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Let’s establish some baselines.
Texas is responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than Saudi Arabia or the global maritime industry. Its oil, gas and petrochemical operations discharge tens of millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air each year, comprising almost one-fifth of such releases in the United States. It is the nation’s top emitter of the carcinogens benzene, ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene.
It accounts for 75 percent of the petrochemicals made in the U.S. It is an engine of the world’s plastics industry, whose products clog oceans and landfills and, upon breaking down, infuse human bodies with potentially dangerous microplastics.
Despite all of this, the state’s commitment to fossil-fuel infrastructure is unwavering, driven by economics. Oil and gas extraction, transportation and processing contributed $249 billion to the state’s gross domestic product and supported 661,000 jobs in 2021, according to the most recent reports from the Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office. An industrial construction spurt is well into its second decade**,** with little sign of slowing.
Since 2013, 57 petrochemical facilities have been built or expanded in the state, according to the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project’s Oil & Gas Watch, which tracks these activities. Over half are in majority-minority neighborhoods, the group’s data show.
Over the next five years, 18 new plants and 23 expansions are planned or are already under construction. Twelve of these projects collectively will be allowed to release the same amount of greenhouse gases as 41 natural gas-fired power plants, according to the companies’ filings with the state. Emissions estimates for the other projects were not available.
All 41 petrochemical projects will also be permitted to release 38.6 million pounds of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s highest-priority pollutants, including carcinogens and respiratory irritants, according to company filings. Places like Jefferson County, in far southeastern Texas, and Harris County, which includes Houston, could see their air quality deteriorate, putting the public at increased risk of cancer, respiratory illness, reproductive effects and other life-altering conditions. Five projects are to be sited within a five-mile radius of Channelview, an unincorporated part of Harris County plagued by extremely high levels of cancer-causing benzene and a surge in barge traffic – an underappreciated cause of air pollution – on the San Jacinto River.
Companies have announced dozens more projects, including seven near Channelview, but haven’t begun the process of obtaining permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, which will allow them to construct facilities that release pollutants into the air.
The odds are in their favor: In the past quarter-century, the TCEQ has denied less than 0.5 percent of new air permits and amendments, often required for plant expansions.
For six months, Public Health Watch has been reviewing TCEQ permits, analyzing air-quality and census data and talking to scientific experts, advocates, elected officials, industry representatives and residents of Harris and Jefferson counties to try to capture the scope and potential health consequences of the petrochemical buildout.
Here are three out of 13 scenes from that buildout. View the full interactive feature at publichealthwatch.org.
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Home of Spindletop booms again: Jefferson County
Jefferson County has a quarter-million residents and stretches from Beaumont in the northeast to McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf of Mexico. Its Spindletop field birthed Texas’s first full-scale oil boom in 1901; today it is once again an axis of industry zeal.
Just off Twin City Highway, where Nederland meets Beaumont, cranes are assembling a plant that will produce anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals used to make fertilizer and alternative fuels. According to state permits issued to owner Woodside Energy, the facility is authorized to annually add almost 80,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides, which can cause acute and chronic respiratory distress, to Nederland’s air. Nitrogen oxides also contribute to ground-level ozone pollution, the primary component in smog. Uncontained, ammonia can sear the lungs and kill in sufficient concentrations.
Four people formally objected to the facility’s expansion last summer but were unable to stop it. Officials in Jefferson County embraced the plant, granting Woodside a 10-year property-tax exemption, and a $209 million tax abatement from the Beaumont Independent School District.
About two miles to the southeast of Woodside, Energy Transfer wants to erect a large ethane cracker on the Neches River. The hulking plant will heat ethane, a component of natural gas, to extremely high temperatures, “cracking” the molecules to make ethylene, a building block for plastics. According to Energy Transfer’s permit application, the cracker would be allowed to release nearly 10 million of pounds of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which contribute to ozone and can cause effects ranging from throat and eye irritation to cancer, along with nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, another smog-forming chemical that interferes with the body’s oxygen supply.
The TCEQ told Public Health Watch in an email that the project “is protective of human health and the environment and no adverse effects are expected to occur.”
There were seven formal objectors to the ethane cracker, among them Reanna Panelo, a lifelong Nederland resident who was 23 when she wrote to the TCEQ two years ago. “It is not fair nor is it morally right to build such a monstrous and horrendous plant designed to kill the surrounding area, residents and environment, for company gain,” wrote Panelo, who said generations of her family had been tormented by cancer. The TCEQ executive director is processing Energy Transfer’s permit application, despite comments submitted in October by the Environmental Integrity Project alleging the project could violate ambient air-quality standards for particulate matter — fine particles that can exacerbate asthma, cause heart disease and contribute to cognitive decline. The Nederland Independent School District authorized a $121 million tax break for Energy Transfer.
Nine miles south of Nederland, in Port Arthur, two ethane crackers are poised for expansion and three new petrochemical facilities are planned, according to Oil & Gas Watch.
