Thousands attend Invasion Day rallies on Australia’s national holiday as colonisation debate rages

With Australia increasingly uneasy about celebrating its national day, recognition of Indigenous people in the constitution has become a new flashpoint

Tens of thousands of people have marked Australia’s national day by attending protest rallies in cities across the nation, amid a rising political and social reckoning with the country’s colonial history.

Australia Day – 26 January – commemorates the landing of the British first fleet of convicts at Sydney Cove in 1788, the beginning of the settlement that entrenched European colonisation of the Australian continent.

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Jair Bolsonaro accused of acts of genocide against Amazonian group

Brazilian president says predecessor emboldened wildcat miners which led to wrecked forests and disease and death among Indigenous people

Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.

Lula visited the Amazon state of Roraima on Saturday to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.

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Landmark deals give Indigenous key role in Canada resource projects

YQT community signs unprecedented agreement with coal company giving Indigenous leadership ‘veto’ on proposed project

Two landmark deals in western Canada could reshape the role of Indigenous nations in resource development projects, placing greater power in the hands of groups that have long been excluded and signalling a possible shift in how industry and governments negotiate with communities on the frontlines of environmental degradation.

In recent years, a string of fierce battles over pipelines have put a spotlight on the fractious nature of resource extraction projects, often pitting First Nations communities against powerful companies.

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Lula to visit Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory amid vow to tackle crisis

Move comes after country’s minister for Indigenous people says issue is an ‘absolute priority’

Brazil’s first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, has vowed to make tackling the humanitarian crisis plaguing the country’s largest Indigenous territory “an absolute priority”, as she prepared to fly into the region with the new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Under the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, thousands of illegal gold miners poured into the Yanomami enclave in the Amazon, bringing violence, pollution and a healthcare calamity captured in a recent series of photographs of severely malnourished children and adults.

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Fears mount over safety of two missing Mexican environmental activists

Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca and Antonio Díaz Valencia’s bullet hole-riddled vehicle was found after an anti-mining meeting

Fears are mounting for the safety of two missing Mexican land rights activists after their vehicle was found ridden with bullet holes.

Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca, a human rights lawyer and environmentalist and Antonio Díaz Valencia, leader of the Aquila Indigenous community in Michoacán, were last seen on Sunday evening travelling toward the neighbouring state of Colima after attending an anti-mining community meeting.

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Peru lawmakers propose bill to strip Indigenous people of protections

Proposal to dismantle existing reserves for ‘uncontacted’ Indigenous groups quietly pushed amid ongoing political chaos

Amid the political chaos following the ousting of Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, lawmakers in the country’s congress are quietly trying to pass a bill into law that would strip “uncontacted” Indigenous people of protection and dismantle existing reserves created for them.

The bill proposes to modify a 2006 law protecting Indigenous peoples in “isolation” and “initial contact” – those living with little or no contact with the outside world – in order to halt the creation of new reserves and eliminate existing ones, of which there are seven in Peru’s Amazon.

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Canada court rejects mother’s lawsuit to ban Indigenous ceremony at children’s school

Candice Servatius, an evangelical Protestant, claimed ceremony infringes on her children’s religious freedoms

A Canadian court has again rejected claims from a mother that Indigenous cultural events at her children’s school infringed on their religious freedoms, ordering her to pay costs after revelations her lawsuit was secretly funded by a Christian activist organization.

Candice Servatius, an evangelical Protestant, complained in 2016 after an Elder performed a smudging demonstration at her children’s school in the western British Columbia town of Port Alberni. A hoop dancer also said a prayer while performing at a school assembly.

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Canada: hopes rise for landfill search where Indigenous women’s bodies believed to be buried

Manitoba site pauses operations, raising prospect that search for bodies of Long Plain First Nation women could be possible

Operations have paused at a Canadian landfill where the bodies of at least two Indigenous victims of an alleged serial killer are believed to be buried, amid mounting frustration that authorities are not doing enough to recover the bodies.

Police in Winnipeg announced last week they had charged Jeremy Skibicki, 35, with the murder of Morgan Beatrice Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, of Long Plain First Nation, months after he was accused of killing Rebecca Contois, 24, from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation.

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Alberta ‘sovereignty act’ sets province on collision course with Justin Trudeau

Bill that could allow province to ignore federal laws criticized by constitutional scholars and Indigenous leaders

Alberta has passed a controversial “sovereignty act” that could allow the province to ignore federal laws, setting the stage for a combative relationship with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and tense relations with Indigenous leaders.

Shortly after midnight on Thursday, the governing United Conservative party passed Bill 1, the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, after weeks of criticism over the proposed law – and only after stripping away a contentious provision that would have allowed the provincial cabinet the power to bypass the legislature and rewrite laws.

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Canada police say they can’t recover bodies of murdered Indigenous women

Family ‘heartbroken’ and angry by decision not to search landfill after four women were believed to have been killed by serial killer

Police in Canada have said they don’t have the resources to search a landfill to recover the bodies of two Indigenous women murdered by an alleged serial killer – a decision that has left the daughters of one victim “heartbroken” and angry.

Last week, police in Winnipeg announced that four Indigenous women – Marcedes Myran, Morgan Harris, Rebecca Contois and a fourth woman who they had not identified – were believed to have been killed by an alleged serial killer. Winnipeg police have charged Jeremy Skibicki in their deaths.

