John Schertow

Above photo: More than 300 protestors filled the main street of Pātea. Te Korimako o Taranaki. As governments and corporations race to secure minerals needed for the global energy transition, Indigenous peoples across the Pacific are emerging as some of the most influential voices shaping the future of seabed mining. The debate centers on vast deposits of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other minerals found on the world’s seabeds.

An international human rights tribunal has concluded that Canada committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Indigenous Peoples through its residential school system and related colonial policies. The preliminary findings were released Friday by the 57th session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), an independent international opinion tribunal thatspent a weekhearing testimony from residential school survivors, legal experts, researchers and Indigenous advocates in Montreal.

Above photo: Shompen Anthropological Survey of India. It has become abundantly clear that the clean energy transition is “business as usual” for Indigenous Peoples. At least a dozen major cases have emerged where Indigenous rights are being overtly dismissed in order to secure supplies of lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt and other strategic minerals. The unprecedented demand is reshaping landscapes and economies across the globe.