Reports state that Bolivia is set to pass the Law of Mother Earth, which will grant nature the same rights and protections enjoyed by humans. This legislation, called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, is intended to encourage a radical shift in conservation attitudes and actions, to enforce new control measures on industry, and to [...]

An article in Indian Country Today, Oct. 26, 2011, at 24, reports on new findings that support the theory that there is a link between arsenic and diabetes.  Two scientists on the US Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program co-authored a report that found sufficient evidence linking high arsenic exposure in drinking water to [...]

A non-profit group called the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) is demanding that the country of Belize in central America explain what an American oil company is doing on protected lands of Indigenous peoples. SATIIM reportes that it learned on October 25 that the American oil company, US Capital Energy, has suddenly re-appeared on protected and Maya [...]

A murderous dispute over natives occupying their lands has broken out in Brazil. Survival International reports that masked gunmen executed an Indian religious leader in front of his community. Gunmen surrounded Nísio Gomes and ordered his community to lie on the ground. He was shot in the head, chest, arms and legs and his body was taken away. Gomes is [...]

Check out this report  http://ilovechile.cl/2011/10/12/indigenous-focus-thousands-march-raise-awareness-500-years-colonialism/35053 Monday, Oct. 10 was a holiday in Chile - the day to commemorate the “discovery” of the New World or the encounter of the European World with the Americas. Historically known as the Aniversario del Descubrimiento de América (Anniversary of the Discovery of America), today it is more commonly known as the [...]

Indian Country Today reports that First Nations in British Columbia Canada have taken the next step toward health-care autonomy by signing a groundbreaking agreement to oversee their own health care services, rather than having the federal government do it. “We will be the first in Canada to take over province-wide health service delivery from the federal government,” [...]

    Survival International is announcing a landmark victory in which a tribe in India has for the first time in that country, apparently, had their right to use ancestral lands recognized – even though it is inside a tiger reserve. According to the report, in 1974 members of the Soliga tribe were evicted from their homes in the Biligirirangan [...]

Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 to address the deplorable conditions Indian children and families were suffering from under state child care programs.  Congress heard testimony on incredibly high levels of Indian children being adopted and placed into foster care as compared to other races of children in the 1940s-1970s. The Indian [...]

The United Houma Nation is participating in President Obama's petition program. I am informed that if the tribe can collect 25,000 signatures in 30 days, then the petition will be passed through the proper legislative channels to be considered for enactment by Cogress and hopefully ending in federal recognition of the Houma. The deadline for signature [...]