“Indigenous peoples are the collective memory of our species,” affirms Victor Toledo, Mexico’s thought leader regarding the need to restore and maintain links between biodiversity and cultural diversity. Because of their pivotal importance, “all of us have an obligation to support their local community control of biodiversity, water, habitat, sacred sites, and more broadly recognize the vitality and cultural insights that they have nurtured over long periods of time that teach us how to live together in harmony with nature.
Despite the hundreds of conflicts affecting their access to and management of their homelands, 300 to 700 million indigenous people who still depend on natural resources for their livelihoods still live, work and speak nearly 700 native languages on this earth. Their rights need guaranteed, as many international laws and conventions have already recognized.”
Brother Coyote, OEF