News of Note 9/12/25: TikTok Data Center Impacts, UN Urges San Protections, Study Shows Health Benefits from Indigenous Land Protection

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TikTok Faces Indigenous Pushback Over Brazil Data Center (Techloy)
“The Anacé, a Brazilian Indigenous community, is taking on one of the world’s most powerful tech companies, TikTok. In late August, they filed a formal complaint to federal authorities, asking them to stop the construction of a massive data center announced earlier this year. [...] It is planned near a river that sustains both their cultural practices and daily needs. Developers say the facility would consume around 30,000 litres of water per day, a figure within normal industry ranges. Yet in Ceará, where droughts have long shaped life and access to water is already a sensitive issue, even that amount sparks unease.”

UN expert urges protection for indigenous Botswana people (Agence France-Presse)
“The San are hunter-gatherers who were evicted from their ancestral land in the Kalahari, where there are diamond deposits. They have lived in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years. [...] ‘While the government has demonstrated openness and a willingness to engage, constitutional and legal recognition of indigenous peoples remains absent,’ the UN's special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Albert Barume told journalists.”

Well-preserved Amazon rainforest on Indigenous lands can protect people from diseases, study finds (Associated Press)
“Researchers compiled and analyzed data on forest quality, legal recognition of Indigenous territory and disease incidence in the countries that border and include the Amazon. [...] the goal of the study was to understand how landscapes can be healthy for people, but that it would be naive to suggest that all forest landscapes stay exactly as they are, especially with the land needs of farming and livestock production.”

Debates Indígenas - September 2025

• Territory, Autonomy and Cartography in the Peruvian Amazon

• Mapping to Protect Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation: Lessons from Geographical Disputes in Yasuní

• Cartographies of Disaster and Memory: The Pilagá and Colonial Violence

• Cartography as a Tool for Indigenous Governance in the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory

• Mapping living geographies and hope in Wallmapu

• Cartography of Sumak Kawsay among the Ancestral Kichwa Peoples of Pastaza

More News

• Not just resisting, but leading the fight: five women who refuse to be ignored (The Guardian)

• World's first Indigenous-led ocean reserve a step closer to reality (Oceanographic Magazine)

• The digital movement that enables Indigenous people to show for themselves how the Amazon region is changing (The Conversation)

• Fast-Tracking Indigenous Land Rights Is a Climate Imperative: Protecting Indonesia’s Forests Amid Rising Threats (Indigenous Peoples Rights International)

• Sweden’s plans to mine rare-earth minerals could ruin the lives of Indigenous Sami reindeer herders (Associated Press)

• Peru accused of violating human rights after government rejects reserve for uncontacted people (The Guardian) 

• Colombia’s Siona Indigenous guard faces landmines, violence around territory (Mongabay)

• Always in our hearts’: September is an important month for boarding school survivors (ICT News)

• Mexico Reaffirms National and Regional Commitment to Indigenous Rights – press release (Gobierno de México)