Roundtables - The Rights of Indigenous Peoples Roundtable (WUF13)

Good morning, abbauk.
My I am Buttarama Akhuri in my indigenous language.
My name is Bina Neprim and I'm honored and humbled to be called upon to moderate this really important and the only official session, an indigenous round table here at Wolf 13 World Urban Forum.
We also wanted to share that this is the first time that an Indigenous caucus have been born in the World Urban Forum meetings, and we are really glad that we are here together.
We may be small in number here, but we are like seeds and it'll grow and it'll blossom.
We begin by honoring our indigenous ancestors here in Baku and also at home, those who are watching us, elders, women, youth, and children across the world whose homes, lands, cultures, and identities continue to sustain humanity and the Earth.
May this gathering be guided by wisdom, dignity, courage, compassion, and truth.
Warm greetings to all the distinguished guests, our panelists.
Some of us are meeting for the first time, but we know the issues that we are dealing are something that we have been grappling with.
Distinguished delegates, indigenous leaders, UN representatives, government, civil society, and friends who are joining us here in the room today and around the world watching us live.
We express our sincere gratitude to the government and people of Azerbijan and the beautiful city of Baku for hosting us and us the indigenous people particularly.
We also thank the UN habitat for convening this critical roundtable on the rights of indigenous people.
We also acknowledge that we are in the South Caucasus region, which is home to the most outstanding and finest creator of epics, the great poet and philosopher Nizami Ganavi.
We know his Lala Maju even in Manu where I come from.
Nizami acknowledges that human beings have always faced problems which has influenced them in their lives in several aspects.
He lived in the 12th century.
But he also said that we can bring about solutions to the crisis.
Even in today's world of 2026, Nzami's philosophy from the 12th century still holds true.
That situation in society and polity and statecraft and governance, the crisis in the past, like the present ones, threatened our lives and our security.
But we can also find ways of coexistence, tackling this ethical, moral and emotional crisis and ensuring peace, security, and spirituality with works for all on this earth.
For us, indigenous people, adequate housing is not simply about shelter.
It is inseparable from our land, territory, spirituality, identity, culture, memory, and our self determination.
With these few words, I'm going to turn it over to our brother, who is from Ecuador because for indigenous people, we always open our meetings with a ceremony and he's going to bring his music, and we also bring weavings that you are seeing around the table here, weavings Indigenous women from Manipur This is a cloth of peace called, and we are honored that we are in the presence of many of these for us.
Our peace negotiations, our treaties are not just on paper, it's also woven in our cloth, and this is our resilience.
Lenin, the floor is yours.
Shua Kiwan, Suu yewang, Shukhimiwan, Runk, Runakunaan Kaska, Runakunaana Kan Chikara, Shia Chachi Kanuka mama, Shia achi anukit, Chimanawkani, Ichmanakani.
I am and I come from a single planet.
I am the root of my life, and the music goes with us in our ceremony and our life.
Condo goes for you and from Ecuador and South America, the ones who have the root of the nature.
A P Indigenous people are the guardians of Mother Earth, and our vision should be at the center of policies and housing development, resisting an organization of people deserve respect, international recognition, not because it's fashionable or because of shame, without territorial safety.
There cannot be a real dignified housing for indigenous people.
The defense of a territory is the defense of life, culture, and the future of new generations.
It's a, it's not a machine to make money, to protect our territories, before the displacement.
Pollution, destructism is key to guarantee Brazilient basic needs and a dignified life.
We are the ones who were here, the generation before dissociated Trump now with a mind and a purpose, we study and we develop.
Thank you for coming here and thank you for listening to us because we are also the change and the fact that you are here today also makes you part of the change.
So thank you for our planet so we can have a dignified life.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lenin, for the beautiful rendering of the condor, which unites all the indigenous people of the Americas.
Thank you.
A round of applause for him.
Yes.
Thank you.
Yes.
Today is the last day and I know you must be all very tired.
So stay with us and promise you by the end of this, you'll walk out of this room invigorated.
So thank you so much, Lenin for this.
I now call upon Mariana Posada Lombani, Director General of the Engagement with Civil Society Organizations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico to deliver her remarks.
Buenos Dias.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm going to speak in Spanish.
First of all, I would like to thank you and Abitat that they invited me to be a part of this session.
I'm really happy to be here with you today.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk a bit about the frame of reference for my country from Mexico to talk about all indigenous matters.
As you all know, Mexico is a purultural country, multicultural country where there are indigenous people, mixed people were part of the mergin of two cultures where we live every day.
I also would like to start by talking about this principle, this notion that it is not possible to talk about development without talking about social justice.
Social justice understood as all this framework of public policies aim to have a more equitable use of resources to implement public policies to decrease the huge gap that there is between the sectors of the population that hold the resources or that have a lot and those sectors of the population who just have little.
Among them, unfortunately, there are the indigenous group, and in the case of Mexico, we've also included in the last public policies The Afro descendant population, Afro Mexican.
In Mexico, we calculate there's about 17 million people that identify as indigenous, which represent a 15% of the whole Mexican population.
When we talk about indigenous groups, we're talking about a huge diversity of ethnics, languages, and places of concentration and practices that are specific to age group.
It's impossible to talk about indigenous as a homogeneous notion where a single recipe or public policy would be the right one for everybody.
We always have to bear in mind the different specificities of its ethnic group.
Likewise, talking about Afro Mexican Afro descendants, we calculate there's about 3.1 million Mexicans who identify as Afro descendant, which is 2.2 0.4% of the population.
I would like to mention because I know that there are time constraints, a number of ideas, reference to tackle the issue of indigenous rights.
Firstly, it's key for governments to elevate the level of attention to indigenous issues to the highest legal level in the case of Mexico, for instance, Article 2 of the political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, United Mexican States recognize the right of indigenous peoples and Afro Mexican communities to autonomy, self determination, and the exercise of their right and access to land tenure and to use natural resources.
On the other side, it's important to create institution A government level to address indigenous issues.
In the case of Mexico, we have the National Institute for Indigenous People.
Which was recently created in 2018, but with precedent is the Indigenous National Institute that established in 1948, and these institutions are the one in charge to execute all policies, projects, programs, and actions, the public ones to quarantine the exercise and implementation of the rights of the indigenous people, the integral development and sustainable development, as well as the strengthening of their cultures and identities.
Likewise, it's really important that the indigenous issues is handled as a cross cutting issue.
That is that all other issues that are addressed include a section to the indigenous issue.
That is when we talk about gender issues of women, head of state, household, childhood, young people, adults, people with disabilities, that we must include indigenous people as part of these public policies, although it is not the main subject in that case.
Of course, that means the involvement of the indigenous in all public institutions.
Also in Mexico, there have been a number of laws and decrees that have promoted The President, Claudia Sinaum, one of them is the National Program of Human Rights 2020-2024, where he plays at the center, the goal to promote targeted actions aimed to historically marginalized groups, recognizing that the structural inequality they face has deep historic roots and demands differentiated actions that should be culturally relevant and sustainable.
They're asking me to finish, so I just wanted to talk about housing, but well, I believe I don't have any more time.
I just wanted to say that Mexico is a country very much committed with indigenous issue.
From this forum, we call to the rest of the countries to pay attention to this issue, to be able to make it visible, to integrate them and include them in all public policies.
Thank you.
Mus Gracias, thank you, Madam Maria Posade Lombana We'd like to share that on your tables are these papers.
If you do not have it, please polices can share them.
We are so glad to have governments here listening to us.
What is the new thing that indigenous peoples are bringing and how can governments like Mexicans can support us in this process? For many of you who are hearing the word indigenous people for the first time, there are nearly 500 million indigenous people living in 90 countries and territories.
The new angle that we are bringing in is something that for governments, we are sharing that Peace is a prerequisite for any urban housing planning.
You may build the best homes, but when there is wars, conflicts, disasters, those homes will not last.
Peace is a prerequisite for any terms of urban planning and to include indigenous peoples in all forms of decision making in the new urban agenda.
With this, I now call upon Ravan Haanov, Executive Director of the Baku International Multiculturalism Center for his remarks.
Thank you once again for the excellent hospitality you have extended to all of us from around the world.
