Hundreds of delegates representing diverse Indigenous nations from across the globe are gathering at the United Nations this week for the world’s largest and most significant annual forum dedicated to Indigenous peoples’ issues, yet their arrival is overshadowed by an increasingly complex and often hostile international landscape. This critical assembly unfolds against a backdrop of burgeoning technological shifts, intensified geopolitical tensions, and an escalating climate crisis, all of which disproportionately impact Indigenous communities and their ancestral territories. The forum faces the immediate challenge of an artificial intelligence boom that is inadvertently driving new forms of resource extraction on traditional lands, while persistent visa restrictions imposed by the U.S. administration have severely hampered the ability of many Global South delegates to attend and participate. Simultaneously, the twin pressures of climate change and the global push for green energy projects frequently collide with and undermine Indigenous land rights, further complicating their struggle for self-determination and cultural preservation.

This year’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) is acutely focused on the stark reality of survival amidst widespread conflict, reflected in its poignant official theme: “Ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ health, including in the context of conflict.” Experts and advocates consistently highlight that Indigenous populations globally already contend with profound health inequities, deep-seated legacies of colonialism, and the accelerating impacts of climate change. These existing vulnerabilities are now critically compounded by armed conflicts and pervasive militarization, which not only inflict direct physical and psychological harm but also risk catastrophic ecological degradation and further displacement of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and traditional ways of life. A central tenet of Indigenous advocacy, powerfully articulated at the forum, is that health for Indigenous peoples is intrinsically linked to the well-being of their environment, the security of their land, and the recognition of their sovereignty, asserting that it cannot be compartmentalized into narrow clinical discussions about medicine or public health services alone. Beyond overt warfare, a growing concern among advocates is the escalating extraction of critical minerals—essential components for the global green energy transition—which is frequently implicated in widespread Indigenous rights violations, prompting renewed calls for direct climate financing to reach Indigenous communities, bypassing often cumbersome and inequitable state or foreign intermediary channels.

Before engaging in diplomatic discourse, many delegates from the Global South confront the formidable practical barrier of stringent visa restrictions, a policy trend that has intensified under recent U.S. administrations. Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores, a Na’uu Savi woman from Mexico and an advocacy assistant at Cultural Survival, shared sobering accounts of these challenges. Last year, her organization diligently prepared Indigenous representatives from various African nations to attend the forum, only to see their visa applications summarily denied. This year, an Indigenous staff member from South America faced a similar rejection, underscoring a systemic pattern. Flores lamented the increasing difficulty of accessing the United States, not solely due to visa hurdles, but also because of a broader climate of insecurity and pervasive hate speech targeting Latin American and Indigenous peoples, leading many brown-skinned Indigenous individuals to feel threatened when traveling.

The repercussions of these challenges extend beyond mere attendance. Flores recounted how Indigenous leaders from Bolivia, who attended the forum last year to protest mining operations encroaching on their traditional lands, ultimately departed prematurely after experiencing harassment from a political party leader from their home country. Coupled with ongoing health issues exacerbated by their advocacy work, they have opted not to return. This incident highlights a deep-seated disillusionment, with Flores stating that while the forum is intended for Indigenous peoples, there’s a growing perception that states often exert disproportionate power over their lives. The relentless struggle to defend their land against extractive industries, she emphasized, takes a comprehensive toll, impacting individuals not only physically but also mentally and spiritually.

This comprehensive toll forms a central focus of a pivotal report by Geoffrey Roth, a descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux, a former vice chair of the Permanent Forum, and the board chair of the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance, an influential international Indigenous health advocacy nonprofit. Roth’s work champions a holistic perspective, asserting that human health is fundamentally inseparable from the health of the environment, cultural integrity, and linguistic vitality. He delineates key Indigenous determinants of health, which span from robust land tenure and effective governance authority that intrinsically strengthen Indigenous well-being, to critical risk indicators such as land dispossession and systematic exclusion from decision-making processes. Roth’s report critically argues that the fragmented approaches to Indigenous health often adopted by the U.N. system and state governments are inherently inadequate, failing to address the underlying causes of health disparities. For instance, biodiversity policies that neglect Indigenous rights squander vital opportunities to restore Indigenous land tenure, which could simultaneously enhance ecosystem outcomes and bolster access to traditional foods. Similarly, mental health interventions that overlook state-sanctioned Indigenous language erasure miss the profound potential for improving Indigenous mental well-being through comprehensive language revitalization efforts. As Roth succinctly puts it, “Indigenous health is not just about healthcare; it’s about land, culture, food systems, and community.”

