Center for World Indigenous Studies

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the modern era may be recognized when it becomes commonly known that ancient knowledge possessed by Fourth World nations can solve modern problems like global warming. As scientists are beginning to realize, forest practices and jungle management developed more than 2000 years ago in the jungles of Brazil... more →

The Flemish are not sure they want to be in the same independent country–Belgium–with the Walloons.  After centuries of living together, these two peoples may decide to go on their own. Like the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 creating the two separate states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic the two main nations... more →

With the advent of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the world indigenous resurgence will require the linking of national, regional, and local movement resources through a process of dialogue and integration. The involvement of moral authorities and organizations will help to assure the proper movement emphasis on moral sanction central to... more →

Shortly before Spanish, Dutch and English sponsored ships arrived on the western hemisphere’s shores more than five hundred years ago, infectious disease rubbed out between 50% and 95% of the human inhabitants. Jerad Diamond’s sweeping effort to explain (in his book Guns, Germs and Steel) how it was possible for a few conquistadors to subdue... more →

It is our observation at the Center that there are from 6,000 to 7,000 nations that speak original languages and generally occupy territories in virtually every continent in the world. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) claims that indigenous peoples come from some 70 countries and have a combined population of some 370... more →