The world’s indigenous peoples are making themselves heard in international arenas, and at the national level, where their growing mobilisation is translating into political muscle. But many challenges remain in the fight for recognition of all their rights.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Small Islands Fear Going the Way of Atlantis
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The world’s small island states, most of which are painfully vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, have put the United Nations on notice.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49302

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ENVIRONMENT: Listen to the Earth, Say Indigenous Peoples
By Valentina Martínez Valdés*
MÉRIDA, Mexico (IPS/IFEJ) – The idea of wilderness is “an interesting concept; it is a Western concept. Our people have always lived and interacted in the environment,” said Illion Merculieff, an environmental activist from the Aleut community in the north-western U.S. state of Alaska.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49334

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BOLIVIA: Women Clamour for Right to Land
By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ (IPS) – Despite major advances in land distribution in Bolivia, single, widowed and undocumented women in this South American country have little chances of owning rural lands due to the patriarchal traditions and customary practices of indigenous peoples, in violation of international instruments and conventions protecting women?s rights.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49446

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BALKANS: Apologising to Sterilised Roma Women – Slovakia’s Turn
By Pavol Stracansky
BRATISLAVA (IPS) – Rights activists are hoping a landmark announcement by the Czech government regretting forced sterilisation of Roma women in the past will push politicians in neighbouring Slovakia to follow suit.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49444

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PERU: Fighting Hunger with Native Crops
By Milagros Salazar
PAUCARÁ, Peru (IPS) – As if he were showing off a treasure, Dionicio Sarmiento holds up his seed potatoes with a smile. “Look how nice they are, all ready to plant. It’ll be a good harvest,” says the peasant farmer from Huancavelica, Peru’s poorest province, where most of the population depends on subsistence farming.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49366

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CHILE: Mapuche Detainees Say They Were Framed
By Daniela Estrada
TEMUCO, Chile (IPS) – “This lie has got to end,” said a sobbing Luisa Marilef, a 55-year-old Mapuche woman who says her son’s arrest and prosecution under Chile’s anti-terrorism law was part of a set-up by the police and prosecutors.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49356

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U.S.: Supreme Court Punts on “Redskins” Case
By Matthew Berger
WASHINGTON (IPS) – The ongoing drive to purge derogatory American Indian nicknames and mascots from U.S. sports and schools took a minor hit Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear an appeal challenging the trademark protecting the name of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49288

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CHILE: Mapuche Voices from Prison
By Daniela Estrada
CONCEPCIÓN, Chile (IPS) – “If the government says let’s sit down and try to reach a solution, we’ll be there,” Héctor Llaitul, a leader of the radical Mapuche organisation Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), who is in prison in the southern Chilean region of Bío-Bío, told a group of foreign correspondents.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49281

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CLIMATE CHANGE: Signs and Portents of a Hostile New World
By Stephen Leahy
MÉRIDA, Mexico (IPS) – Lawrence Amos travelled from the Arctic at the top of the world to the tropical middle to recite in a soft voice the ongoing destruction of his home by climate change.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49236

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Elections, health, education, armed conflicts, corruption, laws, trade, climate change, the global financial and food crises, and natural disasters – IPS covers these frontline issues asking an often forgotten question: What does it mean for women and girls?
www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/women/index.asp

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DON'T MISS IPS SPECIAL COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE.

Through coverage of issues like food security, extractive industries, biodiversity and climate change, IPS is giving a voice to people whose stories are seldom heard. IPS is also highlighting the various challenges they face in the globalised world: health and food insecurity, environment degradation and poverty.
www.ipsnews.net/environment.asp

EARTH ALERT: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE FOR COPENHAGEN?

Read about the forces behind climate change – but also about growing citizen awareness and new climate policies towards sustainable development.

The 15th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) is set to take place in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to 18. World leaders are expected to try to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. IPS brings you the latest news from the ‘frontline’ of environment.
Webpage www.ipsnews.net/climate_change/index.asp
Newsletter ipsnews.net/_newsletter/environment.asp

You’ll find more IPS indigenous news and links at: ipsnews.net/new_focus/indigenous_peoples/

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