Thank you to your country and your government.
Thank you.
Well, thank you.
First of all, let me welcome you to Azerbijan.
It's a privilege for me as the Director of International Center of Multiculturalism special to participate on this panel, the rights of Indigenous People.
And on behalf of Hosting country Azerbijan, allow me to express my appreciation to all participants, the defenders of indigenous voices all around the world and our participation on this panel is one more time demonstrate our shared understanding that sustainable development should also include dignity, respect, and participation of all communities.
It's true fact that our cities are growing and it brings new opportunities like economic growth, like innovation, but it's also bringing new challenges.
And one of the big challenges the inequality.
Many communities, including indigenous communities face different difficulties in urban life and we all know that most of indigenous people are living in the cities and however our cities are not well designed what they need in mind.
Indigenous people have difficulties or limited access to healthcare, house conditions, education, job offers.
They feel mostly excluded from society and decision making process.
We all know the solutions also.
We need to include indigenous communities to shape this policy.
Urban planning must include also diversity because our cities is not just a physical area where we're living, but it's also a cultural environment for us.
We need a strong partnership like government institutions, international organizations, civil society organizations and very importantly, we need to accept a new housing programs.
I see Wolf, I see these roundtables will help us to come to decisions to solve real problems, not just to listen to each other, but to help each other to develop our cooperation.
I believe that our future cities must be more modern, more efficient and more respected for all culturs.
Here indigenous knowledge can help us because it's not something related with the past.
It's a valuable source of solving problems today and tomorrow because indigenous people always decided like a community, they respect as resources.
This is the ideas what we need today for sustainable development.
The land for indigenous people is not something to own, it's something to protect and to share.
This way of thinking is very important, especially in the area of climate changes and environmental problems.
Coming to Azerbijan we don't use the terminology of indigenous people, but the reality is that diversity, cultural and religious diversity exists in this geography, many centuries.
Multiculturalism, mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence is our reality.
There is more than different nations living Azerbijan with different languages with different culture and beliefs, and it's not just way of our life, but it's also our state policy.
I think that multiculturalism policy and indigenous inclusion are both related.
Both are about recognition, both are about participation, both are about to learn from each other to learn different knowledges.
We're giving huge attention to today's policy because the cities like Baku or the cities which we are rebuilding in liberated areas in the Karabakh region.
We're trying to combine modernity, innovation, and diversity also because our cities is not just for us a bridge road or buildings, it's environment.
Uh, we're preserving cultural heritage, religious worship places, historical monuments of all heritage of all people, all groups living in Azerbijan, which has contributed mutual respect, which demonstrate that the government or the state valued all heritage the samely equally, which help us to build a strong social cohesion in our society, which is very, very important.
Highly believe that indigenous knowledge or indigenous communities will remind us that development is not something moving forward, but it's also being connected with their roots, with their history, with your culture also.
A few days we have been together, we learn from each other's many interesting expertise, knowledge, we change points of views.
I think that Baku will always the place where we will come together, we will develop our future cooperation.
I wish success to this roundtable.
Thank you.
I'm honored to be here with you together to defend your voices.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
I think you brought about several really important points.
One, the issue that land is not for us to own.
For indigenous people, we say that we are just protectors of this place.
We are just in this earth for a temporary period.
And so we don't use the word owning or monetizing.
Rather, we are caretakers of the land.
And this is something that we are trying to bring in the spiritual aspect, the cultural aspect in urban planning.
Because in today's world, we may have huge structures, but those structures, if it doesn't have the love, the spirit, the gear, then we are broken as a human race.
So we are trying to bring in some of the things that the indigenous people are trying to bring into making things better.
And so thank you so much once again.
With this, I turn to Omar Siddiqui, who is the head of the Office of the UN Habitat from Canada.
He comes from origin from Bangladesh.
We are neighbors.
I come from northeast of India, so we are so glad to be meeting here today and the floor is yours.
Excellency' distinguished delegates, indigenous leaders, colleagues and friends, it's really my privilege to join you today at Wolf 13 for this important roundtable on the rights of indigenous peoples.
I'm delivering these remarks on behalf of the Executive Director of UN Habitat, Ana Claudia Rosbck.
Today, the last day of this very dynamic world urban forum, we will focus on the right to adequate housing, specifically for indigenous peoples.
We've had so many incredible and insightful discussions all week, but this roundtable, especially is of essential importance.
Because for indigenous peoples, adequate housing cannot be separated from land, from culture, and knowledge.
When housing is denied, when communities are displaced, which is so often disproportionately the case for indigenous peoples, it's not just about an individual violation of human rights, it impacts collective rights, traditions, practices, and community.
The barriers to adequate housing that indigenous peoples continue to face have their root cause in historic injustices, colonization, and the systemic dispossession of lands and territories.
The consequences are highly visible across all countries disproportionate rates of homelessness, forced evictions and resettlements, and land grabbing.
Displacement, whether as a result of climate events and conflict, or so called development projects, or the nonrecognition of indigenous lands remains one of the most challenging realities for indigenous peoples.
And it uprods communities from their lands that sustain their identity and culture.
Addressing adequate housing therefore requires a comprehensive and rights based approach that places indigenous peoples at the center of the decision making, which is echoed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples.
The concept of inadequate housing must be co designed with indigenous peoples so that housing solutions correspond to the needs, expectations, and lived experiences of the people that rely on them.
We must also recognize colleagues the intersectional nature of these challenges.
Indigenous women, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, and LGBTIQ plus individuals face compounded discrimination in accessing adequate housing.
Gender based violence, inaccessible infrastructure, and cultural marginalization deepen existing exclusion.
Addressing housing rights therefore requires an intersectional approach that leaves no one and no place behind.
At human habitat, we are especially excited that we have so many indigenous leaders here today from Latin America to Africa and Asia.
I hope that together we can tackle some of these very urgent questions and share recommendations, best practices, and opportunities.
The recommendations that emerge here will feed directly into the Baku call to action and beyond as we move towards additional key events this year, including the midterm review of the New Urban Agenda.
I encourage everyone in this room and, of course, the many joining us online today to leave with concrete commitments.
UN habitat is making our commitment now.
Indigenous peoples right to adequate housing will be a cornerstone of UN habitats engagement at the global level from the Baku call to action to the review of the new urban agenda and beyond.
Thank you, and I wish you all a productive discussion.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Omar Siddiqui, head of the UN Office, UN Habitat, Canada, for your beautiful remarks.
He mentioned several key points, but one of the things I wanted to bring was the mention of the UNDRIP, which is standing for UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people.
This, for us, is the most critical document adopted in 2007.
Article 25 talks about right to housing of indigenous peoples.
But we also want to bring in the point that look at indigenous civilizations around the world, the Mays, the Incas, Manipur, many cultures around the world.
Actually, modern nation states are built on urban structures of indigenous civilizations.
Do we all agree to this? I think what we are trying to say, and also the UN Human Rights Declaration of 1948 talks about rights to adequate housing too.
We are not doing things which are new, 80 years of the UN, but rather, how can we do things more meaningfully from now on so that what is on paper in our declarations, in our documents remain real.
With this, I want to thank all the panelists of the first session of the inaugural of this.
Before we transition, we have two panels now with several indigenous leaders and experts here with us today.
The first panel will be talking about avoiding displacement, adequate housing solutions.
Today, we are not just talking about the pains and the concerns, but we are also solution providers.
We are bringing in those solutions, our indigenous leaders and our allies will be speaking about that.
The second panel We'll look at adequate housing solutions and indigenous women's experiences and intersectionality.
Are you ready for the two panels? Yes.
A big round of applause for all the people who just spoke today.
Thank you so much for setting the tone and for your commitment.
So as we transition to panel one, we call upon Marina Munoz Garcia, regional manager of the Urban Housing Practitioners Hub to deliver her remarks.
Each speaker has 5 minutes each so that we can have enough time for questions and answers from experts also around this table.
Thank you so much.
F is yours.
Thank you so much.
I am deeply honored to share this table with all of you.
