Indigenous

Nov. 15 (UPI) — Pope Leo XIV on Saturday returned 62 Indigenous people’s artifacts held for more than 100 years by the Vatican to leaders of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The pope, meeting with the high clergy members in the Vatican, fulfilled a promise made by his predecessor, Pope Francis, who died on April 21.

The original inhabitants of Canada are the First Nations, Inuit and Metis, who comprise 1.8 million people, or 5% of the total population.

The CCCB said in a joint statement with the Vatican that it is “committed to ensuring that these artifacts are properly safeguarded, respected and preserved.”

In early December, after being packaged, they will be taken to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, where the museum curators will examine and catalog them before they are delivered to Indigenous groups across the country.

They will be returned to the National Indigenous Organizations, who “will then ensure that the artifacts are reunited with their communities of origin,” CCCB said in a news release

Leo XIV met with three members of the Canadian clergy — Bishop Pierre Goudreault, the CCCB president; Archbishop Richard Smith; and Father Jean Vezina, general secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops — according to the Vatican.

“The Holy Father’s gift is a tangible sign of his desire to help Canada’s Bishops walk alongside Indigenous Peoples in a spirit of reconciliation during the Jubilee Year of Hope and beyond,” Goudreault said.

“As CCCB President, I would like to thank the National Indigenous Organizations for their openness and collaboration in this work. I assure them of the Church’s unwavering commitment to reconciliation,” he added.

In the joint CCCB-Vatican statement, Holy See officials said that “His Holiness Pope Leo XIV desires that this gift represent a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity.”

“This is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artifacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the indigenous peoples,” the Vatican said.

The artifacts were part of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, encouraged by Pope Pius XI during the Holy Year “to bear witness to the faith and cultural richness of peoples,” according to the Vatican.

The artifacts were subsequently combined with those of the Church’s Lateran Ethnological Missionary Museum.

According to the Vatican, returning the artifacts “takes place amid the Jubilee of 2025, which celebrates hope, and the centenary of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition.”

Indigenous communities for years have been asking to have the items returned.

In spring 2022, community representatives visited the Vatican for meetings with Pope Francis before his trip to Canada in 2023, which included visiting the Vatican Museums and receiving a private tour of the collection.

“This is the Seventh Commandment: If you have stolen something, you must give it back,” Francis said at the time.

In 2024, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Francis during the G-7 meeting in Italy and urged him to make good on returning the artifacts, which include an Inuvialuit kayak once used for beluga and whale hunts, according to Canada’s embassy.

“This is historic, something Indigenous communities have been asking for,” said Joyce Napier, Canadian ambassador to the Holy See.

“A big part of the mandate of the Canadian embassy to the Holy See, when I took on this job, was to advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. It was a priority for the government. Today’s announcement is a significant step towards reconciliation.”

The treaty, which comes more than 220 years after the state was colonised, creates an assembly and truth-telling body.

The first treaty between Indigenous people and a government in Australia has entered into law in the state of Victoria after it was finalised and signed.

Members of the state’s First Peoples Assembly gathered for a ceremony to sign the document on Wednesday evening before state Governor Margaret Gardner added her signature to the treaty on Thursday morning.

Jill Gallagher, a Gunditjmara woman and former commissioner of the Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission, told Australian public broadcaster ABC that the treaty represents “the story of the Aboriginal people’s resistance”.

“I feel very happy. I’m just over the moon,” Gallagher said.

“Today marks a turning point in our nation’s history, a moment where old wounds can begin to heal and new relationships can be built on truth, justice and mutual respect,” she said.

Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan described the signing of the treaty as marking a “new chapter” in the state’s history.

“It is a chapter that is founded on truth, guided by respect and carried forward through partnership … a partnership to build a stronger, fairer, more equal Victoria for everyone,” Allan said.

Australia was colonised by the then-British Empire in 1788, with settlers first arriving in what is now known as Victoria in the early 1800s.

While British powers entered into treaties with Indigenous peoples in other colonised countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the United States, no treaty was ever signed in Australia.

The treaty, which has been described as historic by the United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk, formalises the creation of the permanent First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria.

Turk said the treaty “addresses the continued exclusion of and discrimination against the country’s First Peoples – the result of colonisation”.

The agreement, he added, had the “potential to be truly transformative, ensuring the First Peoples have a direct voice in advising and shaping laws, policies and practices that affect their lives”.

The treaty process began in 2016 and included the Yoorrook Justice Commission, a formal truth-telling body which concluded in June this year and heard from Indigenous people harmed by colonisation, including members of the Stolen Generations, who were Indigenous children taken from their families and communities by state agencies and religious organisations.

Australia held a referendum in 2023 that sought to change the constitution and create a permanent Indigenous voice to inform parliament on issues related to Indigenous people.

The referendum failed to achieve enough support to change the constitution.

The referendum followed after the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart petition, which had called for an Indigenous voice to inform parliament, and emphasised that Indigenous people had 60,000 years of ancestral ties to their land. This “sacred link” could not be erased from world history in “merely” 200 years, according to the statement.

Indigenous protesters stormed the UN’s COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, clashing with security officers inside the venue. They were demanding stronger action to stop deforestation and mining in the Amazon rainforest.

