The Indigenous World 2021

For 35 consecutive years IWGIA has published The Indigenous World in collaboration with this community of authors. This yearly overview serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced throughout 2020. The Indigenous World 2021 adds not only documentation, but also includes a special focus on COVID-19. 

 

Throughout 2020, Indigenous Peoples were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with, among other things, lack of access to proper health services, limited health information in Indigenous languages, minimal to no virtual education opportunities for Indigenous students and closure of markets for the sale of goods. Indigenous Peoples proved their resilience by setting up their own networks and solutions, connecting communities to help transfer information and goods, and implementing traditional methods of protection to keep themselves safe from the virus and the intrusion of outsiders who potentially carried it. Nonetheless, as the pandemic spread, Indigenous Peoples continued to be persecuted, threatened, criminalised and killed in their efforts to defend their rights, sometimes under the guise of emergency laws enacted to mitigate the virus, but which also allowed for Indigenous Peoples’ rights to be violated and their lands to be exploited. 

 

The 62 regional and country reports and 20 reports on international processes and initiatives covered in this edition underscore these trends. IWGIA publishes this volume with the intent that it is used as a documentation tool and as an inspiration to promote, protect and defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples, their struggles, worldview and resilience.