I want to bring into this conversation voices and inspiring practices from Latin America and the Caribbean, specifically from the collaborative and co creation activities of the Urban Housing Practitioners Hub, a regional platform that convenes practitioners, governments, communities, indigenous comun, grassroots communities, and multilateral organizations around housing and habitat.
Firstly, I want to state that territory is not just land, it is a living system.
The indigenous community leaders that we have convened across Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Ecuador have shown us that displacement doesn't only mean losing a house.
It means losing governance structures, intergenerational knowledge, and the relationship between people and place that makes communities function.
Adequate housing solutions that genuinely avoid displacement must start by recognizing these territorial rights, not as an outcome to be achieved eventually, but as a non negotiable foundation from which any intvtion must begin.
Community land trust has been a tool for them to start working on this.
Secondly, Indigenous women are core resilience infrastructure.
They are not passive beneficiaries.
Evidence from regional practices show that when women hold housing titles, lead construction, and land management processes, entire communities benefit.
Women are often the primary keepers of ancestral technical knowledge, biolimatic design, local materials, water management.
Any housing policy that ignores this is not just failing on gender equity, it is discarding ready made solutions.
And third, and this is where I want to be highlighting this very specifically, indigenous people are innovators.
We need to stop designing for indigenous communities and start creating the conditions for them to design with and from their own knowledge systems.
The most resilient, climate adapted, and culturally appropriate housing solutions in our region are not only coming from international frameworks.
They are also emerging from communities that have spent generations reading their territories.
So the challenge is not a lack of indigenous innovation.
The challenge is that our institutions are not structure enough to recognize it, fund it, and scale it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Marina Munoz, again, you have highlighted two critical points, and this was brilliant, though it intersects with the next panel and we can have more discussions around it.
So we know for many women around this table and who are listening, In many parts of the world that we come from, except from what we wear and what we have, we are not given the titles to our land that we are the properties of our fathers and then become properties of our husbands and our lives ends with that.
Imagine if you want a more peaceful, more inclusive world where it works for everyone, we've got to get more land titles to women and indigenous women and women in general and marginalized communities.
Number two, the talk about indigenous innovation, as we mentioned, there are many good practices out there and one of the recommendations that we are also giving from the Indigenous Caucus is to talk to the UN Special Rapporteur on housing.
To develop a study which will look at the good practices done for centuries by indigenous communities in planning, housing, as well as spaces, which ensures that our mental health, our spiritual health, our physical health, suicide rates are rising in the world today and particularly for young adolescents too.
How do we tackle a planning which works for our well being? Thank you so much for bringing those really two critical elements.
Our next speaker comes from Kenya.
Christine Gandhi.
Christine, please let us know.
Africa is going through so much wars and conflicts and tension.
With 30% of the worst critical minerals found in Africa, Africa is becoming a land of goose.
In the middle of all this crisis from DRC to Sudan to Sahel, we know the rings of fire.
Under these circumstances, how are you working? And how do you keep your head up and what are the solutions? What is your message to the world coming from the subcontinent, which is the harbinger of the human race? Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak.
I'm Christine Kandy.
I'm from Kenya.
I'm one of the Indigenous leader.
I'm not just an indigenous leader.
I'm bringing intersectionality identities.
I'm an indigenous woman, woman with disability from indigenous community.
Today, I'm really delighted to share this table with all of you, distinguished delegates, fellow advocates.
I'm here to share realities, especially from Kenya and Africa as a region.
On how affordable housing and respect to indigenous people should look like.
First of all, there is no access to housing.
When there is no free prior, and informed consent, it amounts to displacement.
When you look at indigenous setup, most often, those Epic realities are not taken into consideration.
As an African as a region, we have suffered enough through historical displacement.
Even before we could settle down, we're now combating realities of climate change, which has culminated to acute level of conflict over resources, over diminishing resources, over selfish interest by our political class, because of policies that does not align with our realities.
When you look at the policies instead of empowering us, it disempower us.
Just because when there was development of those policies, it was not looking into the realities.
It was not taking into consideration free prior and informed consent.
Currently, as I speak, I come from an indigenous territory called Enoros.
Surrounding Enoros communities that is Lake Bogora.
For 15 years now, Lake Bogora has experienced increase in its size, swallowing away our cresting land, our livelihoods become compromised, access to cultural side, including spiritual side has been fragmentize.
It becomes very difficult for us to bring our collective voice.
Before then, we had a historical land struggle, which we took it to African Commission.
It was heavily celebrated way back in 2010.
We are battling so many realities and that realities is not only for Eros, it is also for other indigenous communities in Africa.
There was displacement, there is a lot of conflict, there is voices.
There is children who don't go to school, there is poverty.
There is so many others struggle as we compete equally for development and many others rights that we are supposed to as human beings.
Today, as I speak on behalf of ERS, I just want to simply bring the indigenous community housing is not simply about walls, it is roofs.
It is about land, it is about belonging, spirituality and survival.
And in recent years, and I spoke about rising level of Lake Mogora, which has also match and flooded our homes and also a sacred cultural site, families are being displaced but repeatedly, and those are the realities.
Not only in Kenya, we have seen even Tanzania, our indigenous communities has been displaced out of carbon credit and other international discussion that compromise access to housing.
And too often, even with relocation, our capacities to adapt to these realities has been compromised.
At the end of the day, we become communities that always think or seen as don't have capacity to adapt.
But when you look deeply on our realities is that we have the knowledge, we have the system, we have sustained our life, we have sustained on how to overcome any other crisis.
But because of displacement and because of disconnecting us with our land, which is a critical element, we become a vulnerable community instead of a community that could also bring solution.
Within these indigenous women defenders like myself, we carry even heavier burden.
We are leading some of the most powerful solution.
This solution, I want to bring forward the AN that is endorse Indigenous women empowerment network, intersection of indigenous rights, women rights, and inclusion of persons with disabilities.
Intersection is not a weakness, it is a strength.
Because we talk about housing, we must ask if it to persons with disabilities? Are our voices included in planning? Or relocation.
In Kenya, they have used it as affordable housing.
When you say affordable, it is not about dignity, it is about capitalist way of treating and where is our dignity when you say it is affordable? Where is our dignity when it can be affordable but not accessible.
How do we ensure that when we talk about affordable housing, it respect everyone rights, including the usage and benefits? Because if we cannot access affordable housing as people with disability, it does not benefit us.
Too often person with disabilities are invisible in both indigenous advocacy and urban development.
A A, we are changing by ensuring that inclusion is not an afterthought, but a foundation of every development.
So going forward, we must strengthen early warning systems that combine indigenous knowledge and climate science, ensure free prior and informed consent in all housing and development, support women and disability inclusion, rehabilitation efforts, building partnership between local authorities, indigenous communities, and civil society, and even including international actors.
So we must rethink about working collaboratively with county government and even engaging our local actors and even strengthening our grassroot networks, including even where we are working with.
So As an organization, we build a future where indigenous communities, including women, persons with disabilities are not displaced, not excluded, but are leaders in shaping our own destinies.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share with all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Christine.
Christine brought an element.
How many of you in this room heard the word epic? Free, prior and informed consent? How many of you know about this? Please raise your hand.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Epic for us indigenous people, It's like the law.
It's like the unwritten law, which means before you do anything with our land and our lives, you need to take the free, prior, and informed consent.
We managed to put that in the Baku call of action, so you will see that when you read it.
But for us, this is really important.
It means consulting and including and ensuring that we have the free pr informed consent before we work on any types, including urban housing and planning for an indigency.
That's something for us absolutely critical in the ways.
Christine has brought that beautifully out.
Second, she also brought up the element between connection between conflict climate and the displacement that we are seeing there were several panels in the last couple of days here at Wolf 13 on this particular issue, and we have been trying to focus also on the importance, and there is a really important work done at the UN and globally on environmental peace building.
There was a panel yesterday, and as indigenous people, we said, en peace building should be actually indigenous peace building because 80% 80, 80% of global biodiversity is protected by indigenous peoples.
Yet only 1% of global climate finance, 1% goes to indigenous people.
You are expecting that we take care of 80% of the world's biodiversity by giving us 1% of climate finance.
So again, these are some of the challenges that is in front of us and which we hope that we will continue to build in, to rectify so that indigenous women's groups like Christine's and leaders have the support they need on Ground Zero to be able to build better, homes, economies that works for everyone.
