In 1997, Joenia Wapichana became the first indigenous woman in Brazil to obtain a law degree. Eleven years later, she was the first indigenous person ever to defend a case in the Supreme Court. And in October 2018 Joenia earned yet another distinction, becoming the first indigenous woman elected to the National Congress. Her 8,491 votes elected her to one of the eight seats destined to her home state, Roraima. The only time Brazil had an indigenous congressman was in 1986 — Mario Juruna, of Xavante ethnicity, was elected in 1983. Keep reading

The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, D.C. went viral online after a group of high school students from Kentucky mocked an indigenous Vietnam War veteran, Nathan Phillips, outside the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18. The incident was indicative of the racial politics in the United States and around the world that devalues indigenous rights and sees indigenous peoples as caricatures meant for the amusement of the dominant classes. However, the significance of the march — which was organized by the Indigenous Peoples Movement, a global coalition of indigenous communities — extended well beyond this petty display of white supremacy. Keep reading

One saying from Morocco’s Atlas has it that eating sow thistle helps people learn Amazigh, the language that is indigenous to that mountain range. The sentence, “ⵜⵛ ⵡⴰⵡⵊⴹⵎ!” (“tc wawjḍm!”, roughly pronounced “chwawzhdm”), is the name chosen for a new learning method that Catalan civil society organizations CIEMEN and Casa Amaziga de Catalunya have just published. The tool is primarily intended for its use in classes of Amazigh language and culture with the Catalan public education system, but the method has also been designed for self-learning. Keep reading

A Sikh diaspora group campaigning to achieve Punjab independence from India in the coming years plans to hold an unofficial referendum in November 2020 as the first step towards a UN-sponsored, binding vote on the issue. The move is sparking renewed political rifts on a very sensitive issue in Punjab and India, where anti-Sikh riots in 1984 claimed the lives of thousands of Sikhs. Keep reading

It’s impossible to get lost. Once in Syria’s north-eastern corner, and after accessing the area from Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey’s presence becomes overwhelming to our right side for the rest of the trip. That set of military watchtowers on the tip where the borders of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq collide may look imposing at the beginning, but one easily forgets them after our sight is completely blocked by a massive concrete wall. It’s a 764 km long barrier along the boundary of two entities, Turkish and Kurdish, that have been at loggerheads for too long. We’re driving across the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), a de facto political entity which may be on the eve of an unprecedented bloodshed. Trump’s announcement last December to pull out his troops from this region led to a threat by Turkey’s president Erdogan to invade the territory, something which still resonates on this side of the border. Those excavators we have spotted along the route were once used to improve the deteriorated infrastructure. Today, digging tunnels is seemingly a much more pressing need. Keep reading

A European citizens’ initiative (ECI) calling for enhanced protection for minoritised languages and cultures in the EU will be shelved at least until the next term. The Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), which launched the ECI, says “mistrust” exists over the real intentions of the current European Commission in relation to the Minority Safepack initiative. The story shows how, once again, civil society organizations meet serious obstacles in promoting the linguistic rights of speakers of minoritised languages. Keep reading