Indigenous groups: make inroads into the global community.

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES, which make up only 5 per cent of the global population but represent a staggering 15 per cent of the world's poor, are still reeling from the results of centuries of decimation and political brutality: violence, unemployment and seemingly inescapable cycles of poverty. New challenges, however, face these communities and with them come innovative opportunities to reverse these insidious cycles.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In today's well-networked, globalized world, no rugged mountain steppe or forest nook seems quite as remote as it once did. Pervasive media and technology have reached the far corners of the earth, offering indigenous people a direct and undiluted connection to the dominant majority. No longer will the world's image of native groups be fixed only in the pages of anthropological texts, confined by the perception of outside eyes.

With new connections far and wide to places and people, indigenous groups have a chance at real representation within the global community, and they are ready to be seen as the complex, dynamic communities that they are. It's a big change and a big responsibility. The United Nations joined forces with indigenous communities as it hosted the fifth session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, held from 15 to 26 May 2006. Over 1,200 representatives travelled to UN Headquarters in New York to assert their commitment to progress in the international arena.

"There are these four walls that any issues facing indigenous peoples always hit up against. I think that indicates that we're at a time when change is absolutely essential", said Merata Mita, a filmmaker and a Maori native from New Zealand, who attended the Forum with the National Geographic's All Roads film project and photography programme, of which she is an advisory board member. This change, she said, involved new ways of looking at the world. "A critical aspect to the future of indigenous peoples is that we must think more laterally and try to impress upon those walls."

Projects like All Roads, which gives grants to indigenous photographers and filmmakers to pursue their creative skills and imagination and have their arts viewed in international venues like the UN Permanent Forum, are major sources of support for indigenous artists worldwide. All Roads has had some mainstream success. Its 2004 animated series, "Raven Tales", which is based on North American aboriginal mythology, has recently joined Porchlight Entertainment and will be broadcast on PBS affiliates across the United States. Indigenous arts groups hope that more contact with the realities of native life will have lasting effects on the global consciousness, dispelling misconceptions and replacing them with human faces.

"Art and life are not static", said Ms. Mita's colleague, Chris Rainier, who heads the photography project. Some of the main themes in All Roads projects, he said, were modern changes in indigenous communities and the identity struggles that often follow. "We have to be aware that putting a fence around indigenous cultures and saying that 'we don't want you to change' is simply not fair and not appropriate", he added, addressing the preservationist attitudes of anthropologists and historians past.

This sentiment reverberated throughout the Forum's two-week session and at many more events. Even as tradition was joyfully celebrated, with songs echoing through the UN Headquarters hallways and colourful exhibits across the lobby, twenty-first-century issues were a strong presence in every venue. With its theme for the 2006 session, "Millennium Development Goals and Indigenous Peoples: Redefining the Goals", the Forum asserted the determination of the United Nations to have indigenous voices included in the development of the new millennium and that special provisions address the needs of the indigenous community.

At a panel discussion entitled "Native American Writers on Writing", which featured two renowned North American poets and welcomed an audience of scholars and artists, the bicultural reality of modern indigenous life was the poignant theme. "What makes us Indian, if we move away from the buffalo and the teepee?" asked James Thomas Stevens, an award-winning Mohawk poet and professor (see photo below), as he read from his collection of poems. "The idea of the 'pure' Indian ... is a near impossibility." This flat image, he said, did not represent the trials of the past and the hybridization that had resulted in Indian life across North America.

Members of the Indigenous Caucus also made bold statements about their own progress. Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca Cepedes said at the Forum's opening ceremony that Bolivia, after five centuries of exploitation, has elected an indigenous person as its President and that this new government would show that a new era was dawning for indigenous people worldwide. Other indigenous attendees were quick to add that it was the use of their traditional knowledge in the modern world that would further their progress today.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"One of the good things about the indigenous groups that are left in the world", said Merata Mita, "is that they've held on to knowledge and they've held on to ways of sustaining people, so that there's not just survival on the agenda. There are ways of applying that knowledge to make the whole of society more aware and more progressive." In Hawaii, she said, indigenous understanding of nature had become essential parts of mainstream modern life. When the State faced grave water shortages, for example, the Board of Water Supply turned to native Hawaiians, who taught them the ancient secrets of rock filtration. Natives worldwide, who oppose dependency on oil, could also offer much sought-after alternative energy solutions.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, a North American Huron poet and scholar (see left photo), underscored this belief as she shared in the discussion. Even the very cognitive aspects of thinking as a native, she said, had helped her understand the world around her and could benefit society as a whole in much the same way. "It's these voices--the indigenous voices--which may condition the audience to see the world for what it truly is."

Only by humanizing and listening to contemporary indigenous voices will today's conflicts truly find resolution, both in indigenous communities themselves and in the rest of the world as well.

For more information on the UN Permanent Forum, please visit www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/ and on All Roads Film Project at www.nationalgeographic.com/allroads.