So thank you once again, Christine, for bringing out also the intersectionality of people with disabilities.
Very, very important, all of these aspects because in many of our cultures, people who are differently able are hidden.
People don't even bring them out in society, but they are also peoples and we got to include them in all aspects of our planning.
So thank you once again for bringing out.
Our speaker next is Ronald Cruz Marines, from Indigenous activists from Bolivia.
And you wouldn't believe Ronal walked for two days to reach the airport to come to Wolf 13 because of the strikes and everything in his country.
So please, a warm welcome to Ronal who amids all hardships, walked for two days with his luggage to be here in Baku.
So Ronal, thank you.
And the floor is yours.
Yeah.
Gracias Principal.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I want to say hi to all of you, to the UN members and thank you to the UN audit for allowing us to talk about our needs and opinions from the point of view of indigenous people about adequate housing and accessible housing.
I want to share three points that are very specific.
First of all, is housing policy based on the respect of indigenous people's rights.
As my colleagues said before and the leaders and representatives of the government said before, we know that from the point of view of indigenous people talking about housing, it is not just talking about a physical space, but about a collective property linked to spirituality, to traditions and culture of every indigenous community.
In this sense, we have a proposal that even though it's true that in the state of Bolivia, we recognize this collective right, we need to establish that they are settlements that do not respect indigenous people in Bolivia.
That's why I want to share a second point that is housing within the point of view of indigenous people.
Also, I want to say that in many government places, we've established a physical space for indigenous people, it is not just the land of the territory, but it is a sacred space where we can manifest our culture, our religion, our traditions.
Housing means to design and to build from our own knowledge using our traditional materials and respecting the distribution of the spaces according to our traditions, the settlements and the settlements linked to the territory and the own earth.
From this point of view, I want to think about another thing that concerns us pretty much in different regions of my country and I felt, and I have also heard from other countries that is about the title and the necessity to avoid evictions of the indigenous people.
There is a lack of consent that there are urban areas getting settled in collected territories.
This is meaning forced evictions and forced displacement of indigenous people, which means relocating in all the different sectors, maybe in some places that are considered as sacred places.
From this point of view, we propose new ideas in order to avoid the situations because we've had lived many cases on which even the justice and the legal framework has to participate in order to stop the urban planning in indigenous territories.
And at least get this consment we were talking about.
It is not just this.
We also need to do a study in order to check how indigenous people see this territory and if it is affecting any sacred places.
This is a concern we all shared with many indigenous leaders and colleagues.
This is a challenge that we need to address.
That's why we have some answers and some solutions in order to this stop happening in the future, not just in Bolivia, but in other countries that may be facing this type of challenges.
First of all, is to legally recognize the possession of collective tenure of collective ends with the previous uninformed constment.
Second of all, to design housing solutions in coordination with indigenous people from their identity, knowledges, ways of living, traditions, and always working with the participation and decision of indigenous people and taking into account women, indigenous women because they have a different link with the Earth from a spiritual point of view.
So We're also thinking that it might be a law that no development project may cause the displacement of indigenous people without the previous informed and free consentment of indigenous people because of what I said about sacred territories.
In order to avoid all these difficult situations, we can start a dialogue with the focus on maintaining the peace before designing any urban planning.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, which is Gracias, Ronald Boris Cruz Martinez, who walked from his village to reach Wharf 13, showing that it is resilience and the spirit of being part of the inclusive process of decision making must include indigenous people at all times.
Ronald brought out two critical elements again.
He talked about collective rights.
At several sessions in the past three days, four days at Wolf 13, there were talks about monetizing land rights, monetizing everything for ensuring that urban planning goes to a speedy success.
For indigenous people, we tend to think a little differently.
For us, privatization is not a solution, rather, Can we also look at other forms of co creating an urban space and living space which works for all.
There was a lot of talk.
We even said, how do we decolonize urban planning from indigenous perspective? Because if we don't, the last 500 years of colonization has not where are we right now? We are regressing as a human race, not progressing.
But we don't want to look back, we want to look ahead.
The next 500 years is one where we're able to protect people, peace, and planet.
These are some of the things.
The second thing that Ronal already brought about our sacred spaces.
In today's world, a lot of indigenous people are facing eviction and displacement because of wars, conflicts, and climate.
We are at the front line of that.
How do we ensure for us, we don't go to a church or a temple or a mosque or a gurdwara.
Our place of worship are in our homes.
So when these homes are broken, when these homes are destroyed, it also takes a part of us away.
Are we including that as urban planners, as developers? There are many questions that we are bringing to the table, but most critical, peace as a prerequisite for any kind of planning.
So thank you once again, Renal, we pray for the people of Bolivia that you get the peace that you require at this moment as your country is going through a turmoil.
With this, we have come to the end of the first panel.
A big round of applause.
Please put your hands together for our excellent panelists, indigenous leaders who are struggling in their home areas, but continue to speak up with courage.
Let us listen to them, let us include them, and ensure that we work together.
How's everyone feeling? Okay.
Yeah, I know.
It's a long day, long week, but we're almost there.
We're almost there.
If you want to just put your hands like this, just rub your hands together, and put it on your face.
Okay.
Do it again.
Yeah.
Just feel the good energy and feel the care and the love and the healing that is needed in the world to do.
We want to bring these elements.
Again, it's about providing solutions.
Indigenous peoples are solution providers.
Whatever names you call us, we are the ones who have been left out and we are asking for inclusion, for dignity, so that we can plan better.
With this, we take a moment, take a deep breath, and we go to the next session, which also has some excellent panelists.
We have come all the way from their countries to be here in Baku.
Our first speaker is Eva Tekun Indigenous activist from Guatemala.
Sister, the floor is yours, Guatemala.
Gent.
Good morning, everyone.
First of all, I would like to thank the opportunity to be here to share some of the main concerns and debates and analysis that within my indigenous colleagues, we've created.
First of all, I want to give you some context on the country where I come from.
We are a country with 25 villages that we co it in a territory that is very, very small, but it has Many internal differences.
We lived an internal world and also a peace process that it is not over yet.
Another main element to give you some more context is that we experienced colonist colonialism, internal colonialism inside our country and situation and condition of the indigenous women in the framework of adequate housing right, it is impacted by patriarchy, racism, and inequalities in our country.
IndianS territories many times are not recognized by the states and not even respected the way how we manage the lands and the ways that we organize ourselves.
This Is something that in the case of Guatemala, we want to solve because we have common lands, municipalities that are historically related without the need of a title.
This connection that the state system has with the indigenous practices creates very forced evictions.
As I was saying yesterday, the bad and, as I was saying, evictions, which don't give the community the opportunity to solve their legal situation and defend themselves through a legal framework This also creates criminalization of the people that defend their own territories in Guatemala communities have suffered forced evictions and they don't have a place to live because the state, after the eviction, they do not offer relocation guarantees for the communities.
I and actually they burn with what we gather, the food and the animals living with the family about indigenous communities, many do not have property titles and many times they have just inherited the places or the territory belongs to the partner or to the person they live with.
If these partner emigrates as usual to the United States, women do not have access to loans or internal policies that may offer them basic services such as water or light on the other side, the existence of internal conflict created by the selation of hydroelectric companies, creates the contamination of rivers and lakes and this has many consequences polluting the able water for indigenous communities.
Also, the growing of the cities many times creates pressure in the indigenous communities because it's indigenous communities that give water to the societies when the cities grow.
This creates a deficit for the consumption of indigenous people.
From this point of view and from this context I gave you, it is for us very important to guarantee the right to an adequate housing.
This needs an intersexual focus and point of view that recognizes the many ways of racism and discrimination and poverty that we women and indigenous people are facing.
It's not enough with urban planning.
We need to transform public policies, laws in order for them to recognize the collective rights of indigenous people to promote self determination, the P Cosenment and informed consentment that guarantees participation of women and indigenous people in the decisions that really affect us in our territories as stated in the Declaration of Indigenous Villages in the UN, in the part 169, and right now in the Article 39 for Indigenous women and Indigenous girls.
Thank you very much.
Gracias Eva Christina.