Demonstrating the practical application of this framework, the Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon formally adopted the Indigenous determinants of health by ordinance last year. Roth, serving as chairman of their executive health board, has been instrumental in integrating these determinants across all tribal agencies. He cites the tribe’s practice of taking elders on monthly fishing expeditions as a powerful example: “They understand that when they take elders out on a monthly basis to do fishing activities, that is health for those elders. It’s continuing their tradition as Coquille people, and it improves the mental health, behavioral health of those elders that are able to participate in that, let alone the food they catch.” Furthermore, Roth’s report strongly advocates for the U.N. to officially recognize and support Indigenous midwifery, a practice that has often been suppressed or outright banned in favor of Western medical models. This suppression has frequently forced Indigenous women into conventional institutions where they encounter systemic racism and instances of “obstetric violence,” including procedures performed without their informed consent. He passionately states, “Indigenous people have been doing this for thousands of years, not only midwifery, but also caring for the environment and caring for our culture and preserving these food systems.”

The accelerating technological revolution, particularly the rise of artificial intelligence, presents another complex challenge and opportunity for Indigenous communities. In a separate, impactful report to UNPFII, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an Indigenous Mbororo woman from Chad and a former Permanent Forum chair, meticulously outlines AI’s nature as a double-edged sword. While she strongly encourages governments to support Indigenous peoples in developing AI tools for vital purposes like revitalizing endangered languages and effectively monitoring their vast territories, she simultaneously issues a stern warning about an impending era of “digital extractivism.” This refers to the concerning trend where generative AI systems and major tech companies are aggressively scraping Indigenous cultural content—including invaluable medicinal knowledge, rich traditional stories, and even sensitive genetic data—often without explicit consent, fair compensation, or appropriate attribution.

Lydia Jennings, a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Yoeme) and Huichol (Wixárika) and an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, echoes these concerns. Her fervent advocacy for Indigenous data sovereignty—a critical movement ensuring that communities retain the inherent right to own and control their own data—was ignited by a troubling discovery. She observed a mining company extracting detailed information about Indigenous cultural practices from an environmental impact statement and subsequently deploying it on its website to promote a mining project. “That was very alarming to me,” Jennings recalled, prompting her to critically question, “How much information do we share in efforts to protect our sacred homelands? And what are the ways that we can govern how and who uses that data?” Like Ibrahim, Jennings acknowledges AI’s potential as an empowering tool for tribes, noting that some may explore hosting data centers or leveraging AI for language preservation or synthesizing complex information. However, she maintains a vigilant skepticism regarding the extent to which AI systems may be co-opting Indigenous data without consent, alongside the severe environmental risks that massive data centers—demanding immense amounts of energy and water—pose to tribal lands and precious water resources. She poignantly asks, “Who has the power and how do we redistribute that power? It can be a tool to power and a tool to harm, but how do we choose to wield it?” Jennings emphasizes a burgeoning global movement to integrate best practices of Indigenous data sovereignty across various sectors, from academic research to national and international policy frameworks.

