New evidence uncovered by the Oakland Institute shows that the US government may have played a role in Cameroon's extending a concession to American palm oil company Herakles Farms in 2013. 

By Tracy Barnett for Intercontinental Cry

A contingent of at least 1,000 Indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people in the Western Sierra Madre are gearing up to take back their lands after a legal decision in a decade-long land dispute with neighboring ranchers who have held the land for more than a century.

We at Cultural Survival support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in demanding that the United States government and the United Nations acknowledge and respond to the gross human rights and Treaty violations that have occurred from the construction of the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has not given their Free, Prior and Informed Consent to and has outwardly opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline project, which would threaten their main water source, the Missouri River, and disturb sacred burials sites.

By Giulia McDonnell

On June 27th, 2016, the director of Public Prosecutions of Belize dropped the criminal charges against the Santa Cruz 13, allowing those who had unfairly been held prisoner to go free. The director stated that he had “no intention to lay charges against the accused in the future.” This is a victory for Indigenous people in Belize, since the government has acknowledged the innocence of the Santa Cruz 13 and the violations of due process and rule of law, as well as racial discrimination, that have plagued the trial.

By Giulia McDonnell

This morning, on June 28, 2016, the Director of Public Prosecutions discontinued the charges against the Santa Cruz 13. The Director also confirmed the state had “no intention to lay charges against the accused in the future.”

By Anna Hernandez

As recent high profile corruption cases continue to bring worldwide attention to Guatemala’s government and military institutions, other, less-known human rights cases have been overlooked.

Sabino Romero, chief of the Indigenous Yupka community in the Sierra of Perijá, Venezuela, was murdered in March of 2013. The Yupka community claims that the suspected murderers were hired by cattle ranchers attempting to take the ancestral lands of the Yupka people. Romero was a lands activist who defended his community’s ancestral lands from cattle ranchers and mining companies.