UNESCO appoints Indigenous co-chairs to protect languages and knowledge amid climate crisis

For more than 30 years, the United Nations has helped support research positions in universities to go into the most urgent issues facing humanity: climate change, sustainable development, peace, and human rights.

Nearly 1,000 UNESCO Chair positions were created in universities in 120 countries. But only a handful of them – less than 10 – was explicitly allocated to the issues facing the indigenous peoples.

Now, two researchers of the indigenous people from Canada and India have been used to head a new role dedicated to enhancing the rights of the indigenous population by enhancing data sovereignty, losing language loss, and improving research practices. Emmy Band, a member of Nisga’a result in British Columbia, and Sonjaria Mins of the tribal peoples of Uraun in India.

The original knowledge has always suffered from colonial rule, and now, the original languages ​​and the ways of life are increasingly at risk due to climate change. More than half of the 7000 languages ​​in the world go on the right track of extinction, an end that the climate crisis can accelerate. The high sea level, storms, and increased heat compels the indigenous peoples to leave their homelands and make it difficult for societies to preserve traditional languages, lifestyles and cultural practices. These extremist air events increase the current health risks of elders and other knowledge holders, and some of them in their societies to be the original language speakers. At the same time, traditional environmental knowledge, which is often captured within the original languages, is a climate solution.

“When we look at the original knowledge systems, everything is connected,” said Parent. “The language is connected to the earth, the earth is linked to the language, and it is linked to thinking, and it is linked to health. It is linked to how we learned. Thus, when we start to destroy one, we harm everything.”

Grist spoke with parents about the original knowledge systems, its relationship to climate change, and what you hope will be able to achieve it in this new role.

This interview was released for length and clarity.

Q: One of your goals is to help stop the loss of original languages, which disappear quickly. How to distinguish what is at stake?

A. The language is everything. Language learned how to think, how to know and how to communicate with our lands and with all living organisms and teach us our relationships with everything. If the languages ​​continue, we lose a lot of knowledge, a lot of values ​​and ways to live within the world can support us in ways that all humanity can survive. I think we are really critical and we need to do everything we can. If we do not have our languages, they will not be able to teach us how to live well in the lands and places where we currently reside.

For example, in my nation, we have five percent of the loudspeakers fluently. Certainly, we are witnessing a reformulation from the original languages ​​around the world. But it is also an urgent priority for us to continue to restore and revitalize it. This is something that we really want to continue in terms of our work that supports goals The United Nations Native Language Contract And continue to work with the largest possible number of language heroes, language teachers and teachers.

Q: Can you share more about the relationship between the original languages, the land and the climate?

A. In the teachings of Nisg̱a’a – which is considered the “complete life method” – our seasonal calendar is more than one way to determine time, a linguistic governance framework. Each month carries a ground education that directs how we are linked to the land, water and each other. For example, X̱maay A month of “berries”, and align with July – indicates the time the wild salmon and other plants ripen. But this is not only about harvesting. It is a ground education that also represents the return of salmon. The color of salmonbury is a braid to prepare the net, clean our jars, and make smoke ready. These signs are remembered and transmitted through the language, linking live environmental courses with our collective responsibilities.

This is why the original languages ​​are inseparable from the ground. One word like X̱maay It contains generations of climatic knowledge, laws and cultural practices. When we revitalize our languages, we not only maintain communication, we retrieve the relationships that you practice across generations.

When the languages ​​of the indigenous population are lost, these signals between generations – the original “climate science” – are also at risk of fading. But when we respect and support and support the original knowledge systems, we restore these living relationships and teachings that support not only our lives but the renewal of the motherland.

Q: What should happen to prevent the extinguishing of the original languages?

A. I think we need to start listening to the indigenous peoples and what is said first and foremost about our languages, why are they important. We need to give priority to our education systems. Here in Canada, we have French and English as our dominant languages. When we look at the financing of the French language, it is a prosperous healthy language that the Canadian government funded in an inconsistent compared to the languages ​​of the indigenous population. Sometimes I think as original people, we need to remind our governments of the importance of our language in terms of priorities. It may be very difficult for our leaders when they wrestle with financing problems, resource issues, health crises and recovery between everything, which our languages ​​are sometimes placed on the back stove. So I think it is really important to give her priority in everything we do.

A decade ago, the United Nations adopted sustainable development goals to address poverty, hunger, climate change and many other ambitious goals. However, since then, the situation of the indigenous people has worsened, according to the International Labor Group for Original Affairs. What do you think of its conclusion, and what does it say about the relationship between the sustainable development goals and the original methods of thinking?

A: It is a necessary criticism to work now. These United Nations bodies are doing their best, but this is a clear example of what is happening when we do not link these green priorities with original systems and languages. Ultimately, we just click on something in an existing framework: we do not change capitalism or wonder anything. We only claim continuous inequality systems that continue to influence the ground, the roles of women, our language, and our future generations.

If you look at the conditions of the indigenous peoples around the world, they have worsened. For me, this was more than a work force on the work we have to do. We can wash anything but we will not change anything. Until we start to identify the systems of knowledge, languages ​​and places through which we are currently available to reside and privilege for residency, we will not know how to live well within the living systems that we are part of, how to protect them and how to preserve and promote future generations.

Q. Now re -evaluation is part of your job as United Nations President. What do the transfers mean?

A. Restoring itself is still related to patriarchal power, still related to the promotion of colonial logic, laws and practices. And if we really honor all the amazing women who have come to what we are today, we need to change this term and make it more important. The evaluation has other dimensions, but it is certain that it relates to the restoration of our mothers within our colonial societies. I think it is a matter of honoring and confessing this as people of indigenous people. For me, for me, it is a balance between all roles in our societies with our men, with diverse people of both sexes, with their children, with our elders, with matclists, with their presidents, and the matter is due to an attempt to rebalance in that colonial disruption. Thus, for me, it is also a process of recovery, restoration and restoration of what has never surrendered.

Q: How do you describe the importance of the role of UNESCO for the original peoples?

A. This means that we have another door open to us to be able to speak to some of those in power who can make decisions and form policies to allow us to create the space we need to support our languages ​​and cultures. It is a door that I still learn because I was not in those rooms. But the door for more conversations that can support our people. It is for everyone and anyone who feels the rights holder of the original population systems and for methods of knowledge, doing and doing it.

Our roles are to keep this door open and allow the largest possible number of indigenous people to reach that room.