International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
Every year, August 9 is commemorated as the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
Every year there is a theme, which lends itself to the direction the UN’s plan to continue to support the world’s indigenous populations.
This year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is devoted to the right to education.
“The right of indigenous peoples to education is protected by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which in Article 14 states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.”
Every year, the commemorations hope to spotlight the issues that the world’s indigenous populations face and bring attention to the present need to conserve the culture of these dwindling populations.
All images are from REUTERS.
A Mzabi girl wearing traditional jewellery poses in the eastern city of Ghardaia, 600 km (373 miles) from Algiers, in this November 7, 2006 picture.
Members of the Dongria Kondh tribe gather on top of the Niyamgiri mountain, which they worship as their living god, to protest against plans by Vedanta Resources to mine bauxite from that mountain, near Lanjigarh in India’s Orissa state February 21, 2010.
A spiritual leader (R) of the Huni Kui Indian tribe performs a ceremony for a sacred samauma (silk-cotton) tree outside the village of Novo Segredo along the Envira river in Brazil’s northwestern Acre state, March 9, 2014.
An Andean man and a woman, depicting Inca’s legendary characters Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, pose for a portrait in a Uros island at Lake Titicaca before a re-enactment in Puno November 5, 2014.
Pokot girls wearing beads and with their faces painted, walk towards a secluded place slightly more than a week prior to an initiation ceremony marking their passing over into womanhood, about 80 km (50 miles) from the town of Marigat in Baringo County November 25, 2014.
Maasai morans sing traditional songs and jump before the Maasai Olympics 2014 at the Sidai Oleng wildlife sanctuary at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro near the Kenya-Tanzania border in Kajiado December 13, 2014.
An indigenous child from Kayapo tribe attends first indigenous assembly for the “Rio +20” Conference at Kari-Oca village in Rio de Janeiro June 14, 2012.
Aboriginal peformer Les Saxby plays a traditional aboriginal musical
instrument known as a didgeridoo on the shores of Sydney’s Botany Bay
April 29, 2002 during the Meeting of Two Cultures ceremony.
An ethnic Tajik family plays traditional musical instruments as they pose for a video during their family gathering near Karakul Lake at the foot of Muztag Ata, at Pamirs in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, July 23, 2012.
A First Nations holds a smudge stick while walking to honour residential school survivors in Vancouver, British Columbia June 11, 2015.
Native Brazilians sing and dance, during the Indigenous Youth Games of Pataxos nation in Santa Cruz de Cabralia, Bahia state, Brazil, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Roosevelt Cassio