Indigenous peoples around the globe are making themselves heard in international arenas and at the national level. But many challenges remain in the fight for full recognition of all their rights.

Native People Warn U.N. of Biofuels Disaster
Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS – Growing demand for biofuels by the world’s rich nations is propelling attacks on indigenous people and destroying their lands and forests. “[There are] increasing human rights violations, displacements and conflicts due to expropriation of ancestral lands and forests for biofuels plantations,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42196

*****
PERU: Preserving the Potato in Its Birthplace
Milagros Salazar
CUZCO – Thousands of varieties of potato (Solanum tuberosum), one of the most widely-eaten and well-known foods in the world, have been developed in the heart of South America’s Andes mountains, where the crop was domesticated more than 8,000 years ago.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42161

*****
BRAZIL: Activists Opposed to Rebuilding Amazon Highways
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO – Nearly four decades after they were first planned, three highways through the jungles and swamps of Brazil?s Amazon region are being rebuilt. Neglected in the past when they became economically obsolete, they are once again a focus of environmental criticism.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42158

*****
ARGENTINA: Training Health Agents to Reduce Child Mortality
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES – An ambitious new programme for training health agents to help reduce infant mortality in small rural communities and indigenous villages, launched by one of Argentina?s best-known human rights groups, drew many more applicants than the organisers had hoped for.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42154

*****
JAPAN: Ainu People to Press Demands at G8 Summit
Catherine Makino
TOKYO – Japan’s hosting of the G8 summit in Hokkaido in July will afford a rare opportunity for the Ainu people who live on the island to press their long-standing demand to be recognised as an indigenous people.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42145

*****
Q&A: Land Reform Agents Try to Free Indians from Servitude in Bolivia
Interview with INRA Secretary General Juan de Dios Fernández
LA PAZ – Alto Parapetí, a rural area in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz, is caught up in a dispute between large landowners and the government, which is trying to free more than 2,700 Guaraní Indians from a state of servitude.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42120

*****
Q&A: “Transgenic Seed Companies Lie and Bribe”
Interview with Jesús León Santos, Winner of Goldman Prize*
MEXICO CITY – Biotech corporations that developed genetically modified seeds are bribing authorities and carrying out costly advertising campaigns “plagued with lies in order to create monsters that attack life,” says Jesús León Santos, an indigenous man who is one of this year’s winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42116

*****
Climate a “Life and Death” Issue for Native Peoples
Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS – Leaders of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples are calling for the United Nations to include their voices in its future talks on climate change.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42103

*****
Cautious Calm Settles Over D.R. Congo’s War-Scarred Ituri Region
Michael Deibert
BOGORO – Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones — still bleaching in the sun — of those who have been lost to the country’s wars.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42032

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

Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), the world’s leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. Its clients include more than 3,000 media organisations and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics, and other users.

IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.

Visit Inter Press Service at www.ipsnews.net