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Canada: unidentified victim of alleged serial killer given name Buffalo Woman

Community members bestow name amid fears that the woman, who is believed to be Indigenous, would remain nameless

The unidentified victim of an alleged serial killer in Canada has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by grieving community members, amid growing fears that a woman who is believed to be Indigenous would remain nameless.

Last week, Winnipeg police charged Jeremy Skibicki in the deaths of three women. Two were named as Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26 of Long Plain First Nation, but the third woman has not been identified. Skibick had previously been charged in May in the killing of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation.

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Six months after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered, the Amazon remains unsafe for activists

Activists are cautiously hopeful that the incoming president will bring relief to Bolsonaro’s forest-wrecking administration

It was a hunting shotgun like to the one used to murder Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira – and it was pointing straight at Julia Kanamari’s chest.

“You’ll be next,” she remembers the bleary-eyed gunman snarling after being caught smuggling a boat-load of illegally poached river turtles out of the Javari Valley Indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon.

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‘Rage, despair, disgust’: Canada reels from killings of Indigenous women

Serial killing of four women prompts anger at failure of politicians to keep promise to protect Indigenous women and girls

The arrest of an alleged serial killer who targeted Indigenous women in central Canada has prompted fresh anger and despair that the country has once again failed in its promises to protect vulnerable women and girls.

Police in Winnipeg announced late on Thursday they had charged Jeremy Skibicki, 35, with the murder of Morgan Beatrice Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, of Long Plain First Nation, months after he was accused of killing Rebecca Contois, 24, from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation.

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Canadian man charged with murdering four Indigenous women

Two of the women killed around the same time as Rebecca Contois are also Indigenous, and the third is believed to be

A Canadian man previously charged with murdering an Indigenous woman has been accused of killing three other women – two also confirmed to be Indigenous and one believed to be.

Jeremy Skibicki was charged 18 May and kept in custody after the partial remains of Rebecca Contois, 24, were found in a garbage bin near an apartment building. Contois lived in Winnipeg but was a member of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, also known as Crane River.

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Tanzania drops murder charges against 24 Maasai leaders

The pastoralists had been detained over the death of a police officer during protests against government plans to evict them from ancestral land

Prosecutors in Tanzania have dropped murder charges against 24 Maasai pastoralists who were detained over the death of a police officer earlier this year.

The officer died in June during protests against government plans to evict them from their ancestral land in Loliondo, in Ngorongoro District, to make way for a conservation and a luxury hunting reserve.

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Greta Thunberg’s charity donates £158,000 to Sami campaign

Indigenous people in Sweden are battling UK firm over plans for iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands

The charity founded in Greta Thunberg’s name has donated £158,000 to cover the legal costs of Indigenous people in Sweden’s Arctic north as they battle a British mining company over plans for an iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands.

Beowulf Mining, which has its headquarters in the City of London, was given approval in March by the Swedish government for excavation on an area used by the Sami community.

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Remains of 18 Indigenous people held by UK museums return to Australia

Return is part of painstaking effort to recover thousands of ancestors stolen from traditional lands who now lie in more than 20 countries

The remains of 18 Indigenous people have been returned to Australia by two British museums, part of the laborious and painstaking effort to recover thousands of ancestors stolen from their traditional lands which now lie in more than 20 countries around the world.

At midnight Australia time on Wednesday, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum returned 17 ancestors to the custodianship of the federal government, which will hold them while further research is undertaken “to determine the traditional custodians”. Another was given to the custodianship of the south-east First Nations people of South Australia, who were represented by Robyn Campbell.

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Canada supreme court refuses to hear appeal in blow to residential school survivors

Survivors of St Anne’s Indian residential school allege government withheld key evidence in determining compensation for victims

Canada’s supreme court has declined to hear an appeal brought by a group of Indigenous residential school survivors, dealing a major blow to their decade-long fight against federal government over thousands of unreleased documents.

Survivors of St Anne’s Indian residential school had hoped the country’s top court would take their case, which alleges Canada’s federal government withheld key evidence in determining compensation for victims of abuse at the school in northern Ontario.

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Stolen Tasmanian Aboriginal artefacts are finally home. But there’s a catch: they’re only on loan

Cultural objects kept in museums around the world are in nipaluna/Hobart for an exhibition. But Aboriginal communities are calling for them to stay permanently

In 2014, pakana woman Zoe Rimmer left the British Museum in tears after viewing a 170-year-old kelp water carrier taken from lutruwita/Tasmania in their collection. As she cried, the seed of a big idea was planted: how could she get the rikawa, and other Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural artefacts sitting in institutions across the world, home?

“Seeing our ancestral belongings in a storage facility in the British Museum was quite emotional,” says Rimmer, who until recently was senior curator of First Peoples art and culture at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).

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Aboriginal man laid to rest in moving ceremony 90 years after he was killed by police at Uluru

Family of Yokun call for government apology and compensation as university says sorry for storing remains

The families of an Aboriginal man shot and killed by police at Uluru 90 years ago, have finally laid his remains to rest at the base of the rock in a deeply emotional ceremony, with his descendants calling for an apology and compensation from governments and police.

The partial remains of Pitjantjatjara man Yokun were repatriated to the place where he was shot and killed in 1934 by mounted constable Bill McKinnon.

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