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“It’s the worst possible situation you can imagine,” said John Beard, a Port Arthur native and founder of Port Arthur Community Action Network, an environmental advocacy group. “You’re living in a toxic atmosphere that with every breath is potentially killing you.”
Air quality in Jefferson County has improved over the years — mostly a product of stricter regulation — but is still far from pristine. The American Lung Association gave the county an “F” for ozone pollution in its 2025 State of the Air Report Card.
A pungent haze occasionally envelops the county, portions of which have some of the highest cancer risks from air toxics in the nation, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Petrochemical Air Pollution Map. Indorama Ventures in Port Neches is one of the main drivers of risk — it makes the potent carcinogen ethylene oxide and releases more of the gas into the air than any other facility in the U.S., federal data show. Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric chemist and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and a team of fellow scientists recently drove an air-monitoring van through neighborhoods bordering Indorama. They measured levels of ethylene oxide “greatly exceeding what is acceptable for long-term exposure,” DeCarlo told Public Health Watch.
The county’s level of particulate matter already exceeds national air-quality standards. Jefferson County spent 18 years in violation of the standard for ground-level ozone, but improved after 2009. Now, the county’s ozone levels are creeping upward again. DeCarlo said that the new sources of pollution slated for the region could push the county over the limit again — subjecting it to tougher oversight — and worsen its fine-particle problem.
In a statement to Public Health Watch, Woodside said its ammonia plant is 97 percent complete and represents “a $2.35 billion investment in American energy, supporting approximately 2,000 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent ongoing jobs . . . Once operational [it] is expected to increase US ammonia production by more than 7 percent, strengthening domestic agriculture, food production and manufacturing, while potentially doubling US ammonia exports.”
The company said it met with four residents who filed comments with the TCEQ and appreciated “the strong community support for the project.”
Energy Transfer and Indorama Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Historic Black neighborhood threatened with extinction: Beaumont, Jefferson County
The Charlton-Pollard neighborhood, on Beaumont’s south side, was established in 1869 by freed slave and school founder Charles Pole Charlton. In the mid-20th century it was a cultural hub — home to Beaumont’s “Black Main Street” and some of the oldest Black churches and schools in the city. It was part of the Chitlin’Circuit, a group of performance venues during the Jim Crow era, which hosted James Brown, Ray Charles and other luminaries.
Segregation, disinvestment and expanding industrial operations — railways, an international seaport and a petrochemical complex — gradually eroded Charlton-Pollard’s rich culture and institutions. Stores, schools and a hospital have closed, and now the buffer between the north end of the neighborhood and advancing industrial development is thinning.
The Port of Beaumont has acquired 78 parcels in Charlton-Pollard’s sparsely populated northeastern corner since 2016, property records show. This year it paved a lot the size of 18 football fields in their place, where it plans to store cargo, including building materials for new and expanding petrochemical plants. The lot lies across the street from the 97-year-old Starlight Missionary Baptist Church and two blocks from Charlton-Pollard Elementary School.
“The port recognizes the deep history of Charlton-Pollard and remains committed to operating responsibly and respectfully within that framework,” said Chris Fisher, the port’s director and CEO. He said he and his team have been transparent with the Charlton-Pollard Neighborhood Association, only developing in a specially zoned “transitional area” in the northeastern corner. In the 1990s and early 2000s, some residents asked the port to buy their properties, Fisher said. Later, after plans for the paved lot were solidified, the port began offering property owners 50 percent to 100 percent above appraised value and, in some cases, $15,000 relocation allowances, he said.
“We kind of made sure that everybody that we dealt with was better off than before we did anything,” Fisher said. The port condemned properties when owners couldn’t be located or had unpaid taxes, he said.
The neighborhood association’s president, Chris Jones, a 45-year-old former Beaumont mayoral candidate, said the port’s acquisitions are “the continuation of a long pattern. One where Black neighborhoods were first under-documented, then under-invested, and ultimately treated as expendable in the path of industry.”
When residents sold their properties, they “were navigating declining property values, loss of services, and the clear signal that the area was being prioritized for industrial use,” Jones said. “In that context, selling is often less about choice and more about survival.”
He worries that the removal of trees and the addition of pavement will intensify heat and worsen noise pollution for those left in the neighborhood. Rail traffic supporting local industry has already increased, he said, and his status as an Army veteran makes him “vexed at the sound of a horn.” Jones and some allies hope to win historical designations for several churches in Charlton-Pollard to stave off further industrial encroachment.
Environmental hazards are not new to Charlton-Pollard. A refinery now owned by Exxon Mobil was built less than a mile away in 1903. Almost a century later, residents filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, accusing the TCEQ of allowing the company to pollute above safe levels, increase emissions without public input and exceed permitted limits without penalty. The case was settled in 2017 after the TCEQ agreed to install an air monitor near the site and hold two public meetings. Charlton-Pollard still lies within the 99th percentile nationwide for cancer risk from air pollution, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
In addition to the refinery, Exxon Mobil now operates a chemical plant, a polyethylene plant and a lubricant plant within the complex; last year the company said it plans to build a chemical-recycling facility there as well. Six more petrochemical projects are planned by other companies within five miles of Charlton-Pollard.
