As the new year starts, we reflect on all that we achieved together as a movement for Indigenous rights. We hope this makes you energized to continue the fight into 2026.

([link removed])

([link removed])

JK Thimma, one of the Jenu Kuruba leaders who led his people back to their ancestral village in 2025

Dear Jack,

We’re beginning 2026 full of gratitude, energy and hope. Survival is a movement of hundreds of thousands of people like you, and your efforts fighting alongside Indigenous peoples for their rights helped make the world a better place last year. The forces against us are strong - but you have been part of showing our collective power to fight back. Here are just a few victories from the last 12 months:

Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples Report

In October, we released a landmark report on the world’s uncontacted peoples, highlighting the threats to their survival, and their astonishing acts of resistance. You can read more about it here ([link removed]), but the report’s central conclusion was sobering: that all uncontacted peoples face threats to their existence.

Alongside the report we launched a campaign targeting extractive industries like logging and mining – they’re the number one threat to uncontacted peoples. In one month, more than 10,000 of you took part in the campaign action, and several key industry bodies are already scrambling to respond.

([link removed])

Hongana Manyawa

Our campaign to stop nickel mining companies from destroying the rainforest home of uncontacted Hongana Manyawa people in Indonesia ramped up last year as the situation grew ever more dire.

As a result of our global campaign, German chemical giant BASF pulled out of the mining project last year, and recently the Norwegian government’s Sovereign Wealth Fund - a high-profile investor in French miner Eramet, one of the main companies involved - withdrew their support and sold their shares in the company.

Jenu Kuruba

Last April, 52 Indigenous Jenu Kuruba families in India who were evicted from their ancestral forest in the 1980s to make way for a tiger reserve marched back into the forest to their old villages.

The authorities tried to evict them once more, but our supporters acted quickly in the face of this emergency: more than 6,000 of you responded in just 48 hours, demanding the authorities stop.

It worked – and the Jenu Kuruba are still there.

African Parks

Conservation organization African Parks has for decades been funding rangers who abuse, even torture, the Indigenous people whose lands have been stolen for national parks and other Protected Areas.

Survival’s long-running campaign to stop this has shone a spotlight on atrocities that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

Survival’s pressure and public concern forced African Parks to commission a law firm to investigate abuses against Baka Indigenous people in the Congo, though they already knew full well what had been going on. The firm’s report confirmed that multiple abuses have taken place against the Baka, though shamefully African Parks refused to make it public. Our campaign will continue until the whole model of conservation which seizes Indigenous peoples’ land and evicts them is stopped.

([link removed])

Baka women and children near Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Republic of Congo © Survival

Central Kalahari, Botswana

Last year there was a political earthquake in Botswana: Duma Boko, one of the lawyers for the Gana and Gwi Indigenous people of the Kalahari in their landmark 2006 victory against the government, became President.

Our staff, who had been banned by the previous government, were once again able to visit Botswana. It was wonderful to return at last to our old Gana and Gwi friends inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, who had returned to their ancestral lands after the court case.

But the previous government had made life very hard for them, and they faced severe water shortages. Now, with your support, we’ve been able to repair a broken borehole in one community, and we’re working with all the communities in the reserve to see what else they need to flourish in the reserve once more.

([link removed])

Men enjoying the water flowing from the newly fixed borehole © Fiona Watson/Survival

There are, of course, many challenges ahead. In the last few weeks, for example, anti-Indigenous politicians in Brazil have proposed new laws that would open up Indigenous territories to logging and mining.

But we know that you and thousands of other Survival supporters will stand up for the Indigenous peoples who we’ve worked alongside for so long.

Thank you for all you do.

Caroline Pearce
Director

([link removed]) ([link removed]) ([link removed]) ([link removed])

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to updates from Survival International in English. You can unsubscribe ([link removed]) from Survival's English email updates at any time.

Survival International | 6 Charterhouse Buildings, London EC1M 7ET | Charity no. 267444

Survival International USA | PO Box 26345, San Francisco, CA 941261 | a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Since 1969 | Supporters in over 100 countries

Offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris and San Francisco

Donate ([link removed])