Thank you very much, Eva Christina.
Once again, for bringing home a couple of important points that Eva has brought out is the issue of criminalization of those who are defending our land and our rights.
This is something which we have also requested for inclusion in the Baku call of action because those are protecting land and our rights, and that's one thing that she has brought out the connection between patriarchy, racism, and the continuum of this has also been brought out.
The issue of contamination, which is also again critical, some of the indigenous lands and territories are areas of dumping sites for toxic waste.
Like nuclear waste dumped in Navajo lands, Guam and other parts of the world.
We have seen this Bangladesh once returned a ship full of waste, remember that episode? Global North dumping toxic waste in Global South in our lands and on those, our houses are built.
Imagine the health impact of those.
We are looking at the health impacts.
We're looking at different aspects.
For us, indigenous people, we live in the intersection of all of this.
Thank you, my sister, for bringing that out.
But again, as I said, that we are also solution providers.
What is it out there that indigenous people? I remember going to a village in Indo Bangladesh border in Tripua actually and I entered a village where it was very hot, but they had mud walls which is this thick.
When you entered the room, it was cool inside, and in winter, it was warm inside.
Indigenous people have technologies.
Some houses in the Northeast are built with bamboo.
Bamboo is considered to be even stronger than steel.
So some of these aspects.
Again, urban planning is not just about the building, it's all of the spaces around you.
How do we for indigenous people, we have made sacred groves, which are climate stabilizers, which ensure that our temperatures are moderated through some of these methodologies of preserving forests as sacred sites.
So people did not cut trees.
If you cut a tree, we plant ten more trees.
In New Zealand, they have given legal rights to a river.
The Wanganu River has legal rights as a person now.
Just to let you know, the different methodologies and the solutions that indigenous people are bringing to the table must be recognized, treated with dignity and included in the planning in multilateral as well as governmental level.
That's the things that we are hearing from our sisters and this panel.
With this, I give the floor to Penny Kerrigan, Haida Elder from Canada to take the floor.
Yes.
Good morning.
First of all, I'd like to thank Oz Brojin for being such gracious and wonderful hosts and welcoming us to one of the most beautiful cities I've seen in the world, Haa.
My name is Penny Kerrigan or that is my given name, and my name is Joss Kegan.
I come from the Haiden Nation Yanis.
My mother we come from a matrilineal line.
My mother's name, she was born Myrtle Davidson, and my grandmother was Florence Edenshaw who gave me my name.
My name means story mate.
I carry it with great responsibility because our people have always had stories and stories are not entertainment alone.
Stories are law, memory, governments, and an instruction for how we live together.
Sorry.
I'm tied up here.
I Sorry, we're having technical issues here.
Let me see.
Benny, just speak from your heart.
I will.
Yes.
Okay.
First of all, I lost my glasses, so I'm having a really difficult time here.
I'm going to speak about three different things.
Indigenous housing must be recognized as rights based and land based issues.
Indigenous housing cannot be treated solely as a social program or infrastructure issue.
For indigenous peoples, housing is inseparable from the land, culture, governance, safety, and self determination.
Advancing indigenous housing requires implementation of the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights.
The rights of indigenous peoples, including recognition of indigenous land rights, free prior and informed consent and indigenous led decision making.
Our Haida people took the government to court to ensure that we had free informed prior consent, which led many of our people in our country to also to be able to have land rights, to have title, and to go through with treaties.
The government must ask and actually talk to us before they do major projects or anything on our land.
For indigenous people, housing is not only about shelter, it's about identity, belonging, safety, culture, and our responsibility to future generations.
Housing cannot be treated solely as a social program or infrastructure issue.
For indigenous people, housing is inseparable from land, culture, governance, safety, and self determination.
Advancing indigenous housing requires implementation of the United Nations Declaration.
Indigenous peoples must lead design governance and delivery of housing systems.
Indigenous people are not only stakeholders in housing policy, we are rights holders and solution builders.
Sustainable outcomes emerge when indigenous communities, particularly indigenous women and grassroots leaders have direct authority over housing design, financing, governance, and long time community planning.
Indigenous housing must also be understood as a violence preventing strategy.
The National Inquiry into the murdered and Indigenous women and Girls demonstrated unsafe housing, displacement, poverty, and racism.
And social isolation increase vulnerability to violence.
Canada did a national inquiry for murdered missing indigenous women and girls and I was part of that.
We had 190 recommendations and the government has implemented two.
When indigenous women must leave their lands to escape violence or remain in unsafe homes because there is nowhere else to go, that becomes a contemporary form of displacement.
The Indian Act, which was a policy that was developed in Canada, and colonial systems have also contributed to gender based displacement by disrupting indigenous women's belonging, housing access, inheritance, and community security.
Housing policy must therefore move beyond emergency responses toward indigenous led models of safety, land based healings, cultural continuity, and women led development.
Indigenous housing systems must support people returning home, not permanent urban displacement.
When I mean returning home, I mean from our cultural, so many women in Canada have had to leave their homes because of violence, sexual violence, and because of the laws that Canada made that discriminated against indigenous women and continues to discriminate against indigenous women today.
But we have solutions and too often, indigenous housing systems Sorry.
Too often indigenous housing systems are structured around managing homelessness in urban centers after displacement has already occurred, rather than supporting indigenous people to remain in or return to their own territories, families, cultures, and support systems.
In Canada, significant public resources are spent on housing indigenous women and families far from the nations, often in environments where they remain isolated from community culture, safety networks, and traditional governance systems.
Many indigenous women living in urban poverty for homelessness do not want permanent displacement.
They want ability to safety and to return home.
We should ask ourselves whether it's more effective socially, economically, and morally.
To continue warehousing indigenous people in urban poverty or to invest directly in indigenous communities so people can return home with dignity, safety, and belonging.
Haa.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Penny, for your statement.
In the interest of time, we have one more speaker in this panel, but we will open up the floor for discussion.
So please introduce yourselves and also in a minute each, if you can share what are your thoughts because I know there's so much expertise around the room too, so we want to also hear from all of us here.
With this, thank you so much, Sherri Redden for your patience and Director General of the intergovernmental and External Partnerships branch of Canada.
We have a lot of representatives from Canada here, but we are glad that you are here with us.
But one of the things that we want to bring home as Penny also mentioned, indigenous housing.
That's a beautiful term that has come about.
What does indigenous housing look like? And hopefully, when the next Wolf 14 happens in Mexico, we should be able to showcase some indigenous housing at the expo.
I think that's something that we would like to work with the UN, with the governments, with all stakeholders, with indigenous peoples to make that happen.
I think this will be really beautiful to demonstrate some of the critical elements.
What Penny has also mentioned was the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women.
This is not just in Canada, but around the world.
And this is something that we will work, we need more work on it on a global level.
So with this, miss Sherri Redden, the floor is yours and thank you for your patience.
We wanted to let all the indigenous leaders speak.
So thank you for being patiently waiting with us on this.
Thank you.
F is yours.
Good morning, Bonjour and Qua.
For the translators, Quay is the traditional greeting of the Algonquin and Nsbis peoples whose traditional territory I have the privilege of living and working on.
I'm also grateful to our Azerzbijani hosts, our UN Habitat organizers, all of the indigenous leaders in the room.
Of course, I'd like to also acknowledge any elders, including my own elder from Canada, Penny Kerrigan, I have two objectives really with the presentation.
I'd like to just situate the Canadian context and then also provide listeners with an overview of some of the changes, program policy, and legal landscape that we're undertaking in Canada to move forward with indigenous housing solutions and pathways to self determination in this area.
Notwithstanding the prosperity and high standard of living that we enjoy in Canada, not everybody shares in that.
Indigenous peoples in Canada lag behind in virtually every socioeconomic indicator compared to their mainstream Canadian counterparts.
Indigenous peoples in Canada face systemic barriers to adequate housing.
They are 50% more likely to be in core housing need, six times more likely to be homeless than their mainstream Canadian counterparts.
They are often faced with overcrowding in terms of, housing is in need of repairs or renovations and significant gaps in terms of housing enabling infrastructures such as water and wastewater systems in their communities.
