Hundreds of delegates representing Indigenous nations from every corner of the globe have arrived at the United Nations headquarters in New York this week for the world’s largest and most significant annual gathering of Indigenous peoples, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Their arrival, however, is set against a backdrop of increasing global hostility and complex, interconnected threats, including an unprecedented artificial intelligence boom fueling new resource extraction on ancestral territories, persistent difficulties for delegates from the Global South to secure travel visas to the United States, and the relentless dual pressures of climate change and hastily conceived green energy projects that frequently disregard Indigenous land rights and sovereignty. This critical assembly serves as a vital platform for advocacy, seeking to amplify Indigenous voices and demand recognition of their inherent rights amidst these profound challenges.

This year’s UNPFII is dedicated to the stark reality of survival in an era of widespread conflict, with its official theme, "Ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ health, including in the context of conflict." Experts and advocates underscore that Indigenous communities already contend with profound health inequities, deep-seated legacies of colonialism, and the escalating impacts of climate change. These existing vulnerabilities are now critically compounded by armed conflicts and pervasive militarization, which not only risk widespread ecological degradation but also trigger further displacement of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and traditional ways of life. For Indigenous populations, health is inextricably linked to the well-being of their environment, the security of their land, and the exercise of their sovereignty; it cannot be narrowly confined to clinical discussions of medicine or public health interventions. Beyond the direct ravages of warfare, advocates are increasingly concerned about the accelerated extraction of critical minerals, essential components for the global green energy transition, which is frequently driving egregious violations of Indigenous rights. They are also renewing a long-standing call for climate financing to be made directly accessible to Indigenous communities, bypassing state or foreign intermediaries who often misdirect or delay vital resources.

Before diplomatic discussions can even commence, a significant number of delegates face formidable practical obstacles, primarily rooted in stringent visa restrictions. Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores, a Na’uu Savi woman from Mexico and an advocacy assistant at Cultural Survival, highlighted the systemic nature of these barriers. Last year, her organization prepared Indigenous representatives from Africa to attend the forum, only for their visa applications to be denied. This year, an Indigenous staff member from South America encountered the same rejection, underscoring a consistent pattern. Flores emphasized the growing difficulty of accessing the United States, extending beyond mere visa issues. She articulated a pervasive sense of insecurity and threat felt by many Indigenous peoples from the Global South, particularly those with distinct physical characteristics such as brown skin, who experience heightened scrutiny and are targets of rising hate speech directed against Latin American and Indigenous populations.

Flores recounted an incident from the previous year where her organization supported Indigenous leaders from Bolivia attending the forum to protest destructive mining operations on their traditional lands. Following harassment by a leader of a political party from Bolivia and compounding health issues, these leaders ultimately chose not to return. Flores observed that while the forum is intended for Indigenous peoples, the palpable imbalance of power often leaves them feeling marginalized, with state interests frequently overshadowing their concerns. The relentless struggle to defend their lands against extractive industries exacts a comprehensive toll, impacting individuals not only physically but also mentally and spiritually.

This profound, holistic impact forms a central focus of a key report by Geoffrey Roth, a descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux, former vice chair of the Permanent Forum, and board chair of the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance, an international Indigenous health advocacy nonprofit. Roth cogently argues that "You can’t separate human health from the health of the environment, or our culture or our language," emphasizing the holistic perspective Indigenous peoples hold regarding well-being. His report meticulously outlines the Indigenous determinants of health, ranging from secure land tenure and robust governance authority—elements that profoundly strengthen Indigenous well-being—to critical risk indicators such as land dispossession and exclusion from vital decision-making processes. Roth critiques the fragmented approaches to Indigenous health often adopted by the UN system and various state governments, asserting that such strategies consistently fail to adequately address the underlying causes of health disparities.

For instance, biodiversity policies that neglect Indigenous rights often squander opportunities to restore Indigenous land tenure, which could simultaneously enhance ecosystem outcomes and bolster access to traditional foods. Similarly, mental health interventions that disregard state-sanctioned Indigenous language erasure overlook the immense potential for improving Indigenous mental well-being through concerted language revitalization efforts. Roth reiterates that "Indigenous health is not just about healthcare, it’s about land, culture, food systems and community." The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon notably adopted the Indigenous determinants of health by ordinance last year, with Roth working closely as chairman of their executive health board to integrate these principles across their agencies. He highlighted that activities like taking elders on monthly fishing trips are recognized as integral to their health, fostering cultural continuity, improving mental and behavioral health, and providing traditional nourishment.

Roth’s report also strongly advocates for the UN to formally recognize the invaluable role of Indigenous midwifery, a practice frequently suppressed or banned in favor of Western medical approaches. This suppression often forces Indigenous women into conventional institutions where they regrettably face systemic racism and "obstetric violence," including procedures performed without their informed consent. Roth emphasizes that Indigenous peoples have upheld these traditional practices—midwifery, environmental stewardship, and food system preservation—for millennia, underscoring their profound historical and cultural significance.