In short, anyone who hasn’t been bought out by the portmay breathe increasingly dirty air. Jefferson County is already violating the EPA’s standard for particulate matter, and diesel-burning trains and maritime vessels accommodating the industry expansion are large emitters of fine particles, as well as smog-forming nitrogen oxides.
Most infuriating, Jones said, is the idea that industrial development in Jefferson County is being underwritten in part by tax breaks even as Beaumont’s basic infrastructure — roads, sewage treatment — crumbles. Not long ago, he said, he saw “fecal waste” collecting in the Irving Avenue underpass. “The shit just rolled onto the street.” (Voters approved a $264 million bond package in November to improve streets and drainage)
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Fine particles, ozone and the body
In addition to spewing carcinogens like benzene and 1,3-butadiene, petrochemical plants release large amounts of “criteria pollutants” — the six common airborne substances the EPA regulates most closely. Regions across the country struggle to meet federal air-quality standards for two of these in particular: ground-level ozone and particulate matter.
Dr. John Balmes, a professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, is a physician advisor to both the EPA and the California Air Resources Board, which regulates air quality in a state that’s had serious ozone and particulate-matter problems for years. He’s researched the effects of both pollutants on the body and helped craft EPA standards for them. Balmes said plant emissions will represent only a portion of particulate and ozone pollution from the petrochemical expansion in Texas. Transportation — diesel trucks, trains and ships — will add to the burden, he said. (Railyards and ports are often located in low-income and minority neighborhoods, like Charlton-Pollard.)
Particulate matter and ozone can wreak havoc on the body, Balmes said.
Fine particles, known as PM2.5, are about 20 times smaller than a human hair. When they’re inhaled, they don’t break down, and the body’s immune cells remain in a heightened state of response. Their ability to fight off infection is weakened.
Fine particles often make their way into the bloodstream and trigger cardiovascular problems, such as heart attacks and congestive heart failure. They can also accumulate in the brain, contributing to cognitive decline and strokes.
A 2023 analysis conducted for Public Health Watch by two researchers estimated that 8,405 Texans died from fine-particle pollution in 2016. Exposure to the particles also led to thousands of new cases of Alzheimer’s, asthma and strokes, the researchers found.
Last year, an EPA advisory board, on which Balmes served, recommended tightening the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for PM2.5. The EPA said the new standard would prevent 4,500 premature deaths and yield $46 billion in net health benefits over more than a decade. According to federal data, 16 Texas counties, including Jefferson, violate the new standard, which the Trump administration has vowed to abandon**.**
Environmental groups and regulators have been fighting ozone pollution for more than 70 years.
Ozone gas is formed when two pollutants — VOCs and nitrogen oxides — are released from stacks and tailpipes and react in the presence of sunlight. When ozone enters the body, it chemically burns the respiratory system, leading to inflammation. It’s so caustic that it can break down synthetic rubber. Acute exposure can worsen asthma; chronic, high-level exposure can cause permanent lung damage.
The eight-county Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area, with roughly 7.2 million people, has been under continual threat from ozone for two decades. It spent over half of that time classified as being in “serious” or “severe” violation of the EPA’s eight-hour standards. Still, 35 petrochemical projects in the region have been announced or permitted by the TCEQ.
“Adding 35 petrochemical plants to a region that is already in serious ozone [violation] is the wrong way to go in terms of public health,” Balmes said.
Explore all 13 scenes from Texas’s petrochemical expansion at publichealthwatch.org.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas clears the way for petrochemical expansion as experts warn of health risks on Jan 7, 2026.
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Deusdedit RuhangariyoICT
Around the world: Honoring Māori leadership through collective memory and service; Cree fashion designers stitch ancestry into modern expression; Nicaragua forest falls as Indigenous lands are breached; Tamworth Festival amplifies Aboriginal voices; and Nepal Indigenous communities resist development without consent.
NEW ZEALAND: Honoring Māori leadership
The New Year Honours list in New Zealand has brought renewed attention to Māori leadership, language preservation, and community service, recognizing individuals whose work has strengthened not only institutions, but the cultural and moral fabric of the nation itself, RNZ News reported on Jan. 2.
The honors span multiple levels of the New Zealand Order of Merit and the King’s Service awards, reflecting decades of commitment across education, governance, health, arts, conservation and cultural revitalization.
Minister for Māori Development and Māori Crown Relations Tama Potaka described the recipients as exemplars of intergenerational service — people whose achievements are inseparable from the whānau, hapū, and iwi that sustained them. He emphasized that while honors are conferred upon individuals, their impact is collective. Behind every recognized leader stands a network of families, mentors, elders and communities whose quiet labor makes visible success possible.
Among the most significant recognitions was the appointment of Professor Thomas Charles Roa as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori language and education.
A professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato, Roa has been a central figure in the revitalization of Māori for more than five decades. As a founding contributor to Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori in the 1970s, his work helped shift Māori language from the margins toward national consciousness.
