WEST KIMBERLEY, Australia — November marks the end of the dry season in the Kimberley, the northernmost region of Western Australia, the country’s largest state. As the monsoonal rains start to…
MAUMERE, Indonesia — During Catholic wedding ceremonies in Indonesia, families traditionally bring gifts meant for the church up to the altar. On the day of their nuptials, Erlyn Lasar and…
When news of the COVID-19 pandemic came to the white-clad peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia, nobody was very surprised. The Kogis, Arhuacos, Wiwas and Kankuamos,…
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Martin Pineda describes Liguasan Marsh on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao as a no-man’s land that “strongly reeks with gas.” Pineda is a member of…
In São Gabriel da Cachoeira, a municipality in northern Amazonas state, the traditions and culture of 32 ethnic groups are the hallmarks of a daily life rich in diversity. But even here, traditional peoples face discrimination.
MEDAN, Indonesia — A recent clash between Indigenous community members in Sumatra and workers from a pulpwood plantation company has marred ongoing efforts to resolve a decades-long land conflict. At…
ANTSAHADINTA, Madagascar — Marcel Rakotonary, 75, gives a sharp warning to visitors before they enter Antsahadinta, or the “valley of the leeches.” Located 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of the…
On the land where their ancestors once lived, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilians band together in the face of hostility to preserve their cultures and traditions in the capital of Bahia state
In Brazil's biggest city, descendants of the original inhabitants live in invisibility and struggle to keep their traditions despite São Paulo’s celebrated cultural diversity
Mongabay starts publishing today a series of data-driven multimedia stories on Brazil’s Indigenous people living in urban areas, including the metropolitan centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília, showing that Indigenous people are much closer to most Brazilians than they realize
Sitting in the doorway of his house, Isaac Zacharías Klassen, the patriarch of a Mennonite colony that has settled in Masisea, in Peru’s Amazonian department of Ucayali, says he was…
MOCOA, Colombia — The Union of Traditional Yage Medics of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) brings together five ethnic groups — the Cofán, Inga, Siona, Coreguaje, and Kamëntsá — who practice…
COLOMBO — With its blends of soft red, pink and yellow, the fragrant cannonball flower (Couroupita guianensis) is a favorite of Sri Lanka’s Buddhists when making floral offerings during religious…
Ricardo Lopes Dias, an anthropologist and Christian Evangelical pastor, appointed to head Brazil’s isolated indigenous tribes department, has been removed due to a “conflict of interest”
Some 600 indigenous people have seen their crops die due to the expansion of agribusiness in the state of Pará, Brazil. The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up.
Created by an indigenous anthropologist, the Centro de Medicina Indígena Bahserikowi offers residents of the Brazilian Amazonian city of Manaus traditional healing and protective treatments by shamans from the Dessana, Tuyuka and Tukano ethnicities.
Christian fundamentalist Andrew Tonkin is allegedly planning to contact and convert isolated Brazilian Amazon indigenous people, according to Marubo and Mayoruna indigenous leaders.
A supposed COVID-19 test for a possibly infected Marubo indigenous man in Atalaia do Norte — gateway to the vast Javari Valley Indigenous Territory — was never analyzed; so results remain unknown.
Ethnos360 missionaries have purchased a helicopter as part of a plan to contact and convert isolated Amazon indigenous groups, putting them at grave risk of deadly infectious disease.
AMBON, Indonesia — Activists in Indonesia have called on police to drop criminal charges against two indigenous men who took part in a confrontation against a company accused of illegally…
MEDAN, Indonesia — Activists have deplored the recent jailing of two indigenous community members in Sumatra in a land conflict involving an affiliate of pulp and paper giant Royal Golden…
Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.
‘Multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth,’ warned Pope Francis, urging conservation of the rapidly vanishing Amazon — but the world’s media barely took notice.
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
Indigenous group entered Brazilian museum and retrieved sacred funeral urns that courts said were rightly theirs, but which dam construction firm and authorities kept from them.
Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
During Climate Week, starting September 22 at the UN in New York City, interfaith leaders will unveil the Faiths for Forests Declaration, with a call to political action by global congregations.
Just before Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, an encyclical, or formal letter from the pope, on the environment, on May 24, 2015, global concern for the environment seemed to be…
