Hundreds of delegates are arriving at the United Nations this week for the world’s largest gathering of indigenous peoples. But they arrive against an increasingly hostile global backdrop, facing an artificial intelligence boom that is leading to new extraction from ancestral lands, a US administration that has made it increasingly difficult for Global South delegates to obtain visas to attend, and the dual challenge of climate change and green energy projects that often conflict with indigenous land rights.
This year’s UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues focuses on the bitter topic of survival in the midst of war, and its official theme is “Ensuring the health of indigenous peoples, including in the context of conflict.” Experts confirm that indigenous peoples are already facing health disparities due to colonialism and climate change, and these damages are exacerbated by armed conflicts and militarization that threaten environmental degradation and further displacement of indigenous peoples from their lands. Experts say Indigenous health is directly linked to the environment, land and sovereignty, and cannot be isolated from clinical discussions about medicine or public health. War is not the only concern. Advocates argue that extracting critical minerals for the green transition leads to violations of indigenous rights, and are echoing a long-standing call to make climate finance directly available to their communities, rather than through government or foreign intermediaries.
But before diplomatic talks can begin, many delegates must confront the practical barrier of visa restrictions imposed by the Trump administration. Mariana Kimi Ortiz Flores, a Naño Savi from Mexico who works as an assistant at Cultural Survival, said last year her organization prepared indigenous representatives from Africa to attend the forum, but their visa applications were denied, and this year, one of her indigenous employees from South America was also denied a visa.
“It is becoming harder and harder to get to the United States, and not just because of visa (issues),” Flores said. “People from the Global South, especially indigenous peoples who have a certain appearance such as brown skin and certain characteristics, feel threatened by the general climate of insecurity and hate speech against Latinx people and indigenous peoples.”
Last year, Flores’ organization helped indigenous leaders from Bolivia attend the forum to protest mining on their traditional lands. They left the forum after being harassed by the leader of a political party in Bolivia and, coupled with health problems, decided not to return. “The forum is meant to be for indigenous peoples, but we really felt that wasn’t happening anymore, and that ultimately it’s the states that have more power over our lives,” Flores said. “Their struggle to defend their lands against this extractive industry is actually affecting them not only physically, but also mentally and spiritually.”
This comprehensive tally is one of the main focuses of a major report by Jeffrey Roth, a descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux, a former vice president of the Permanent Forum, and board chair of the Indigenous Determinants of Health Coalition, an international Indigenous health advocacy nonprofit. “You cannot separate human health from the health of the environment, our culture, or our language,” Roth said. “Indigenous people look at health from a holistic perspective.”
In his report, Roth identifies the determinants of indigenous health, ranging from land tenure and management authority that promote indigenous well-being to indicators of risk such as land confiscation and exclusion from decision-making. Roth argues that fragmented approaches to indigenous health, often adopted by the UN system and state governments, fail to adequately address health problems and their underlying causes.
For example, biodiversity policies that ignore indigenous rights miss opportunities to restore indigenous land tenure, which can improve ecosystem outcomes and enhance access to traditional foods. State-sanctioned mental health interventions that ignore the erasure of Indigenous language ignore the potential to improve Indigenous mental health through language revitalization. “Indigenous health is not just about health care, it is about land, culture, diets and community,” Roth said.
The Coquill Indian Tribe in Oregon adopted Indigenous health determinants by decree last year, and Roth has been working with them as chair of their Executive Health Council to integrate health determinants across their agencies. “They realize that when they take the elderly out on a monthly basis to do fishing activities, it represents health for those elderly people,” he said. “It’s a continuation of their traditions as the Kuku’il people, and it improves the mental health and behavioral health of those elders who are able to participate in that, not to mention the food they hunt.”
Roth also calls on the United Nations to recognize the value of Indigenous midwifery, which has often been outlawed in favor of Western practices, forcing Indigenous women into traditional institutions where they often face racism and “obstetric violence,” such as procedures performed without their consent. “Indigenous people have been doing this for thousands of years, not only in midwifery, but also in caring for the environment and caring for our culture and preserving these food systems,” he said.
In another report for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Hindo Oumaru Ibrahim, former president of the Permanent Forum and an indigenous Mbororo from Chad, warned that artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword for indigenous communities. While she urges governments to help indigenous peoples develop AI tools to revitalize endangered languages and monitor their lands, she also warns of a looming era of digital extraction, in which generative AI systems and technology companies actively eliminate cultural content, such as medical knowledge, traditional stories, and even genetic data.