Roa himself rejected the idea of singular achievement, noting that his journey rests on the teachings and sacrifices of elders who came before him. He spoke of standing “on the shoulders of giants,” naming respected Māori leaders and scholars whose influence shaped his path, according to RNZ News. His remarks echoed with a recurring theme throughout the honours: recognition as remembrance, not elevation.
The list also acknowledged Māori excellence across diverse fields. Leaders in business, technology, governance, women’s health, disability advocacy, conservation, education and the arts were honored for weaving cultural values into modern institutions. From rugby to environmental stewardship, from visual arts to governance reform, the recipients’ work demonstrates how Indigenous knowledge systems continue to guide contemporary leadership.
Several recipients were recognized for work supporting vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities, blind and low-vision communities, and those historically excluded from decision-making. Others were honored for advancing Māori participation in education and governance, reinforcing cultural continuity while navigating modern challenges.
What distinguished this year’s honors was not merely the breadth of contributions, but the clarity of a shared ethic: service grounded in responsibility to future generations. As Potaka noted, the work of today’s leaders is ultimately measured by what is preserved, taught, and passed on to mokopuna yet unborn.
In this sense, the new year honors function less as a ceremonial endpoint and more as a public affirmation of values — language as survival, leadership as stewardship, and recognition as a collective act of memory.
CANADA: Cree fashion designers stitch ancestry into modern expression
For two Cree fashion designers in Canada, creativity is not a departure from tradition, but a continuation of it — stitched together through memory, resilience and family inheritance. Their journeys into fashion reveal how Indigenous identity, when nurtured rather than suppressed, can evolve into powerful contemporary expression, CBC News reported on Jan. 2.
Brandon Morin Fox, a Two-Spirit emerging designer from Piapot First Nation, grew up in Regina’s North Central neighborhood in a household shaped by music, artistry and loss. After losing both parents in his early teens, Morin Fox remained anchored by the creative encouragement they instilled in him. His father, a drummer and singer, affirmed individuality as strength — a foundation that later allowed Morin Fox to pursue fashion, not as hobby but as vocation.
At age 23, he enrolled in Toronto Metropolitan University’s fashion design program, drawn by its Indigenous fashion community and mentors who demonstrated that Indigenous aesthetics belong in high-fashion spaces. Morin Fox describes his work as a dialogue between tradition and modernity, blending ancestral adornment with contemporary luxury. His designs reject the idea that Indigenous fashion must be confined to the past, instead asserting its relevance in global creative economies.
Recognition followed sooner than expected. His garments caught the attention of international musicians and creatives who trusted his vision without demanding extensive credentials. For Morin Fox, that trust represented something deeper than professional validation — it affirmed that Indigenous artistry carries authority on its own terms.
Alongside him, another Cree designer, Moody, followed a different but equally intentional path. Leaving his home community seven years ago, he became the first among his siblings to do so, determined to turn spoken dreams into lived reality. While working as a youth support worker in Winnipeg, he was invited to share cultural teachings — a moment that catalyzed his journey into textile work.
With basic skills learned from his grandmother and online tutorials, Moody taught himself sewing. His first ribbon skirt took four hours; today, it takes one. Each piece incorporates medicine colors representing the seasons, embedding cultural meaning into wearable form. For Moody, fashion is not only aesthetic — it is ceremonial, educational and relational.
As a Cree man in a field where such representation remains rare, Moody embraces learning as responsibility. He views design as a skill meant to circulate within Indigenous communities, not be hoarded. His work bridges generations, translating teachings from elders into garments that move through contemporary life.
Together, these designers illustrate how Indigenous fashion operates as cultural infrastructure. It carries grief and healing, memory and adaptation. Their work challenges narrow definitions of success, proving that creative careers rooted in ancestry can flourish without abandoning community.
In their hands, fashion becomes language — one that speaks of survival, continuity and the quiet power of self-determination.
NICARAGUA: Forest falls as Indigenous lands are breached
Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected rainforest in Central America, is undergoing an accelerating ecological and human crisis. Spanning approximately 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 square miles) along the Honduran border, Bosawás is home to extraordinary biodiversity and to the Miskito and Mayanga Indigenous peoples, whose lives and identities are inseparable from the forest. Despite its UNESCO designation, more than 30 percent of Bosawás’s primary forest has disappeared since 2000, Mongabay reported on Dec. 31.
Satellite data reveal that 2024 marked a devastating turning point. Roughly 10 percent of the reserve’s total land area was cleared in a single year, with fire accounting for over a third of the destruction — a 700 percent increase from the previous year. Preliminary data from 2025 indicate that deforestation continues, advancing deeper into old-growth rainforest.
Indigenous advocates identify cattle ranching as a primary driver. Ranchers clear vast tracts of forest to feed Nicaragua’s beef industry, displacing wildlife and severing Indigenous communities’ access to hunting grounds, fishing waters, and clean drinking sources. Gold mining poses an additional threat, with more than two-thirds of the reserve overlapping with metallic mining concessions.
