By Sandra Peláez (CS Intern)
The Camentsa Shnan Wabuatmeng Indigenous Association is an organization composed of members of the Kamëntsá Peoples—primarily midwives, traditional healers (sobanderas), medicinal knowledge keepers, traditional doctors, and apprentices—both women and men. The Kamëntsá, who refer to themselves as Kamuentsa Ÿentsá, Kamëntšá Biÿá (Peoples of this place, with their own thought and language)—are an Indigenous Peoples living in the Sibundoy Valley, Colombia.
By CS Staff
The rights of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories, and natural resources constitute the material and spiritual basis of their self-determination, cultural identity, food systems, political organization, and intergenerational continuity.
By Nichodimas Cooper (Nama, CS Journalism Fellow)
By Gregory Jones (Shawnee)
By Mathias Tooko (Maasai, CS Fellow)
By Jagat Man Lama Dong, Chairperson, Indigenous Rights Foundation
The rural municipality of Umakunda, located in the ancestral homeland of the Sunuwar Peoples, is a prime example of the disruption to communities caused by climate change. Many Sunuwar are leaving for cities because they can no longer earn a living from farming, their traditional occupation. Biren Sunuwar (Sunuwar) from Kubukasthali articulates the trend: “There is nothing in the village. It’s impossible to make a living here.”
By Lucas Kasosi (Maasai, CS Fellow)
Dr. Ruth H. Matamoros-Mercado (Miskitu) is a scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography & Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From an interdisciplinary perspective, her work bridges law, geography, and Indigenous studies to understand and raise awareness of the struggles for land, community resistance, and environmental justice in Central America. Originally from the northern Moskitia region of Nicaragua, Dr. Matamoros-Mercado brings to her research a perspective deeply rooted in the lived experience of the Miskitu people.
By Sandra Pelaez (CS intern) and Alison Guzman (CS Staff)
By Mathias Tooko (Maasai, CS Fellow)
By Lucas Kasosi (Maasai, CS Fellow)
Each year on February 2, the world observes World Wetlands Day, marking the 1971 adoption of the Convention on Wetlands in Ramsar, Iran. What began as a modest international agreement has grown into a global framework for recognizing the ecological, social, and economic importance of wetlands, ecosystems once dismissed as wastelands, but now understood as essential to life on Earth.
By Akash Poyam (Gond/Koitur, CS Fellow)
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
