‘It is a true and real genocide that people in Colombia are facing,’ said indigenous Colombian leader Luis Fernando Arias Arias at Amnesty’s Human Rights Action Centre last night.

Nukak boy, Colombia. © David Hill/Survival

Luis Fernando had some sobering facts to hand: at least 32 Colombian tribes face ‘extinction’. 1,400 indigenous Colombians have been murdered in the last eight years. 80,000 people have been displaced.

The causes? Mega-projects, exploitation of natural resources, military conflict and the government’s so-called ‘democratic security’ policy that has brought ‘death, fear and terror’ to Colombia’s tribes.

Luis Fernando, together with Neyda Janeth Yepes Rodriguez, was speaking as part of a European tour to launch a campaign to save at least thirty-two Colombian tribes, including the Nukak, from ‘extinction.’

‘I never imagined I would come to Europe to talk about this,’ Neyda said. ‘It’s a very painful story and I hope to find ways that people in Europe can support us.’

Luis Fernando described it as an ‘invisible’ genocide – not just internationally, but within Colombia as well. ‘We sometimes wonder if Colombian society is anaesthetized or asleep,’ he said.

It’s time to wake up. Colombia’s national indigenous peoples’ organisation, ONIC, is encouraging the public to get involved in its campaign. Writing to Colombia’s president is one way to start.

A new Australian film telling the story of young Aborigines in love and tragedy has attracted a string of international awards.

Samson and Delilah won the Camera D’Or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival 2009.

It is released in the UK on April 2nd. You can get updates at the film’s Facebook page.

This stunning photograph by Akash features in Survival’s new book We Are One.
© GMB Akash/Survival

The recipient of the 2009 International Travel Photographer of the Year award is GMB Akash from Bangladesh, whose photographs of the Jumma people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts appear in Survival’s new book, We Are One, together with a previously unpublished article on the plight of the Jumma peoples by Richard Gere.

They have lived in the dense forests of the Hill Tracts for generations, and for many years have endured some of the worst human rights violations in Asia.

We Are One also contains photographs taken by the award’s 2007 winner, Cat Vinton from the UK, of the Moken ’sea gypsies’ of the Andaman Sea and nomadic Mongolians of the Gobi Desert.

Other photographers whose images of endangered tribal peoples appear in We are One include Sebastiao Salgado, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Mirella Ricciardi, Mike Goldwater, Frans Lanting, Steve McCurry and Don McCullin.

We Are One is available from Survival’s online store.

Opposition to Vedanta’s mine in Orissa, India, and the devastation it will cause to the Dongria Kondh, is gathering steam and increasingly well-documented.

Vedanta is now so infamous we think they might have an uphill struggle convincing the world that they are ‘mining happiness’ in Orissa. Nevertheless, the company’s expensive new video facelift, now showing on YouTube, is trying valiantly.

You can comment and rate the video on YouTube, although, unsurprisingly, comments not overflowing with praise are currently being removed.

Chile has a new President. The billionaire Sebastián Piñera was elected recently.

The outgoing President, Michelle Bachelet, has overseen a real shift in the future of indigenous peoples’ rights in Chile.

Under her government, the country became only the 20th to commit to the international law for tribal peoples, ILO Convention 169, in 2008 and late last year the country’s Supreme Court applied that law for the first time, protecting an indigenous group’s right to water.

Chile’s Supreme Court was asked to decide if a water bottling company could divert water from a river source historically used by indigenous communities in the Andean foothills of northern Chile.

The Court decided that the communities must be guaranteed a steady flow of water from the river, in accordance with their rights to resources recognized in Convention 169.

This major victory is an example to all countries on how to apply Convention 169 in practice, making a tangible difference to the lives and security of indigenous people.

ILO Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples protects in law the rights of indigenous peoples to control their own lives, on their own lands. Chile signed up to the law in 2008, and it took full effect in September 2009.

The incoming President Piñera has the opportunity to usher in a new era for indigenous rights in Chile. We will have to wait and see if he does.