The consequences extend beyond environmental loss. Indigenous residents report escalating violence, intimidation and displacement as outsiders encroach upon their territories. Conservation initiatives have collapsed under the weight of human rights violations, including the cancellation of a major climate-funded forest protection project in 2024.
For Indigenous communities, the forest is not a resource but a relative — a living system that provides sustenance, protection and meaning. Leaders describe Bosawás as Mother Earth herself, underscoring that her destruction constitutes cultural erasure as much as ecological harm.
An international investigation released in late 2025 revealed that beef produced through illegal deforestation — termed “conflict beef” — continues to enter global supply chains, mixed with legally produced exports. Environmental organizations have urged importing countries and retailers to enforce strict traceability and sourcing policies, warning that consumer markets are indirectly financing deforestation and human rights abuses.
Bosawás now stands as a test case for global environmental accountability. Its destruction exposes the limits of paper protections without enforcement, and the dangers of treating Indigenous territories as expendable zones of extraction. What is lost here cannot be replaced: endemic species, irreplaceable carbon stores, and cultures that have safeguarded these forests for generations.
AUSTRALIA: Tamworth Festival amplifies Aboriginal voices
The Tamworth Country Music Festival, one of Australia’s most prominent music events, is once again hosting the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase — a First Nations-led program dedicated to elevating Indigenous artists, stories and cultural expression, National Indigenous Times reported on Jan. 2.
Fourteen Indigenous performers have been announced for the 2026 showcase, which runs from Jan. 16 to 25 and forms a vibrant counterpoint to the festival’s mainstream programming.
Backed by a three-year sponsorship package from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, the showcase reflects a long-term commitment to Indigenous cultural infrastructure rather than symbolic inclusion. The council has supported the event since 2016, providing staging, lighting and organizational resources that allow Aboriginal artists to perform on their own terms.
The lineup spans generations and nations, featuring respected headliners alongside emerging voices. Artists from Gomeroi, Arrernte, Wiradjuri, Yamatji, Murrawarri, Dharug, Yorta Yorta, Kalkadoon, Kuku-Yalanji, Ngarrindjeri and other nations will share the stage, creating a convergence of musical traditions, languages and lived histories.
For many performers, Tamworth is more than a venue — it is a site of memory. Nathan Lamont recalls first performing at the festival as a child and describes his return as a continuation of a lifelong journey. Others, like Aimee Hannan and Kyla-Belle Roberts, speak of the showcase as a festival highlight, a space where Aboriginal excellence is centered rather than peripheral.
The program also acknowledges the networks that sustain Indigenous talent. Alongside the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, sponsors include Aboriginal Employment Strategy – Tamworth, Tamworth Aboriginal Medical Service, and the Aboriginal Regional Arts Alliance NSW, all contributing to the Buddy Knox Talent Contest and broader cultural development.
Importantly, the showcase is not framed as a cultural add-on but as an integral component of Australia’s contemporary music landscape. It affirms that Aboriginal music is not confined to heritage categories — it is evolving, experimental and deeply relevant.
By bringing artists together during a nationally significant festival, the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase creates a space where Indigenous voices are not merely heard but amplified. It invites audiences to engage with Aboriginal culture as living practice — one that honors the past while shaping the future.
NEPAL: Indigenous communities resist development without consent
Throughout 2025, Indigenous peoples and local communities in Nepal found themselves at the center of escalating conflicts over development projects that threatened land, livelihoods and sacred ecosystems, Mongabay reported on Dec. 29.
From hydropower dams and cable cars to mining concessions, infrastructure expansion increasingly collided with Indigenous rights — particularly the right to free, prior and informed consent.
Multiple legal challenges underscored this tension. Indigenous Bhote-Lhomi Singsa communities refiled petitions against a hydropower project accused of submitting flawed environmental impact assessments while continuing construction. Communities reported tree felling far exceeding approved limits and demanded project cancellation.
In Nepal’s far west, Indigenous and local residents resisted what was promoted as the country’s largest iron mining project. Approved without community consent, the operation threatened rivers, forests, farmlands and ancestral territories. Despite agreements to halt progress, documents showed mining approvals advancing over hundreds of hectares.
Sacred landscapes were also targeted. The Pathibhara cable car project, planned within a forest revered by the Yakthung (Limbu) community, drew widespread opposition after assessments failed to document key species. Community estimates suggested tens of thousands of trees were cut. Protests escalated into clashes, prompting the Supreme Court to order an immediate halt.
Political instability compounded these struggles. Before being ousted, Nepal’s previous government granted national priority status to several controversial cable car projects, including one within a protected conservation area. Indigenous leaders and conservationists warned that these decisions bypassed judicial safeguards and community consultation.
Development banks came under scrutiny as well. The Tanahu Hydropower project, financed by international institutions, generated a disproportionate number of complaints related to environmental damage, land rights violations, and inadequate compensation. Critics argued that lenders failed to exercise due diligence, leaving communities exposed.
