Indigenous Leaders at UN Warn of Dual Crisis: Land Defense and Digital Exploitation
Indigenous land defenders are being killed and criminalized at alarming rates while artificial intelligence systems scrape traditional knowledge without consent. Indigenous leaders raised both threats this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, warning that the fight for health and sovereignty now extends into digital spaces.
In 2023 alone, 31 percent of human rights defenders killed worldwide were Indigenous or working on Indigenous rights, despite Indigenous peoples making up only 5 percent of the global population. The forum, which convened in New York, drew participants from around the world to address what UN Special Rapporteur Albert K. Barume called a systemic crisis of violence and criminalization.
Land Rights and State-Sponsored Violence
Indigenous communities without legally recognized land tenure face mounting pressure from extractive industries and governments. Legal systems are increasingly being weaponized to suppress resistance on ancestral lands, according to human rights groups monitoring the issue.
Latin America remains one of the most dangerous regions for fatal violence against land defenders, but the suppression of Indigenous voices is also a pressing issue in the US and Canada. In 2022, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called for urgent action in land rights cases for Western Shoshone, Native Hawaiian, Gwich'in, and Anishinaabe peoples.
Judy Wilson, a Secwépemc elder and knowledge keeper for the British Columbia Native Women's Association, said Canadian legislation prioritizing rapid resource development "directly threatens our Indigenous sovereignty, environmental protection, safety and specifically increases the risks associated with man camps and missing, murdered Indigenous women and girls."
Across North America, Indigenous nations have documented widespread use of detention, surveillance, and strategic lawsuits to silence leaders opposing projects like pipelines and logging. Amnesty International found that such abuses are rarely investigated, creating a cycle of impunity.
The New Frontier: Digital Extractivism
Generative AI systems are replicating long-standing patterns of exploitation in the digital realm. These systems frequently scrape Indigenous medicinal knowledge, traditional stories, and cultural motifs from the internet without consent, leading to commodification and appropriation of heritage.
A study presented at the forum by Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim outlined what she called "digital extractivism." Algorithmic biases in AI models, driven by underrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in training data, result in systems that fail to accurately recognize Indigenous identities or languages, amplifying structural discrimination.
To address this, Indigenous leaders are pushing for strict "Indigenous data sovereignty" frameworks to replace the Western "open data" paradigm. Ibrahim's report recommends the adoption of the CARE Principles - Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics - which establish a framework for ethical management of AI technologies and ensure Indigenous communities retain decision-making authority over their data.
The report also cites the OCAP principles - Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession - developed by First Nations of Canada. These establish a community's absolute right to own its data and control how it is collected, accessed, and stored.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Hiku Media developed te reo Māori speech recognition tools while keeping linguistic data under Māori control. Dr. Karaitiana Taiuru, a Māori data sovereignty expert, emphasized that data is deeply connected to identity and lineage. "All data is whakapapa [lineage]," he said. "It still has that spiritual connection."
The Kāhui Raraunga Charitable Trust is implementing the Māori Data Governance Model to ensure Indigenous people control their own data for better service delivery outcomes. The model centers on Māori needs and priorities rather than external interests.
For professionals working in IT and development, understanding these frameworks is essential. Generative AI and LLM Courses and AI Data Analysis Courses increasingly cover ethical data governance and Indigenous data rights as core competencies.
Violence Against Indigenous Women
Displacement, climate change, and extractive industries have an acute impact on Indigenous women. In North America, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is driven by the intersecting vulnerabilities being debated at the UN.
As of 2025, Māori women make up 63 percent of the total female prison population in Aotearoa New Zealand. Forty-nine percent of Māori women experience intimate partner violence and are three times more likely to experience it compared to non-Māori women.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women issued a landmark 2022 recommendation specifically dedicated to protecting the rights of Indigenous women and girls. Despite this status, Indigenous women at the forum highlighted the lack of implementation and ongoing threats they face.
The recommendation urges states to provide targeted scholarships, expand financial aid, strengthen Indigenous-led education systems, and combat discriminatory stereotypes limiting Indigenous girls' educational opportunities globally. Indigenous girls face major hurdles to school enrollment and completion due to lack of culturally appropriate, Indigenous-controlled educational facilities.
Claire Charters, an expert in Indigenous global affairs from Ngāti Whakaue, noted that while discrimination against Indigenous women isn't new, understanding whether such discrimination originates within Indigenous communities or stems from colonization remains a crucial and complex debate.
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