"Aboriginal People have been knocking on the doors of the U.N. for the past 30 years. We finally have something permanent", says Ghislain Picard, vice-president of Canada's Assembly of First Nations, about the new Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues. Meeting in session from May 13-24, and gathering representatives of more than 900 indigenous peoples, the Forum is the only official United Nations body devoted to affairs of the planet's more than 300 million indigenous peoples.