Amid these conflicts, one story offered cautious hope. A reforestation initiative integrating Indigenous ecological knowledge demonstrated measurable success. Communities planted over 130,000 native trees across multiple sites, and satellite imagery later confirmed significant vegetation recovery — evidence that development aligned with local knowledge can succeed.
Nepal’s experience in 2025 revealed a stark truth: development imposed without consent fractures trust and destabilizes both ecosystems and societies. Where Indigenous knowledge was ignored, conflict followed. Where it was respected, regeneration occurred.
My final thoughts
Across five continents, these stories converge on a single, urgent lesson: Indigenous peoples are not resisting progress — they are resisting erasure. Whether through honors lists, fashion studios, rainforests, music festivals, or courtrooms, the struggle is fundamentally about who defines value, whose knowledge counts, and what kind of future is being built.
In New Zealand, recognition of Māori leadership affirms that cultural continuity is not nostalgia; it is national strength. In Canada, Cree designers demonstrate that creativity rooted in ancestry can shape global aesthetics without surrendering meaning. In Nicaragua, the destruction of Bosawás exposes the catastrophic cost of ignoring Indigenous stewardship in the name of export economies.
In Australia, the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase proves that when Indigenous culture is resourced rather than tokenized, it flourishes. In Nepal, legal battles and protests reveal the consequences of development divorced from consent — and the promise of alternatives grounded in local knowledge.
What links these stories is not geography, but ethics. Indigenous communities consistently articulate a relational worldview: land as living system, leadership as service, creativity as inheritance, and progress as responsibility to future generations. Where institutions listen, resilience grows. Where they do not, conflict escalates.
This is not a cultural issue alone — it is a governance issue, an environmental issue, and a moral issue. Global systems continue to extract from Indigenous lands, knowledge, and labor while offering recognition, protection, or consent as afterthoughts. The result is predictable: biodiversity collapse, social unrest, and broken trust.
Yet these stories also show pathways forward. Honor can be collective rather than symbolic. Fashion can carry memory without fossilizing it. Conservation can succeed when Indigenous peoples lead. Development can regenerate rather than dispossess.
The question facing governments, corporations, and global institutions is no longer whether Indigenous voices matter. That has been answered repeatedly. The real question is whether power is willing to change its behavior accordingly.
History will remember not only who spoke, but who listened — and who refused to.
The post GLOBAL INDIGENOUS: New Zealand honors Māori for leadership, preserving culture appeared first on ICT.
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David Bauder
Associated Press
Leaders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private agency that has steered federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country, voted Monday to dissolve the organization that was created in 1967.
CPB had been winding down since Congress acted last summer to defund its operations at the encouragement of President Donald Trump. Its board of directors chose Monday to shutter CPB completely instead of keeping it in existence as a shell.
“CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks,” said Patricia Harrison, the organization’s president and CEO.
Many Republicans have long accused public broadcasting, particularly its news programming, of being biased toward liberals but it wasn’t until the second Trump administration —- with full GOP control of Congress — that those criticisms were turned into action.
Ruby Calvert, head of CPB’s board of directors, said the federal defunding of public media has been devastating.
“Even at this moment, I am convinced that public media will survive, and that a new Congress will address public media’s role in our country because it is critical to our children’s education, our history, culture and democracy to do so,” Calvert said.
CPB said it was financially supporting the American Archive of Public Broadcasting in its effort to preserve historic content, and is working with the University of Maryland to maintain its own records.
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This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.
Makenzie Huber
South Dakota Searchlight
For the fourth year in a row, Native American children made up more than 70 percent of children in the South Dakota foster care system at the end of the state’s fiscal year.
That’s six times higher than Indigenous children’s representation in the state’s population. White children, by comparison, make up 70 percent of the state’s population and 23 percent of the state’s foster care population.
South Dakota officials have known Native American children are overrepresented in the foster care system for nearly half a century. Children who are removed from their homes and placed in foster care are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders, to be involved in the criminal justice systemor homeless, and to have their own children removed from their care, studies indicate.
The state Department of Social Services recently released its annual Child Protection Services report, detailing the number of children in foster care, how they’re cared for and where they’re discharged.
Of the state’s 1,709 foster care children at the end of fiscal year 2025, according to the department, 1,201 were Native American.
State works to increase kinship care numbers
About 32 percent of children, regardless of their race, were placed in kinship care with relatives or close family friends, while 86 percent were placed in a “family setting” with a foster family. Kinship care falls within family settings.
Kinship care is up from 30 percent the year before, when the state first began releasing the data point.
The number of registered foster homes in the state for the 2025 fiscal year was 793 — the fewest since 2020. Of those homes, 93 — or nearly 12 percent — were Native American, up from 11 percent the prior year.
When children have to be removed from their homes, prioritizing kinship care (placing them with a relative or close family friend) can improve academic, behavioral and mental health outcomes, and allow the child to stay within their culture and community, according to Child Trends, a research organization focused on child welfare.
Department of Social Services Secretary Matt Althoff told South Dakota Searchlight in an emailed statement that kinship care is “a priority.” The department implemented new licensed kinship foster home standards in June, meant to remove barriers that kept potential kinship families from registering with the state.
