This document summarizes the challenges facing indigenous peoples around the world. It discusses how indigenous tribes have faced obstacles to preserving their way of life and natural habitats due to colonialism, exploitation of resources, and discrimination. The key issues addressed are linguistic and cultural preservation, exploitation of natural resources, environmental degradation, political autonomy, and discrimination. Examples are provided from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and North America to illustrate how indigenous groups have struggled to maintain their lands, languages, and customs in the face of globalization and unsustainable development practices that threaten their traditional ways of life.

1. The Endangered Indigenous
Ambrosia Danu
LIB315 The Environment & the Human Spirit
Instructor: Robin Glenn
Submitted: January 14, 2013
(Click anywhere to advance each slide)

2. Who are the Indigenous?
A Kenyan woman works in a tree nursery during a time when 100 million trees a
year are needed to restore the lost and declining indigenous forests (Kenyan
Woman).

3. Who are the Indigenous?
Indigenous tribes are generally ethnic groups of people that are
historically connected to particular parts of the globe.
A Kuna tribe member walks a path through the rainforest in Panama (Kuna Woman).

4. Who are the Indigenous?
Due to centuries of colonialism and expansion, these native
peoples have encountered many obstacles to preserving their
way of life, which includes their natural habitats.
A stone quarry with adult and child labourers,Wakiso district, Uganda
(Uganda quarry).

5. Who are the Indigenous?
The devastation of indigenous lands has continuously been
justified through indifference to the customs of these native
people, as well as unsustainable lifestyles that are based on
global domination of resources.
Much of the land utilized by these Third World cultures is being
systematically destroyed (Logging).

6. The Issues
Many of the dilemmas faced by
these indigenous tribes include
linguistic and cultural
preservation, exploitation of
natural resources,
environmental degradation,
political autonomy, and
discrimination.
“The Darién National Park is inhabited by the emberá-wuonán or chocoes
ethnic group that live in communities within the forest where they
conserve their ancestral hunting, fishing and food harvesting customs, as
well as their traditional huts that transport us to the indigenous past of
America” (Cultural Preservation).

7. Political autonomy and discrimination
Throughout history, indigenous tribes have encountered conflicts in
their attempts to avoid oppression while struggling to understand
the newly invading cultures.
"Custer's Last Stand : On June 25, 1876 General George Armstrong Custer and his entire force
were defeated and killed by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians, led by Sitting Bull, at the Battle
of Little Bighorn, in Montana Territory" (Native American Warriors and Battles, 2013).

8. Imperialism
Historically, Africa has been a
prime example of indigenous
disruption due to its high
levels of minerals and other
profitable resources.
"Africans in the Congo were enslaved and forced to meet
quotas. If they did not meet quotas, they were beaten and
whipped" (Van Tuyll, Bahm & Enright, 2011, page 80).

9. THE ZAPATISTA REVOLUTION
The very same day that NAFTA was put into effect throughout North America, masses of indigenous,
destitute peasant rebels donned hoods and stood together against their government and generations of
discrimination. "The hooded Indians demanded human rights, justice, independence, democracy,
employment, liberty, education, healthcare, a subsistent way of life and the recognition of their lands, rights,
and culture by a government that had both exploited and abandoned these indigenous people and their
land for centuries. They sought a voice that would be heard around the world" (Valenzuela, 2004).

10. Linguistic and cultural preservation
With the arrival of explorers and new customs, these native peoples
worked to maintain their generational heritage.
“Maa is an oral language that has not been documented and is therefore vulnerable to
extinction. Other written languages, such as English and Swahili, are quickly finding their
way into our communities through formal education, religion, and globalization. Elder
Parkesian recalls, „Our fathers never wanted us to go to school but the British
colonialists insisted and a few were reluctantly sent. They knew we would lose our
language and culture and then get lost‟” (Rogei, 2012, para. 2).

11. Exploitation of natural resources
As the world population continues to grow and spread, resources
continue to be harvested at an unsustainable rate.
" Global Coal Management Resources (GCM) wants to bulldoze 12,000 acres of
Bangladesh‟s most productive agricultural land and replace it with one of the world‟s
largest open-pit coal mines. By their own account, they would forcibly displace 40,000
people in the Phulbari region, including at least 2,200 Indigenous people whose history
in the area dates back 5,000 years" (Cultural Survival, 2011).

12. Environmental degradation
Unsustainable growth leads to ecosystem imbalance.
"Scorched earth and blackened vegetation marks where bush fires raged in Southeast
Australia, one of the effects of climate change in the region"(Turk & Bensel, 2011, page
247).

13. References
Cultural Preservation. [Photo]. Retrieved from:
http://www.panamacanalcountry.com/images/CIMG2343.JPG
Cultural Survival. (February 2011). Bangladesh: Ban Coal Mine, Save Forests and Farms.
Retrieved from: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action/bangladesh-ban-coal-mine-save-
forests-and-farms
Kenyan Woman. [Photo]. Retrieved from: http://www.agrowingculture.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/11/trees3.jpg
Kuna Woman. [Photo]. Retrieved from: http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/12/14/cuipo-
partners-kuna-create-project-good-hands?cmpid=tp-twtr
Logging. [Photo]. Retrieved from: http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/un-
forest-protection-scheme-open-for-organized-crime-abuse.html
Native American Warriors and Battles. (2013). The History Channel website. Retrieved
7:48, January 14, 2013, from http://www.history.com/photos/native-americans-warriors-and-
battles.
Rogei, D. S. (November 26, 2012).We, Maasai: Revitalizing Indigenous Language and
Knowledge for Sustainable Development in Maasailand, Kenya. Retrieved from:
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/we-maasai-revitalizing-
indigenous-language-and-knowledge
Turk, J., & Bensel, T. (2011). Contemporary environmental issues. San Diego, CA Bridgepoint
Education, Inc. Retrieved from: https://content.ashford.edubooksAUSCI207.10.1
Uganda Quarry. [Photo]. Retrieved from:
http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2011/09/seizure-of-land-for-mining-a-violation-of-
indigenous-peoples-rights/
Valenzuela, M. (January 11, 2004). Not in our Back Yard. Retrieved from: http://www.world-
crisis.com/print_format/348_0_15_0
Van Tuyll, H., Bahm, K., & Enright, K. (2011). Historical contexts and literature. San Diego, CA: