Issue 3, 2016

This month, the World Bank’s board of directors approved a new Environmental and Social Framework, modernizing a decades old set of policies aimed at preventing Bank-funded development projects from harming the environment and people.

The American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will help protect our self-determination rights, our rights to our territories and natural resources, our right to sustainable development and to the healthy environment on which indigenous peoples physical and cultural survival depends. It will also help to ensure respect for the practices, traditions, laws, and cultural values of indigenous people.

Multilateral development banks play a key role in financing large-scale development projects, such as dams and forestry initiatives, that have often had devastating impacts on indigenous people and their communities. The Center led a workshop on the United Nations System and multilateral development banks for the traditional and ancestral authorities of the Mayan Nation.

Terri Henry, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Secretary of State and chairwoman of the Indian Law Resource Center board of directors, is one of 16 experts tapped to serve on the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She will begin her three-year term on January 1, 2017.

Tribal leaders from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and other Minnesota Indian Affairs Council representatives met with Indian Law Resource Center lawyers August 4, 2016, for a high-level workshop about how to engage in the United Nations system to protect tribal lands, sovereignty, and cultures.