“This permits kinship families to become licensed and receive financial support more quickly to meet the children’s needs,” Althoff said.
At-home intervention decreases by 13 percent
At-home intervention, without a child’s removal or the court’s involvement, decreased by 95 children this year.
Just under 500 children received at-home intervention services through the state Child Protection Services, including parental training and home management, according to a Searchlight data request answered by the department.
Interventions can include a “safety plan,” which is a strategy created by a social worker to address safety concerns of at-risk families while a case is being investigated, and a “present danger plan,” which involves families voluntarily letting a child live with another caregiver or having a person accused of maltreatment leave the home.
Another 122 children received other types of at-home interventions, such as a referral to counseling or other assistance, without further Child Protection Services involvement.
More children aging out of foster care system
Of the 984 children who left the child welfare system during the 2025 fiscal year:
- 423 were reunited with their families.
- 254 were adopted (54 percent by a foster parent and 36 percent by a relative).
- 72 were transferred to a tribal program.
- 108 were placed into a formal guardianship agreement.
- 34 were placed with a relative without guardianship or kinship licensure.
- Five were transferred to the Department of Corrections or another agency.
Eighty-five children aged out of the system during fiscal year 2025, up by 20 from fiscal year 2024.
The state reported that 58 percent of children in the child welfare system are reunited with their families within a year — a gradual decrease each year from a 75 percent reunification rate in fiscal year 2020, the oldest data available on the department website.
Althoff said the department tracks reunification data to “ensure that efforts remain focused on child well-being and family stability.” He added that many factors influence reunification timelines.
“These can include the willingness on the part of the birth parents to conform to behavioral changes described by the court, the complexity of family circumstances, availability of services, court scheduling, and the time needed to ensure a safe and stable environment for the child,” Althoff said.
Two children ran away, both cases reported as 15-year-old females who were found, and one child died in state care. The child was a 15-year-old male who died “unrelated to child abuse and neglect,” according to the department. The department did not disclose the cause of death.
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West Papua Says Indigenous Communities Can Reject Palm Oil Projects on Customary Lands
(icmagazine.org)
Last Updated on January 6, 2026 The West Papua provincial government reaffirmed Monday that Indigenous communities with customary land rights have the legal authority to approve or reject any expansion of palm oil plantations in their forests, a policy change officials and local advocates say aims to safeguard both community rights and the region’s sensitive […]
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Jake Goldstein-Street*Washington State Standard*
Washington state troopers stop and search drivers of color more often than white Washingtonians, new data shows.
Washington State Patrol’s total traffic stops statewide dropped slightly in 2024, but remained well ahead of 2022 figures. Infractions issued climbed significantly in that period. The findings come as police accountability advocates have pressed state lawmakers unsuccessfully for new restrictions on when police in Washington can pull drivers over.
“Traffic stops really remain one of the most common forms of police-civilian contact, and it’s also one of the riskiest,” said Jazmyn Clark, the Smart Justice policy program director at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington chapter. “For many people of color, a traffic stop is often the most dangerous moment of police interaction.”
Black and Hispanic drivers were much more likely to be stopped last year than white drivers, according to state patrol data presented to lawmakers this month, with the rate of stops for Black drivers nearly double the rate for white motorists.
Black drivers were pulled over 154.6 times per 1,000; Hispanic drivers 102.8 per 1,000; and white drivers 82.5 per 1,000, according to the data. Two years ago, those numbers were 146.7, 89.3 and 73.2, respectively.
Vancouver police killed Nickeia Hunter’s brother, Carlos, during a traffic stop in 2019. Hunter, an advocate from the Coalition for Police Accountability, called the state patrol data “beyond troublesome.”
Speaking to the Joint Transportation Committee this month, state patrol Capt. Deion Glover told lawmakers that the agency “remains committed to fair, unbiased and professional policing statewide. That’s our goal.”
Analyzing traffic stop data from 2015 to 2019, a Washington State University study in 2021 found “no evidence of systemic bias in the decision to stop” drivers.
Disparities with searches, too
Disparities carry over to searches, as well. While Native Americans are less likely to be stopped, they are much more likely to be searched by troopers.
Native Americans were four times more likely than whites to be subjected to a high-discretion search in 2024. These searches refer to when troopers use their judgment to search a person or their car while remaining within constitutional bounds. They’re rare. Last year, there were only 320 statewide, but that’s up from 246 two years prior. About half of them over the past three years turned up contraband, Glover said.
“We really have to have some reasonable suspicion or high level of thought that this person is involved in some type of criminal activity,” Glover said.
Black and Hispanic drivers were also more likely to be searched than their white counterparts, but not to the same degree as Native Americans.
The use of low-discretion searches, used in the case of arrest warrants, vehicle impounds and arrests, also indicated disparities. Black drivers were nearly four times as likely as white drivers last year to face these types of searches, which are also on the rise, with more than 9,000 in 2024.