Lydia Jennings, a native of the Pascua Yaqui (Yomi) and Huichol (Wexaretari) tribes, is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College. She said her advocacy for Indigenous data sovereignty — the movement that ensures communities retain the right to own and control their own data — began after a troubling discovery. It noted that one mining company had pulled information about Indigenous cultural practices from its environmental impact statement and was using it on its website to promote a mining project. “That was very upsetting to me,” she said. “How much information do we share in efforts to protect our sacred lands? And in what ways can we control how that data is used and by whom?”
Like Ibrahim, she says AI could be an opportunity for tribes, noting that some might be interested in hosting data centers or using AI to help preserve language or collect information. However, it remains cautious about how much AI systems might data-source Indigenous data without their consent, as well as the severe risks that large data centers pose to tribal lands and water resources. “Who has power and how do we redistribute that power?” I asked. “It can be an instrument of power and an instrument of abuse, but how do we choose to use it?”
Jennings said there is a growing movement to incorporate best practices related to Indigenous data sovereignty at multiple levels, from academic research to national and international policy.
Another focus area for this year’s Permanent Forum is the climate crisis. In a February report focusing on nomadic peoples, experts warned that strict state borders and exclusionary “fortress conservation” models are limiting the traditional mobility of pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and seafarers, even as they deal with the consequences of climate change and increasing inaccessibility to ancestral lands and waters.
The authors argue that mobility is a deliberate, knowledge-based climate adaptation strategy that country policymakers are actively working to erase, citing the example of the Tuareg people in the Sahara. “While the desert knows no borders, contemporary military borders increasingly restrict ancestral ways and undermine pastoral systems and access to services, making these lived realities of indigenous peoples invisible in official statements and policy frameworks,” the authors describe.
This echoes the sentiments expressed by Samanti Ann, an indigenous Maasai in Kenya, who recently spoke at a virtual panel discussion on the legal rights of pastoralists on behalf of the Integrated Pastoralist Development Organization in Mainuito. Although 60 percent of land in Kenya is considered communal, land is increasingly subdivided for development and claimed for carbon offset projects that limit pastoralists’ access to land and movement, Anne said.
“Mobility has to do with adapting to climate change,” Anne said. “Mobility has a lot to do with ensuring our livelihoods are secure, and our food security is good.”
Making progress on indigenous health, artificial intelligence, and territorial rights is complicated by an ongoing trend within the United Nations: bringing indigenous peoples together with “local communities.” In official policies and initiatives, the two groups are often combined under the acronym “IPLCs” – Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. But while local communities represent a broad category of stakeholders, indigenous peoples have distinct, legally recognized rights under international law. Roth of the Indigenous Determinants of Health Coalition said he recently encountered this issue at the World Health Organization when the agency classified an Indigenous initiative as merely an “equity” issue.
“This is not a stock issue,” Roth told the agency. “We are not just another minority of your population. We are rights holders, and this must be addressed through a rights-based approach.”
“Confusing us with other populations really diminishes our rights and diminishes our ability to maintain our health in our communities,” Roth said. This clustering also hinders participation, Roth said, pointing to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s IPLC working group as an example.
“I have tried to participate in this group several times, and as an indigenous person, I do not feel welcome and cannot participate,” he said. “These IPLC institutions are a way to diminish or weaken the voice of indigenous peoples in these global mechanisms, and that is unacceptable to me.”
He’s not the only one who feels this way. In 2023, the three major UN bodies on indigenous rights – the Permanent Forum, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – issued a joint statement demanding that UN environmental treaties stop using the abbreviation IPLC entirely. “Indigenous peoples should not be lumped together with an ill-defined group of communities who may have very different rights and interests,” they wrote.
For human rights defenders on the ground, this discussion is just one part of growing disillusionment with the UN system itself. Mariana Kimi Ortiz Flores, of the Foundation for Cultural Survival, said the foundation had suffered from member states’ willingness to simply ignore its laws.
“The United Nations as an international institution is beginning to lose its influence and power,” Flores said. But despite the bureaucratic hurdles, visa denials and geopolitical hostility, she said she is among many indigenous people determined to attend this week.
“If we as indigenous peoples don’t do this, no one will speak up for us and stand up for us,” Flores said.
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This story was originally published by grinding It is distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.