Camp" in Brasilia said more than 3,000 people reached the city this week to denounce what advocacy groups say is a continuing and unprecedented rollback of indigenous rights in the country.