Push for new restrictions falters
This racial data isn’t perfect, as troopers track the demographics of people they pull over based on their own perception, Glover noted. He said the agency recognizes it has work to do.
“Those are definitely some numbers that we need to work on and dig into and learn why are these disparities happening,” Glover said.
For years, police accountability advocates have pushed legislation to limit when police can stop motorists. Under the proposed Traffic Safety for All Act, law enforcement in Washington would have been barred from stopping drivers solely for nonmoving violations, like expired tabs or a broken headlight, that advocates say disproportionately affect people of color.
Clark, with the ACLU, said “there is likely no other reform that would be more effective” at reducing racial disparities in traffic stops.
“The biggest driver of disparities is what officers are legally allowed to stop for, and when the law allows for broad discretion, bias is going to show up,” Clark said.
But the measure hasn’t made progress in the Legislature. Police officials have opposed the idea amid a dramatic increase in traffic deaths on Washington’s roads. And supporters say they are setting the idea aside for 2026.
Training and other efforts
In the wake of mass racial justice protests in 2020, state lawmakers passed a suite of police accountability measures.
More recently, they’ve shied away from the issue, especially after their move to restrict when police can pursue drivers drew such staunch pushback they had to roll the law back.
Glover noted cadets and troopers are required to take ethics and bias training. The state patrol has also recently done a four-hour “tribal liaison training” on working with tribal governments.
“This training supports better decision making by our troopers and helps reduce disparities amongst traffic stops and other issues as they’re out there working,” Glover told lawmakers.
The agency also has outreach programs to strengthen relationships with the state’s Latino and Indigenous communities.
In 2021, consultants found the state patrol had failed to diversify its ranks, with one key reason being that the department’s psychologist was failing more job candidates of color than white applicants. Glover said “95 percent” of the recommendations from that report have been implemented.
A proviso in the state’s transportation budget passed earlier this year required the state patrol to report the data to the Legislature in hopes of finding ways to address the longstanding demographic disparities.
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Juan Karita
Associated Press
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Before setting out for the wide, white mountain, Ana Lia González Maguiña took stock of her gear: A chunky sweater to guard against the chill. A harness and climbing rope to scale the 6,000-meter summit of one of Bolivia’s tallest mountains. Aviator glasses to protect from the bright highland sun.
And most crucially, a voluminous, hot-pink skirt.
The bell skirt with layered petticoats — known as the “pollera” (pronounced po-YEH-rah) — is the traditional dress of Indigenous women in Bolivia’s highlands. Imposed centuries ago by Spanish colonizers, the old-fashioned pollera has long since been restyled with local, richly patterned fabrics and reclaimed as a source of pride and badge of identity here in the region’s only Indigenous-majority country.
Rather than seeing the unwieldy skirt as a hindrance to physically demanding work in male-dominated fields, Andean Indigenous women, called “cholitas,” insist that their unwillingness to conform with contemporary style comes at no cost to their comfort or capabilities.
“Our sport is demanding, it’s super tough. So doing it in pollera represents that strength, it’s about valuing our roots,” said González Maguiña, 40, a professional mountain climber standing before the snow-covered Huayna Potosi peak, just north of La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital. “It’s not for show.”
Skirt-clad miners, skaters, climbers, soccer players and wrestlers across Bolivia echoed that sentiment in interviews, portraying their adoption of polleras for all professional and physical purposes as an act of empowerment.
“We, women in polleras, want to keep moving forward,” said Macaria Alejandro, a 48-year-old miner in Bolivia’s western state of Oruro, her pollera smeared with the dirt and dust of a day toiling underground. “I work like this and wear this for my children.”
But many also described the current moment as one of uncertainty for pollera-wearing women in Bolivia under the country’s first conservative government in nearly two decades.
Center-right President Rodrigo Paz entered office last month as Bolivia’s economy burned, ending a long era of governance shaped by the charismatic Evo Morales (2006-2019), Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who prioritized Indigenous and rural populations in a country that had been run for centuries by a largely white elite.
Through a new constitution, Morales changed the nation’s name from the Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia and adopted the Indigenous symbol of the wiphala — a checkerboard of bright colors — as an emblem equivalent to the national flag. For the first time, pollera-wearing ministers and officials walked the halls of power.
But disillusionment with Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party grew, especially under his erstwhile ally ex-President Luis Arce, who was arrested earlier this month on allegations that he siphoned off cash from a state fund meant to support Indigenous communities.
Some cholitas now wonder how far that change will go and fear it could extend to their hard-won rights despite Paz’s promises to the contrary.
They describe feeling neglected by a government with no Indigenous members. They worry about the implications of the army last month removing Indigenous symbols from its logo and the government deciding to stop flying the wiphala from the presidential palace, as was long the tradition.
“I feel like the government won’t take us into account,” said Alejandro, the miner. “We needed a change. The economy must get better. But it’s sad to see there are no powerful people wearing polleras. I see it as discrimination.”
But González Maguiña said she still had hope, given how far Indigenous women had come.
“We already have the strength and everything that comes with it,” she said. “We’re certainly going to knock on the doors of this new government.”
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