Hundreds of people have joined an Indigenous-led protest on the second day of the UN climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem, highlighting tensions with the Brazilian government’s claim that the meeting is open to Indigenous voices.

Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) on Tuesday evening after hundreds of people participated in a march to the venue.

“We can’t eat money,” said Gilmar, an Indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community near the lower reaches of the Tapajos River in Brazil, who uses only one name, referring to the emphasis on climate finance at many of the meetings during the ongoing summit.

“We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.”

A spokesperson from the UN, which is responsible for security inside the venue, said in a statement that “a group of protesters breached security barriers at the main entrance to the COP, causing minor injuries to two security staff, and minor damage to the venue”.

The protest came as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has highlighted Indigenous communities as key players in this year’s COP30 negotiations, even as several industries continue to further encroach on the Amazon rainforest during his presidency.

Lula told a leaders summit last week that participants at the COP30 would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities – for whom sustainability has always been synonymous with their way of life”.

However, Indigenous participants taking part in rolling protests in and around the climate change meeting say that more needs to be done, both by Lula’s left-leaning government at home and around the world.

A joint statement ahead of the summit from Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin and all Biomes of Brazil emphasised the importance of protecting Indigenous territories in the Amazon.

As “a carbon sink of approximately 340 million tons” of carbon dioxide, the world’s largest rainforest, “represents one of the most effective mitigation and adaptation strategies”, the statement said.

The statement also called for Indigenous territories to be excluded from mining and other activities, including “in particular, the Amazon, Congo, and Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia basins”.

Leo Cerda, one of the organisers of the Yaku Mama protest flotilla, which arrived at the summit after sailing 3,000km (1,864 miles) down the Amazon river, told Al Jazeera that Indigenous peoples are trying to secure nature not just for themselves but for humanity.

“Most states want our resources, but they don’t want to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples,” Cerda said.

As the flotilla sailed towards COP30, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, received a licence to begin exploratory offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

“You cannot make climate policies without indigenous people at the negotiation table.”

This Indigenous activist flotilla just sailed the entire length of the Amazon River to take their message to the #COP30 climate conference. pic.twitter.com/55YjlZgJct

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 11, 2025

Cerda also said it was important for Indigenous people to be present at the conference, considering the fossil fuel industry has also participated in the meetings for several decades.

According to The Guardian newspaper, some 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists participated in UN climate summits over the past four years.

Representatives from 195 countries are participating in this year’s summit, with the notable absence of the United States. Under President Donald Trump, the US has fought against action on climate change, further cementing its role as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuels.

Most recently, Trump has torpedoed negotiations to address emissions from the shipping industry.

Notably, this year’s meeting is the first to take place since the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that countries must meet their climate obligations and that failing to do so could violate international law.

Nov. 4 (UPI) — Indigenous communities in the Yurúa district, on the remote border between Peru and Brazil, have raised the alarm over the growing presence of members of Brazil’s Comando Vermelho criminal organization in their territory.

They say the group is exploiting what they describe as a “state vacuum” that leaves those living there unprotected against the advance of organized crime.

The armed Brazilian group has been crossing from Brazil into the Peruvian Amazon, taking part in drug-trafficking routes, illegal logging and other illicit activities that threaten the physical, cultural and territorial integrity of the Amazonian peoples, according to reports.

Those reports come from the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, the Regional Organization AIDESEP Ucayali and the Association of Native Communities of the Yurúa-Sheshea District.

In the Yurúa and Breu river basins, residents have reported sightings of small planes landing on improvised airstrips in the early morning hours, establishment of unfamiliar camps inside Indigenous reserves and movement of boats carrying cargo without government oversight.

The situation has reinforced perceptions that Comando Vermelho and allied criminal networks are operating with relative impunity in the region.

After a large-scale operation at the end of October against organized crime in Rio de Janeiro, the Comando Vermelho’s main base of operations, alarms sounded over possible attempts by senior members of the criminal organization to seek refuge in neighboring countries.

Indigenous organizations are not only denouncing the problem but also demanding immediate and coordinated action from the Peruvian government, La República reported.

To that end, they have outlined five key areas for response: maintaining a permanent security presence, coordinating efforts between the Interior and Defense ministries, protecting Indigenous leaders, promoting alternative development for local communities and granting legal recognition to a “Transborder Indigenous Guard” to monitor the frontier with Brazil.

Former Interior Minister Rubén Vargas warned in an interview with Radio Exitosa that Comando Vermelho is conducting criminal operations in Peru, mainly along the Amazon River route, reinforcing community warnings in Yurúa and surrounding areas.

And the reach of this criminal network has expanded into the regions of Pasco and Huánuco, in the area known as Puerto Inca, a hub for drug trafficking and illegal mining.

“There are two businesses that interest Comando Vermelho: cocaine and illegal mining,” Vargas said.

Although press reports dating to 2019 have documented the activities of the criminal organization in Peru’s Amazon territories, many details about Comando Vermelho’s operations along the Peru-Brazil border remain unclear because of the region’s inaccessibility, lack of disaggregated official data and clandestine nature of the networks.