These challenges are driven by affordability pressures in Canada, a harsh climate, exposure to climate change, um, a lack of access to suitable land and infrastructure, high construction costs, limited access to labor and materials to build homes due to remoteness or geographic isolation, and historic government policies that have resulted in barriers to accessing housing, finance, and alternative capital.
In the Canadian context, when I use the word indigenous, we have three different or distinct indigenous peoples.
First Nations, Inuit, and Neti.
There's significant diversity between First Nation Inuit and Ni and then even within those distinct peoples across Canada.
They have different cultures, different traditions, and different challenges that they face.
Over the last ten years, our government has been prioritizing indigenous relations.
We have been prioritizing nation to nation relationships with our indigenous peoples and really wanting to move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and attempt to right historic wrongs that were undertaken by colonial practices.
Over the last decade, we've seen a number of changes in terms of programs, policies, and legal reforms to help put in practice the spirit of reconciliation and give it a pragmatic focus.
Um In line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people and our own federal act that we've put in place to implement and entrench the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people.
We increasingly support indigenous led solutions and capacity to advance self determination in indigenous housing systems and in financial tools to enable greater access to lending, to borrowing, and to raise capital to support indigenous led priorities in the housing and homelessness space.
We believe that it's only through indigenous led approaches that we will have enduring and lasting and successful solutions.
A couple of examples of reforms in this space.
We have a national housing strategy.
Our national housing strategy is embedded in legislation.
It includes accountability mechanisms, which I'll talk about a little bit later in this presentation.
We have federal investments under that strategy.
We have investments that we provide to provinces and territories through that strategy.
We also have investments that we provide dedicated housing investments that we provide to First Nation Inuit and NAT pursuant to that strategy that comes with funding, which enables First Nation Inuit and MAT leaders to identify priorities in this space, to identify actions to address their housing priorities and their housing challenges.
It sees First Nation inuit and MT leaders at the front driving funding allocations, and also being accountable for outcomes and their priorities in this space.
Um, Back home in Canada right now, we're currently undertaking a national engagement to look at the next generation of our indigenous housing strategies and to take on indigenous feedback in terms of the success over the last ten years, but also their priorities, their vision, their interests in the next generation of that strategy.
Co development underpins all of our work, not just in housing, but in education, in health, and other sectors of government and partnership is an essential feature of that work.
One recent partnership that I'd like to share with you in the housing space is really in Canada's north where there is a lack of supply of housing.
It's very difficult to bring in supplies to manage logistics, to manage around some of the climate realities.
And we've recently successfully brokered a partnership between the government of Canada, the Nut, the territorial regional government, and inuit government in that area.
That through that partnership, we'll see 750 new units of housing being built together.
Those housing units will be supported by new and modern methods of construction through factory built capacity that's going to be built into the north and hopefully speed up the supply of housing in that territory, but also make it more resilient to the climate in that area and more energy efficient because it's very costly to heat homes in the North and many of those communities rely on diesel to fill their homes.
A key feature of this partnership is that a selection of the homes will be managed by the Inuit Housing Corporation according to their priorities and their cultural practices, and they will have a housing model that they will put in place to incent their citizens to pursue employment opportunities and to pursue pathways to home ownership so that they can cultivate a housing as an asset and capital that can be passed on within families.
We've also taken some important steps in our policy and legal landscape in Canada.
In addition to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, our National Housing Act also provides for specific considerations around vulnerable populations, including indigenous people, but also women.
And girls.
It provides for oversight mechanisms such as the National Housing Council, a federal housing advocate who include indigenous representatives as part of their representation, and also the authority to conduct review panels where they challenge and basically audit the federal government on its performance in this regard.
Lastly, we have permanent bilateral mechanisms in place that offer First Nation inuit and MT governments the chance to participate alongside Canada in a government to government process.
We co develop a work plan together, we co develop priorities.
We have regular check ins against those priorities, and it culminates with an annual meeting at the political level between federal, but sometimes provincial territorial in some cases and indigenous leaders to check and assess progress in that regard.
So, colleagues, those are a few examples of some of the policy, program, and legal changes that we are putting in place in Canada to improve housing outcomes for First Nation Inuit and Main Canada and to increase access to self determination in the housing sector.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sherry, and this is a round table which includes indigenous leaders, governments, the UN and other stakeholders.
For indigenous people, we have one basic thing in life, speak the truth, speak truth to power.
We are glad for many of the things that are stated by governments here, but we are also aware that the world is moving in an area where we have more wars and conflicts than ever before happening in our territories.
This is impacting all types of planning, urban planning.
We cannot even plan as indigenous people, constantly displaced.
One of the cause factors are the extractive industries.
The extractive industries around the world are causing displacement and eviction of many indigenous peoples around the world.
Many countries in this room and your companies are responsible for that.
But we also as indigenous people, we are not against development, but we want a development which works for all, not for 1% of the world's population, which owns 99% of the world's wealth.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, we have enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.
So at this moment, last year at the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke about how 54% of the world's critical minerals are found in areas where indigenous people live in sometimes 90%, and that's where the next frontier of displacement is going to be.
While planning urban planning, we've got to be aware of some of these criticalities, but for us, it's not many houses, but how do we continue to protect 500 million indigenous people living and protecting 80% of the world's biodiversity? For us, all this work, when we go back home from these meetings, we are on the front line of many of these issues.
We want the governments in this room to carry this voice also with you when you return.
With this, once again, a big round of applause to the panelists here, Eva, Christina, Penny Kerrigan, and Cherry Redden, for their really important insightful remarks for this.
We take a moment, take a deep breathing, Just shrug your shoulders, just feel the energy in the room because we are almost tied up with all of this and I don't know if some of you were in the rooms last four days.
We already have speakers speaking to an audience and we couldn't speak anything.
We didn't want that to happen in this round table.
Because I think everyone is an expert in this room.
Everyone has worked so hard to be here where you are today.
We are also very privileged to be sitting in this room where millions cannot even be here.
We understand the responsibility of our work in this room at Wolf 13.
We would like to open the floor To anyone who have any questions of our two panelists, you have heard many of the concerns, you've also heard many of the solutions.
If you have thoughts, please unmute, introduce yourself, but limit to 1 minute each so that everyone could get a chance.
Who will be the brave one to take the floor? Yes, please.
Thank you very much, Dear moderator and also dear panelists.
I represent Baku International Intercultural Department.
My name is Rashad Ilyasov.
My question will be addressed to the moderator, but other panelists can also respond.
In philosophy, we talked about land ethics, we talked about the right to land.
In philosophy, There is also land ethics that came as a notion.
Miss Moderator mentioned that among the population, about 80% of the population are involved in biodiversity.
It's mostly done by the indigenous people.
And by taking into account this purpose at the moment when we talk about biodiversity, in terms of violating biodiversity, more than law, more than economy, isn't it more of an ethical problem? Isn't it more of an ethical consideration so that if we refer to this factor, these local indigenous people's problems could be also resolved.
For instance, in the US, in China.
They have this Kyoto protocol, they have other agreements that they have made.
I don't want to go into too many details, but at the same time, capitalism.
These are the issues and challenges and consequences of capitalism and these local indigenous people in terms of preserving biodiversity, in terms of their being bio citizens.
From that perspective, I would like to know your point of view from the ethical perspective.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll take a few more from the floor.
Here is your chance, please No one else? Okay.
Thank you so much, Abina.
My name is Emma.
I'm from Johannesburg, South Africa.
I was really here to learn and it's been such a privilege to be witness to this conversation and what feels like a very profound moment in the history of the World Urban Forum.
Thank you so much.
I was just reading your call to action and I thought that maybe more could be made of indigenous people as innovators and as solution makers.
There's this wonderful idea which I came across, which is also from Canada, powerfully represented today forgive my pronunciation, it's Mc Mc Elder Albert.
Which is the idea of two eyed seeing the notion that from the one eye you see with the benefit of Western knowledge and with the other eye and at the same time you see with the benefit of indigenous knowledge.
To me, this is such a profound idea that you could improve so many of the colonized ways that we see the world by integrating and layering them with indigenous ways of seeing.
I was just thinking to really maybe make more of the notion that it's not just about solving problems for indigenous people, but that many of the other problems that we confront in the world might benefit from this two eyes seeing as well.