A still from the film Birdwatchers.
© Marie Hippenmeyer

The long-running troubles of the Guarani people are the focus of an ongoing Survival campaign.

Violent invasions by ranchers have devastated their territory and nearly all of their land has been stolen.

They are also the subject of landmark film Birdwatchers which contains a cast primarily composed of Guarani actors.

Survival is leading a fund to raise money specifically for Guarani campaigns.

The film is on sale online from the 25th January.

Crude is a new movie , just out in the UK, looking at the legal struggle over what’s been dubbed the ‘Amazon’s Chernobyl’ in Ecuador.

It tracks the dramatic case of Texaco’s ongoing battle to avoid payment for the cleanup of oil contamination of an area compared in size to the US state of Rhode Island.

The disaster is said to have enormously increased cancer, leukemia, birth defects and a multiplicity of other health ailments amongst indigenous peoples in the region.

A new documentary investigating the lives of people living in a region of India dominated by the British company, Vedanta Resources, will be aired next week in the UK.

Cowboys in India is a Simon Chambers' documentary on questionable corporate activity.

The programme follows filmmaker Simon Chambers’ attempt to get to the bottom of what is really happening in Orissa, India, where Vedanta has built a large plant for processing aluminium ore.

Along the way, Simon meets people who’ve seen how the region has changed, while his guides are harassed for taking him around.

Since the film was shot, in 2007, it has become even more difficult to film the area. Survival’s own researchers were repeatedly harassed by thugs during a visit there in December 2009.

Vedanta’s refinery, shown in the Channel 4 documentary, is supposed to complement a mine planned on a sacred mountain of the Dongria Kondh tribe. Survival’s own short film, Mine, shows how the Dongria Kondh are prepared to defend their land and their way of life at any cost.

The documentary, Cowboys in India will show on the More4 channel on Tuesday 19 January at 10pm, and again at 2.25 am on Wednesday 20th January.

It’s a new year, a new decade even, and as always, the usual resolutions are being formed; do more exercise, get a new hobby, write a book…

But there’s one resolution that should be top of the list for all governments across the world; to ratify ILO Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples – if they haven’t already.

Chakma child of Bangladesh. Ratification of ILO 169 should increase the Chakma peoples’ involvement in decisions about their lands.
© Mark McEvoy/Survival

Bangladesh has made some moves towards ratification. State Minister Dipankar Talukder recently said ratification should be possible and expressed the government’s commitment to protecting the rights of indigenous people.

Others flatly reject the Convention. The UK says it won’t ratify it because there are no tribal peoples in the country.

But that hasn’t stopped the Netherlands from ratifying it, and the UK’s Joint Human Rights Committee recently acknowledged that British companies ‘frequently exert an enormous impact on indigenous peoples… and their activities escape effective regulation’.

ILO 169 is the only international law for tribal peoples, recognizing their rights to land ownership and to consultation about projects that affect them. It’s 20 years old, but only 20 countries have ratified it.

Governments should take the opportunity to make 2010 the start of a new decade of respect for indigenous rights. First on their list should be ratifying Convention 169.

In recent days we’ve had news of the violent persecution faced by the solitary survivor of an uncontacted Brazilian tribe.

Still taken from Corumbiara by Vincent Carelli in which we see FUNAI officials trying to establish contact with the Indian, who backs off refusing contact.

Living alone, doubtless haunted by memories of his tribe’s massacre, he hides from outsiders on a patch of rainforest surrounded by cattle ranches. He grows basic crops and attempts to survive unnoticed.

Despite his past and his plight, the man’s existence in this segment of forest adds up to lost earnings for some local rancher, making the land, and the man, a target.

It’s not far-fetched to suppose that there is a price on his head, with thugs at large plotting to collect that fee. It’s the sort of scenario that other Brazilian tribes know all too well.

And so it is that this quiet survivor of a wiped-out people teeters on the edge, as those around him with their eyes on his land move in with ruthless zeal.