There are more than 300 million indigenous people, in virtually every region of the world, including the Sámi peoples of Scandinavia, the Maya of Guatemala, numerous tribal groups in the Amazonian rainforest, the Dalits in the mountains of Southern India, the San and Kwei of Southern Africa, Aboriginal people in Australia, and, of course the hundreds of Indigenous Peoples in Mexico, Central and South America, as well as here in what is now known as North America.

As Ellen Lutz reports in her letter on  page 3, the administration of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on April 3 that the country will endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The decision  comes on the heels of Rudd’s recent speech apologizing to Aborigines for the government’s former policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families and placing them with white families or institutions—the so-called Stolen Generations.