Thank you very much.
Yes, please.
There are two hands on the right side and there's a third end there.
Thank you.
My question about.
Can you please identify yourself? Yeah.
My name is An Graman.
I represent here at the Banco International Multiculturalism Center.
I would like to raise the issue on the natural resources that are often found on the indigenous territories and generates the great revenues for the corporations, for the states, for the business people, and yet the indigenous people are oftenly excluded from the decision making, for the ownership, from the benefits of those resources.
Raises very critical debates about the ownership of the natural resources for the indigenous people.
I would like to ask if there are any concrete law that protect the right of indigenous people on the natural resources that are found on the indigenous territories.
Thank you.
Thérèse very good points next, identify yourself.
My name is Kenin Rustaov.
I'm also from Baco International Multiculturalism Center.
Actually, my question has no addresses, so any one of our distinguished speakers are welcome to respond.
Recently, I finished reading one of the books of the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The book was the Army General in its own libernes.
There was a line that says, some indigenous people after gaining their independence back after being set free, they didn't know what to do with their independence.
I wonder, is it really sometimes tough to deal with the independence with the liberty they have? Thank you.
Interesting questions coming in there.
What would you do if you have freedom? Yes.
Yes.
Yes, we had a hand there.
Could you identify yourself.
Yes.
I'm going to speak in Spanish, please if you can use your headsets then I can translate by myself.
I just want to say.
Yes.
My name is Mater Rodriguez Blandon.
I come from Guatemala and my colleague from Guatemala is also here and I'm very happy I represent the Guatemala Foundation, but also the Water Commission.
The Commission is based in New York.
I'm very happy to see that I'm here.
Well, I'm going to give my sincere congratulations because I see the first round table of indigenous people in a world forum of this level.
I want to say that in other experiences, there's a caucus that is very huge and active in the Cp, for example, in the different cops.
But I think that to open a space in here in the Woof and also in the global platform of disaster reduction in Hivera it's important because it's the population of indigenous communities that are the most affected when there's a climate event or a crisis or a war or a conflict.
And so I am very happy that this roundtable is taking place here, that there is an agreement in the global forums about indigenous people.
I would love to understand how are we going to coordinate with the indigenous community that is so huge and they works two or three days before the cop.
It would be interesting for them to learn about these matters that we are talking right now and that they are so important, so urban and so collective.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Important points.
Yeah.
I'm looking at time is 11:41.
We have how many minutes? 12:00, a shop and at 12, so we're just looking at the time logistics.
What we're going to do is this, These questions anyone from our panelists want to, please feel free to take and respond to any of the queries which just come today from the floor.
Does anyone.
Again, your responses should be just like 2 minutes, not more.
Yeah.
Bueno, I want to thank you all for the space of being here.
In relation to the questions in a general way, mainly I want to say I want to start saying that the reason for being indigenous and original from a specific territory does not imply humiliation or pity or to think that poor indigenous, we need to give them some rights.
No, because being an indigenous person, it is something important.
We also, we understand the legal framework.
We understand what we can achieve to do.
Maybe before we didn't have this knowledge aspect, but now we do.
But the consciousness of the capitalism does not allow It is not allowing us to be able to be in these kind of places.
The reason of why we are banned or why we do not have representative spaces in this kind of scenarios is why because of the political gaps.
If we are not a part of a political community, we cannot be here.
So yes, there are s.
There are a lot of lows.
Because the reality we've been talking about or that I shared personally comes from South America.
I shared experiences of South America, but in other places it might change.
The reality is South America is the one I am living.
It is sad because we are not asked for permission.
There are laws, but we do not participate in them.
So what do we have to do? I will just share this.
So The word indigenous, many will ask what it is.
Some nations don't even allow that use of the word to be very honest.
But for us as scholars, practitioners, what we'd like to put in the table is that for the United Nations, the word indigenous is a self identified term.
I just wanted to clarify this.
Just like the word mother, Child has never been defined, but we know who a mother is.
We know who the child is.
This is how and the other thing, the sustainable development goals, do not leave anyone behind.
We are talking about sections of populations that we have left behind in the building of nation states, and they are asking to be included.
They're asking to be treated with dignity, with respect.
Whenever you hear the word indigenous, please know that this is about rectifying a historical wrong.
And ensuring that we work together to build a better world that works for him.
This is all just to put it under context.
It took since the first movement for Indigenous people's rights actually started during the League of Nations.
Remember, before the United Nations was the League of Nations.
Chief Descha from the Native American community, went to Geneva in the 1920s to raise the issue that indigenous peoples are not anyone, but they're also nations.
They should be in the League of Nations.
They went to Geneva.
Since 1920s work through 1970s with the United Nations for the first time, have a working group and a study on who are the indigenous peoples.
You can read this online.
And then it took many years from that time to 2007 for the UN Declaration on the Rights of indigenous people.
So these are very strong historical work that was done so that indigenous peoples are recognized and treated with dignity that we deserve.
So this is about inclusion.
So again, and because we live also in the periphery of societies at the border areas, also facing the issue of cross border transnational criminal networks operating in our territories.
There are many issues that we are impacted by.
Again, this is not the forum to discuss everything.
We're talking about urban planning for now, but we are happy to have another roundtable on this, another time even virtually to explain to you more.
In fact, we have just come back from New York.
We had the second global summit on Indigenous peace building held at the margins every year at the UN headquarter in New York, the Indigenous people of the world actually come together for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues.
And where we are discussing all these issues to mitigate and to find solutions to these collective issues.
With this, my sisters who are in the line.
Yes.
Yes.
I would love to just say some things about the ethic matter.
I think in the case of Guatemala, it is a structural problem, a legal problem, a thinking problem because people consider that there's just one way of living and one way of understanding how to live.
The only way is we can say it becomes a structure and it is focused on local policies, law creation and everything that does not agree with this thinking logic, it is decriminized.
It is not just an ethical problem, but structure, a legal problem.
On the other side, About indigenous people, what Garcia Market says about indigenous people is that after being liberated, they didn't know what to do with their independence.
I think we can read these in different ways.
In my case, I think it is a wrong way of saying it because the majority of indigenous people, we had to be autonomous.
We had to have out sustainability in the case of basic services.
We've created our own services of access to water or roads because the state does not assume these responsibilities.
I think that the Urban Forum also gives the indigenous people how shall we demand this constitutional rights that we should have? It is not that we are asking the state for these things, but it's responsibility of the state to solve these issues.
Also, maybe I just want to add that in the case of thinking the urbanism as a debate, and I'm going to talk of the case of Guatemala, of course, because there are some questions that are very strong and affect us very strongly, such as feeding defense of the territory that we've talked about.
Legal framework, I think there are international standards that we've talked about and that we need to take into account because we as indigenous people, we've achieved the United Nations system in order to propose new laws such as how nature has a right.
How do we talk about nature's rights? Because every country has their own standards on the thing that what we all have in common is that some of them have created, consulting laws and others haven't.
But I think that the historical demanding of indigenous people is always going to be self determination and free self determination of how we want to live, of how we want to be seen, and most of all, of how we want humanity to exist.
Thank you very much.
I wanted to respond to our Azerbijani colleagues question around resource development and the implications for indigenous people in our nations.
I'd be happy to talk about the Canadian context.
It's a hot issue right now.
Our government is coming together around approximately 15 identified projects of national interest.
They include, for example, new oil pipelines, liquefied natural gas facilities, mining projects, and major transportation infrastructure projects.
In our country, there's our legal framework requires a duty to consult with indigenous peoples who are impacted by major developments or major projects such as this, that would cross into their traditional territory.
So there is a legal requirement to consult and that's been in place for many years.
But over the past year that shifted quite a bit.
We've moved beyond just the traditional duty to consult requirement, and we've seen federally at the national level, new measures put in place.
First, grants and contributions funding, non repayable loans provided to indigenous governments whose lands cross into those projects to bolster capacity and to hire staff and legal counsel to be participants and to participate alongside federal and provincial territorial governments in the brokering and the development of those projects.
As well, a National Advisory Council has been put in place to oversee and provide direction to politicians and project managers, oversight, if you will, and direction, and there is indigenous representation on that council.
