Deusdedit Ruhangariyo
ICT
Around the world: Indigenous leaders excluded from public safety talks, Canada, Kimberley Women demand funding to lead safety reforms.
CANADA: Indigenous leaders left out of national public safety forum
The first ministers’ meeting on public safety convened in the Kananaskis region of Alberta with a stated focus on crime, community safety, and the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system, CBC News reported on October 16.
Yet Indigenous leaders say they were allowed only a brief window – hours, not days – to present priorities before being shut out of the main deliberations. “We’re still not allowed in the room tomorrow,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak after Wednesday’s session. For her, every agenda item touches Indigenous rights and realities; exclusion is not procedural – it is consequential.
Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree framed the discussions as “productive,” and Public Safety Canada emphasized that ministers dedicated a full day to Indigenous issues, placing them “front and centre.” But the response sidestepped the central question raised by leaders: If Indigenous peoples are most affected by policing and justice policy, why are they barred from the meetings that decide those policies? “It can feel tokenistic,” said Victoria Pruden, president of the Métis National Council, describing an afternoon so compressed that hundreds of points had to be crammed into rapid-fire lobbying.
The timing is not theoretical. In northern Ontario, 49 First Nations recently declared a state of emergency tied to gangs, illicit drugs, and violence. Last year, the Assembly of First Nations demanded a national inquiry into systemic racism in policing after at least 10 First Nations people died following police interactions in a three-month period.
The Supreme Court of Canada also chastised federal and Quebec governments for underfunding First Nations policing, while long-promised federal legislation to recognize First Nations policing as an essential service remains unfulfilled.
Against this history, leaders are wary of new federal plans to tighten bail for repeat and violent offenders. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced forthcoming bail reforms; Indigenous representatives warned that longer incarceration risks intensifying Indigenous overrepresentation in prisons. “Talking about putting people [behind bars] with longer sentences, that’s going to negatively impact First Nations people,” said Woodhouse Nepinak. Pruden added that consultation must precede – not follow – legislation.
Others in the room echoed the same throughline: Natan Obed of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador’s regional chief pressed for long-delayed First Nations policing legislation and for alignment with frameworks like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and the federal Indigenous Justice Strategy. Without structural inclusion, leaders argued, the meeting’s photo-ops risk eclipsing substantive commitments.
“When our populations are so greatly impacted … it is a missed opportunity to not at least have us there as observers,” Pruden said. The ministers will continue their closed-door talks. Indigenous leaders will continue living with the consequences. The difference between the two rooms remains the story.
AUSTRALIA: Kimberley women demand funding for safety reforms
In Western Australia’s north, the Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council has tabled a concrete plan – and a precise price – for community safety and economic justice: a $10 million federal investment over five years, the National Indigenous Times reported on October 17.
Half would strengthen Aboriginal-led service reform across Kimberley, Western Australia’s northern region; the other half would fund Maganda Makers to deliver a Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Economic Justice Roadmap. After meeting Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy, Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council leaders Jodie Bell and Rhiana Powers made the case that family safety and prosperity are inseparable and that women should be resourced to lead both.
“Aboriginal women are the matriarchs of our families and communities. Investing in our leadership is investing in family stability, cultural healing, and the rebuilding of our nation,” Bell said.
The ask is not symbolic. The Kimberley faces compounding social and economic pressure, violence, service gaps, the high cost of distance – that intensify family risk and sever the cultural threads that keep children at home. The Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council’s plan directs funds into locally designed services, not top-down programs, into prevention and stability, not just crisis response. It extends beyond safety to women’s enterprise, arguing that economic empowerment is itself a protective factor for families.
The meeting with McCarthy focused on federal pathways to accelerate Aboriginal-led solutions in remote and regional communities. The Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council’s case is pragmatic: long-term outcomes depend on culturally grounded design and delivery, and those who hold the cultural authority to keep families safe must have the resources – and decision-making power – to do so. The roadmap pairs service reform with an ecosystem for women’s businesses, aiming to shift the region from reactive spending to generational investment.
“Lateral love” and cultural healing are not phrasing for press releases; they are operational principles that determine whether families stay intact and whether young people see a future in the place they call home. The Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council’s proposal treats those principles as budget lines, not afterthoughts. The subtext is a challenge to conventional funding: success will not come from fly-in or fly-out interventions but from steady capital in Kimberley hands.