In another significant report to UNPFII, former Permanent Forum chair Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an Indigenous Mbororo woman from Chad, issues a stark warning about artificial intelligence’s double-edged nature for Indigenous communities. While advocating for governments to support Indigenous peoples in developing AI tools for revitalizing endangered languages and monitoring their territories, she simultaneously cautions against an impending era of digital extractivism. This new form of exploitation involves generative AI systems and tech companies aggressively scraping vast amounts of cultural content, including invaluable medicinal knowledge, traditional stories, and even sensitive genetic data, often without consent or fair compensation.

Lydia Jennings, a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Yoeme) and Huichol (Wixárika) and an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, recounted how her advocacy for Indigenous data sovereignty—the critical movement asserting communities’ right to own and control their own data—was spurred by a troubling discovery. She observed a mining company extracting information about Indigenous cultural practices from an environmental impact statement and subsequently using it on its website to promote a mining project. This alarming realization prompted her to question the extent of information shared in efforts to protect sacred homelands and to explore effective mechanisms for governing how and by whom that data is utilized. Jennings, echoing Ibrahim, acknowledges AI’s potential as an opportunity for tribes, citing interest in hosting data centers or leveraging AI for language preservation and information synthesis. However, she remains deeply wary of the vast amounts of Indigenous data potentially co-opted by AI systems without consent, as well as the severe environmental risks posed by massive data centers to tribal lands and precious water resources. She poses the fundamental question: "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 notes a burgeoning movement dedicated to embedding best practices of Indigenous data sovereignty across multiple levels, from academic research to national and international policy frameworks.

The climate crisis constitutes another central focus of this year’s Permanent Forum. A February report, specifically addressing nomadic peoples, warned that rigid state borders and exclusionary "fortress conservation" models are severely curtailing the traditional mobility of pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and seafarers. This restriction occurs precisely as these communities grapple with the compounding effects of climate change and increasingly limited access to their ancestral lands and waters. The report’s authors contend that mobility, far from being random movement, is a deliberate, knowledge-based climate adaptation strategy that state policymakers are actively undermining. They cite the example of the Tuareg people in the Sahara Desert, whose ancestral routes are increasingly restricted by militarized frontiers, rendering their lived realities invisible in official data and policy frameworks, despite the desert knowing no borders.

This sentiment was powerfully 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 while 60% of Kenya’s land is communally owned, it is progressively being subdivided for various developments and claimed for carbon offset projects. These initiatives severely limit pastoralists’ access to land and their crucial traditional movements. She emphasized that "Mobility has everything to do with us adapting to climate change. Mobility has everything to do with ensuring our livelihoods are secure, our food security is good."

Making substantive progress on critical issues such as Indigenous health, artificial intelligence governance, and territorial rights is further complicated by a persistent, problematic trend within the United Nations system: the conflation of Indigenous peoples with "local communities." In numerous official policies and initiatives, these two distinct groups are frequently merged under the acronym "IPLCs" (Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities). However, while "local communities" represents a broad category of diverse stakeholders, Indigenous peoples possess distinct, legally recognized rights under international law, particularly the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Geoffrey Roth from the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance recounted challenging this very issue at the World Health Organization when the agency categorized an Indigenous initiative merely as an "equity" concern. Roth firmly stated, "This is not an equity issue. 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 stressed that "Conflating us with other populations really diminishes our rights and diminishes our ability to maintain our health in our communities." This grouping also actively impedes meaningful participation, as evidenced by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s IPLC working group, where Roth, as an Indigenous person, found himself unwelcomed and unable to effectively participate. He views such "IPLC" institutions as a deliberate mechanism to dilute the voice of Indigenous peoples within global mechanisms, deeming it unacceptable. This sentiment is widely shared. In 2023, the UN’s three most authoritative 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 demanding that UN environmental treaties cease using the IPLC acronym entirely. They unequivocally declared, "Indigenous Peoples should not be grouped with an undefined set of communities that may have very different rights and interests."

For Indigenous advocates on the ground, this ongoing debate is just one facet of a growing disillusionment with the efficacy of the UN system itself. Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores of Cultural Survival observed that the international institution has experienced a noticeable erosion of its influence and power, largely due to the willingness of member states to simply disregard international laws and conventions. Yet, despite the bureaucratic hurdles, the disheartening visa denials, and the overarching geopolitical hostility, Flores and countless other Indigenous peoples remain resolutely determined to attend and engage this week. Their unwavering resolve stems from a profound understanding: "If we as Indigenous peoples don’t do it," Flores asserted, "No one else will speak for us and defend us."