And lastly, the most significant feature is the availability of um, low cost loans, some of which are non payable to indigenous governments so that they can buy into the projects and be equity partners.
Not only can they realize the benefits of the projects and have impact benefits, but also realize socioeconomic and broader community benefits as a result of their participation.
Thank you, Sherri.
Ronald, you have a Yes, but there's a lot of representation from Canada, so just give it to Bolivia and come back.
Yes.
Thank you.
Yes, we are on time, don't worry.
About the resources for indigenous people, this is a very critical dialogue because in many states in Latin America, at least constitutions recognize that the soil and the earth belongs to the state and so the indigenous communities Do not possess the territory, which includes the natural resources.
I'm going to talk from the perspective of the Bolivian state.
There, we've applied the Declaration of the UN through the legal Constitution.
Based on this in the management of 2022, we created an institutional sentence in Bolivia that determined that in order to export natural resources from indigenous communities, we've interpreted first the territory that includes sacred places and also the soil of indigenous people.
In order for the state to be able to exploit those places, they need to consent and have a free prior informed consent of indigenous people.
In case of them saying yes, then they can get benefits of these resources if you like, I could search this report.
Also about Garcia market in Bolivia, we've achieved the autonomy of indigenous communities.
I think we've achieved that dream at least in Bolivia.
And there are many indigenous communities that are governing and managing themselves, and there are indigenous autonomies and they are an example that they are urban places that follow their own traditions and their own ways of living.
Also, the taxes for the state are going to the village and to the communities, and this is making them grow according to their own structure.
As I can share that according to Garcia Market, the writer, it is a dream for indigenous communities to achieve freedom and self determination.
Thank you very much.
Sister from Kenya would like to take the floor.
Yes.
Thank you so much for another opportunity to share with all of you.
I just want to bring to your attention in regards to the question of national resources and how these resources are protected.
I just want to bring our views that indigenous rights are heavily protected by United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People.
It is heavily a pronounced in regards to how those rights look like, including rights to access to natural resources, rights to use, access, and benefit from natural resources.
We have also international instruments like CIO and all these, you realize that most states have ratified, it becomes a national law to their countries and any violation of indigenous rights amount to maybe a not respecting those rights that they have provided a signature to.
Closer to that is that we have epic that they have earlier spoke about.
We have also Nakoa protocol that protects on access to resources and even benefit sharing that is going to indigenous community in case of resources that is amount to national interests to a nation.
We have provided on how such modalities are extracted without exploiting indigenous people and respecting their rights and how indigenous people can get back royalties or even benefit in terms of benefit sharing.
In regards to the same In Kenya, we have a constitutional body like minority and indigenous groups that has been constituted by the government of Kenya that speak about or identify indigenous people as guardian of the land, protects and even how we can provide our voice at national discourse.
At the moment, we are documenting on how epic look like and how epic free prior and informed consent should inform national policy.
This is a process that we are building a lot of advocacy in, and it will also be brought to national level, including African Commission on Human and People's rights and even at the UN conversation.
Thank you so much for this and it is widen up and give us ability to take back experiences learned from here.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, sister.
We have 2 minutes left.
So trying to do some management, 2 minutes left with the organizers.
If they can give us five more minutes if it's okay to be in the room, then we can take on some more because of the intensity of these discussions because we have a question from the floor and our elder, Penny also has to come in.
So yes, please take the floor.
Thank you very much, distinguished moderator and estimate panelists.
I would like to briefly to describe what did by our civil society organizations in order to protect indigenous people's rights in our country.
As Bakuish I represent the Bakuish group.
My name is Abz, we conducted more than 35 international events in order to protect indigenous people's rights at various international platforms.
Also, we submitted alternative reports to the United Nations and other relevant organizations in order to protect and support all indigenous people's rights who suffered, unfortunately, from colonial dominations from French, Dutch, Belgian, and other countries.
Thank you very much for such meaningful discussions.
Thank you for your participation.
Thank you for your time.
Our civil society organizations and especially our organization will continue to support and protect all indigenous people's rights at various international platforms.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
We really welcome that and we'll bring that home.
We have our elder Penny Kerrigan.
I just wanted to express that in Canada, we have a very good relationship right now as a Haida woman with the federal government.
We are in the process where our extracted resources have been over $1 trillion on our island and most recently for over 50 years, we've fought in court For our land and our right to title and our land claim, and two years ago, we've had a date for 2026 in May.
This is ironic.
In May 2026, we had a date to go to court.
Two years ago, the federal government of Canada acknowledged that the land was already rightfully ours.
The provincial government and the federal government acknowledged that the land is ours and we have title to the land, which is the first time a colonial government has ever acknowledged such a thing.
Right now, we're in the middle of developing the laws in which working together with the federal government over the next two years.
It was two years with the province of British Columbia and five years.
What I really urge other countries to do is to actually take a really good approach of reconciliation with its indigenous people because they know how to take care of the land.
They also know how that they know that this land is sacred, they share their land, and I really think that we could have a better life going forward if you listen to your indigenous people because, you know.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for bringing those dimensions and the important work that you're doing indigenous people of Canada are struggling and the working relationship with the federal government.
We also know about the treaty violations there and we want to also see how particularly Treaty six, which Chief Wilton Littlechild always brings up, what are the ways we can navigate around it.
But again, thank you to the really good partnership that we need to do for collective.
Once their wants to take the floor, and then with this, this will be the final statement, and then we're going to close with a prayer from Ecuador and a photograph, if you will stay with us for a few more minutes and we will end it.
My sister, please introduce yourselves.
Hello, everyone.
I have no question.
My name is Nya Aliyev.
I just want to thank you because you let me think about the question that do we really improve ourselves to be a conscious urban planner and building solution builder.
After that, after we answer this question that we know that we make the people around us to feel themselves safely and in peace and emotionally supportive.
Thank you so much for this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Those are words which brought so much healing in the room.
A conscious urban planner.
That's what you have said.
Thank you, sister, for those beautiful words.
With this, we are bringing this really, as our sister said, this is the first ever roundtable on indigenous people at the World Urban Forum deserves a huge clap.
Yes.
Thank you so much to all the organizers for making this happen.
The key messages that has come out, we all have heard it.
I don't have to repeat it.
Housing is a human right.
Indigenous housing rights are inseparable from land rights and self determination.
Housing insecurity is also peace and a security issue.
Conflict, climate change, and displacement disproportionately affect indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities.
Indigenous women's leaderships are essential.
Finally, indigenous innovation, as many of you spoke about, they offer solutions for sustainable cities and peaceful futures.
Finally, nothing about indigenous peoples without us.
That's important.
In the closing remarks, we would like to share that for us, let us remember when we walk away from this room that adequate housing for indigenous people are not just about buildings or infrastructure.
It's about our dignity, our justice, our memory, our healing, and for our peace, for cultural survival and collective futures.
We thank the people and all the volunteers.
I would like to take a special moment to thank the women carpet weavers of Azerbijan who were there and demonstrating their work.
What I'm wearing, women of Manipur wore this.
Weaving is an essential culture, whether of carpets or fabric, and we are bringing this.
We thank the city of Baku for hosting this important dialogue on behalf of indigenous peoples worldwide.
We want to close.
From your own Azerbijani poet, we started Nizami Ganja.
In the hour of adversity, be not without hope for crystal rain falls from black clouds.
Also, he also mentioned that the world is a body.
The world is a body, and the nations are the limbs.
If one limb is afflicted with pain, the other limbs cannot remain at rest.
May we, indigenous peoples, and all peoples worldwide move forward in solidarity, justice, and peace.
Thank you for your attention and for your commitment.
With this, our brother Ronald, we'll have the we start with the ceremony, we'll end with a ceremony.
He wants us to stand up.
Repeat with me.
Azerbajan Indigenous people.
Azerbaijan.
Azaz.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I thought he was doing a prayer, but what does it mean Thank you, everyone.
Yes.
I believe he said that it comes from our heart.
You want to join the group photo, you're most welcome to come this side.
Or outside.
The photographer is there.
Please come this side and to be a part of bring back some memory of this session.