The pervasive climate crisis constitutes another primary focus of this year’s Permanent Forum, particularly its disproportionate impact on nomadic and mobile Indigenous populations. A compelling February report, specifically addressing nomadic peoples, warned that rigid state borders and exclusionary “fortress conservation” models are increasingly stifling the traditional mobility of pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and seafarers. This restriction occurs precisely as these communities grapple with the escalating fallout of climate change and face diminishing access to their ancestral lands and waters. The report’s authors powerfully argue that traditional mobility is not merely a practice but a deliberate, deeply knowledge-based climate adaptation strategy that state policymakers are actively undermining and erasing. They cite the profound example of the Tuareg people in the Sahara Desert, whose ancestral routes are being increasingly restricted by contemporary, militarized frontiers. The authors emphasize that while “the desert knows no borders,” these artificial barriers severely undermine pastoral systems and limit access to essential services, effectively rendering the lived realities and adaptive strategies of Indigenous Peoples invisible in official data and policy frameworks.

These sentiments were strongly echoed by Samante Anne, an Indigenous Maasai woman from Kenya, who recently spoke at a virtual panel on pastoralists’ legal rights on behalf of the Mainyoito Pastoralists Integrated Development Organization. Anne highlighted that despite 60% of Kenya’s land being traditionally communal, there is a relentless push for subdivision for various developments and, increasingly, for carbon offset projects. These initiatives significantly restrict pastoralists’ access to vital lands and their essential traditional movements. “Mobility has everything to do with us adapting to climate change,” Anne asserted. “Mobility has everything to do with ensuring our livelihoods are secure, our food security is good.” For Maasai and other pastoralist communities, freedom of movement is not just a cultural practice but a fundamental strategy for ecological resilience and survival in changing environments.

Making meaningful progress on critical issues such as Indigenous health, the ethical development of artificial intelligence, and the protection of territorial rights is perpetually complicated by a persistent and problematic trend within the U.N. system itself: the conflation of Indigenous peoples with a broader, undefined category of “local communities.” In numerous official policies, initiatives, and documents, these two distinct groups are frequently merged under the acronym “IPLCs”—Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. However, this seemingly innocuous grouping fundamentally overlooks a crucial distinction: while “local communities” represent a wide array of stakeholders with varying interests, Indigenous peoples possess distinct, legally recognized rights under international law, most notably enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Geoffrey Roth, from the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance, recounted a direct confrontation with this issue at the World Health Organization, where the agency categorized an Indigenous initiative merely as an “equity” issue. “This is not an equity issue,” Roth firmly stated to the agency. “We are not just another one of your minority populations. We are rights holders, and this needs to be approached from a rights-based approach.”

Roth further elaborated that this conflation actively diminishes Indigenous rights and severely hampers their ability to maintain health and well-being within their communities. He cited the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s IPLC working group as a prime example of how this grouping actively hinders genuine Indigenous participation. “I’ve tried to participate in that group several times, and as an Indigenous person, I don’t feel welcome and I’m not able to participate,” he explained. He views these IPLC institutions as a deliberate mechanism to lessen or dilute the collective voice of Indigenous peoples within crucial global mechanisms, a tactic he deems “unacceptable.” Roth’s sentiments are far from isolated. In a powerful demonstration of unity and resolve, in 2023, the U.N.’s three foremost Indigenous rights bodies—the Permanent Forum, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—issued a joint statement unequivocally demanding that all U.N. environmental treaties cease using the IPLC acronym entirely. Their collective message was clear: “Indigenous Peoples should not be grouped with an undefined set of communities that may have very different rights and interests.”

For advocates working tirelessly on the ground, this ongoing debate about terminology and recognition is merely one facet of a growing disillusionment with the efficacy and responsiveness of the U.N. system itself. Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores of Cultural Survival articulated a widespread concern that the United Nations, as an international institution, has seen its influence and power wane significantly, primarily due to the persistent willingness of its member states to disregard its established laws and conventions. Yet, despite these formidable bureaucratic hurdles, the challenges of securing visas, and the pervasive geopolitical hostility that often undermines their efforts, Flores emphasized that she is among countless Indigenous peoples globally who remain steadfastly determined to show up and make their voices heard at the forum this week. “If we as Indigenous peoples don’t do it,” Flores declared with unwavering resolve, “no one else will speak for us and defend us.” Their presence at the UNPFII underscores an enduring commitment to self-determination, cultural survival, and the pursuit of justice on the global stage, even as the path ahead remains fraught with systemic obstacles.