As Canberra weighs the request, the stakes are straightforward. Underfund Aboriginal women’s leadership, and the system remains brittle – costly, slow and misaligned. Fund it, and the Kimberley can model a different architecture of safety: women as designers, families as beneficiaries, culture as infrastructure. The price tag is specific, but the return – measured in stability, healing and continuity – could be vast.
NEPAL: In Nepal’s hills, iron rush ignites consent and conservation battle
In Nepal’s far-western hills, the village of Jhumlabang has become a headline: home, officials say, to the country’s largest iron deposit – roughly 200 million tonnes of hematite, potentially twice the size of the Dhaubadi mine, Mongabay reported on October 17.
For residents like Til Kumari B.K., who forages mushrooms in the monsoon and harvests allo fiber (Himalayan nettle) the rest of the year, the forest is her livelihood, pharmacy and memory. “The farm feeds my family,” she says; the forest pays for her children’s books and pens. That world is now colliding with concessions, drill plans, and a promise of jobs.
Community leaders insist that promise arrived without free, prior and informed consent. Ajay Budha Magar of the Jhumlabang Village Foundation says villagers were not meaningfully informed about the survey or its findings. After a July meeting, they delivered a letter asking the project to be halted.
In August, the Department of Mines and Geology instructed local authorities to facilitate the company’s work. By early 2025, a concession covering about 750 hectares was granted to Elevate Minerals, a sister company to Ramesh Steels, which plans initial drilling on 100 hectares to test ore quality before an environmental impact assessment.
The community’s concerns are layered. First is displacement – thousands could be uprooted. Second is environmental risk in a landscape laced with waterways and community forests. Locals cite vital species – from the red panda and Eurasian otter to danfe pheasants and asala (snowtrout) – and the medicinal plants that anchor both health practices and cultural rites. “Our lives center around these lands, forests and water sources,” said school principal Homjung Rana Magar, warning of polluted rivers, diminished pasture, and the loss of sacred sites.
Scientists add a cautionary note: Iron mining can leach radioactive elements (uranium, thorium, radium) and elevate the risk of contamination from tailings if not planned and monitored rigorously. The department says the company must consult and clear environmental procedures; the company counters that minerals are the property of the state under the 1985 mining law and says it has consulted community members and will conduct assessments after testing.
For Indigenous rights lawyer Durga Mani Rai, the legal hierarchy is plain: Nepal has endorsed UNDRIP and ratified ILO Convention 169, instruments that enshrine free, prior and informed consent and self-determination and, in Nepal, supersede local law.
“What matters,” says resident Rajan Pun Magar, “is whether the development is worth the social, economic, and environmental harm.” Compensation offers – reportedly up to $6,300 per 0.05 hectares – do not answer that question. For now, monsoon clouds lift, and villagers return to the forest, uncertain how many seasons remain before drills arrive. The ore may promise sovereignty from imports. Without consent, the cost may be sovereignty itself.
My final thoughts
Across a continent-spanning week, three scenes speak the same language of power: a closed conference room in Alberta, a kitchen table budget in the Kimberley, and a green valley in Nepal where a forest still answers to the seasons. In each, Indigenous communities describe what real inclusion looks like – not a cameo in someone else’s agenda, but authorship of their own future.
Canada’s ministers call the talks “productive.” The leaders most affected are left outside the door. Process without presence is performance. If incarceration grows while consultation shrinks, outcomes will be entirely predictable: The numbers that scandalized us last year will harden into the normal of next year. It doesn’t have to be that way.
In Australia, the Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council does something governments say they want: they show the work. A plan, a price, a theory of change grounded in matriarchal authority. Safety as culture, enterprise as prevention, healing as infrastructure. If we can fund failure at scale, surely we can fund wisdom with specificity.
In Nepal, Jhumlabang is not refusing development; it is refusing erasure. Free, prior and informed consent is not a slogan. It is the grammar of consent that allows nations to be modern without forgetting who they are. Sovereignty measured only in tonnes will always be brittle. Sovereignty measured in forests, waterways, livelihoods and law can last.
Thread them together and the verdict is simple: when Indigenous people are in the room – with power, budget and binding processes – systems become less extractive and more human. That is not charity. It is competence. The invitation is on the table, in three different accents. All that remains is whether those who hold the pen will let others write their names.