ROME – Pope Francis sent a message to a United Nations gathering on Indigenous Peoples, stressing the need to preserve their cultural identity and protect the natural resources at the heart of their way of life.

In a Feb. 11 message to the 7th Indigenous Peoples’ Forum organized by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the pope voiced hope the meeting would be “a meaningful space for debate, study and reflection on the priorities, concerns and just aspirations of Indigenous communities.”

The forum is taking place in Rome from Feb. 10-11 and holds the theme, “Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination: a pathway for food security and sovereignty.”

Each global forum is preceded by regional and subregional consultations in the months prior, aimed at highlighting the diversity of views and recommendations from indigenous communities in different regions.

Pope Francis, who has gone to great lengths to highlight the plight of Indigenous communities and advocate for their rights, said the theme for the meeting is a call “to recognize the value of original peoples.”

It is also a call to acknowledge and respect “the ancient ancestral heritage of knowledge and practices that positively enrich the great human family, coloring it with the varied features of their traditions,” he said.

He said this perspective can be a “horizon of hope” in the current global situation, “marked by intense and complex challenges, and not a few tensions.”

“The defense of the right to preserve one’s culture and identity necessarily involves recognizing the value of their contribution to society and safeguarding their existence and the natural resources they need to live,” he said.

To this end, the pope lamented that this cultural identity and attachment to nature is being “seriously threatened by the increasing hoarding of farmland by multinational companies, large investors and States.”

“They are practices that cause harm, threatening the right of communities to a dignified life,” he said, saying resources such as land, water and food, are not “mere commodities,” but are “the very basis of life and of these people’s connection with nature.”

Defending Indigenous rights, he said, is not simply a question of justice, but it is also “a guarantee of a sustainable future for all.”

“Inspired by a sense of belonging to the human family, we can ensure that future generations will enjoy a world in harmony with the beauty and goodness that guided the hands of God in creating it,” he said.

Throughout his papacy Pope Francis has consistently advocated on behalf of Indigenous communities and has condemned acts of intimidation aimed at indigenous environmental and climate activists defending their lands from multinational companies.

In Latin America, in particular, as many as one third of climate activists are Indigenous, and many face threats of intimidation and violence.

The plight of Indigenous communities was a major theme during the pope’s 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, which focused at length on the need to safeguard and protect Indigenous lands and culture, and which saw many Indigenous leaders and representatives appointed delegates and observers to the synod gathering.

After that meeting, the pope in his 2020 exhortation Querida Amazonia stressed the need to better enculturate the faith, respecting and incorporating local traditions while also working to purify the faith from pagan elements present in some Indigenous practices.

In 2022, he held a historic meeting with Canadian Indigenous communities at the Vatican amid fallout from scandals involving abuses inside of residential schools, making an initial apology for the Catholic Church’s own role in the forced cultural assimilation and physical abuses children at the schools endured.

That summer, he traveled to Canada to fulfill one of the action points of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which asked that the pope travel to Canada and apologize on Canadian soil, offering a historic apology that many local Indigenous saw as a much-needed step in the path toward healing and reconciliation with the Church.

Pope Francis closed his message for this year’s Indigenous forum praying that efforts to protect Indigenous communities and ensure a sustainable future would bear fruit and inspire national leaders, “so that appropriate measures may be taken to ensure that the human family walk together in pursuit of the common good, so that no one is excluded or left behind.”

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