The main official theme of the celebration this year is “Indigenous designs: celebrating stories and cultures, crafting our own future”, according to information provided by Bolivian newspaper Los Tiempos.

The theme stresses the need to preserve indigenous cultures, their art and intellectual property rights. It aims to remind the general public about the responsibility they have as consumers to remember that behind each piece of fabric, tissue or art crafted by indigenous there are stories and life experiences.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent a message of celebration on this day. Spanish newspaper El Mundo says he demanded “a bigger effort” to recognize and strengthen the indigenous peoples right to intellectual property and so that they have a “fair compensation for their cultural heritage and traditional knowledge”.

Ban Ki-moon highlighted that nearly 370 million people in the world are indigenous, and they are present in 90 countries. “Together, they are the guardians of a valuable cultural heritage that is quickly disappearing. We see its creativity and innovations in art, literature and science”, he said.

The UN Secretary General also said the indigenous peoples face many problems to preserve their identity, their traditions and customs and their cultural contributions are often exploited and commercialized with little or no recognition”.

Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, demanded in a separate statement “Let us ensure that development for some is not to the detriment of the human rights of others”, referring to the suffering of many indigenous peoples around the world. “An estimated 370 million indigenous people” globally have lost or face the threat of losing their ancestral lands and natural resources.

Human rights organization Amnesty International warned that the indigenous peoples’ survival is in danger because of the lack of political will to respect and enforce their rights.

Amnesty International published a new report titled “Sacrificing rights in the name of development – Indigenous peoples under threat in the Americas”. It analyses different cases in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and the US.

The introduction of the new report reads “the false and dangerous dichotomy between development and indigenous peoples rights is frequent in the continent”. It is related with the concept that indigenous peoples “prevent national growth” by opposing to the so called “development projects”. The social and environmental impacts that these projects have are not often considered, and the indigenous peoples are not even consulted. For this reason indigenous communities often resist the implementation of oil, gas, mining and hydroelectric projects by transnational corporations.

These struggles lead some social sectors to consider “anti-development” indigenous irresponsible or “backward”. “This response has terrible consequences on the human rights of indigenous peoples of the region”, reads Amnesty’s report.

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