Deusdedit Ruhangariyo
ICT
Around the world: When universities let Indigenous languages quietly die in Canada, forests versus minerals in Congo’s global resource rush and Indonesia’s forest crackdown raises power, justice questions
CANADA: When universities let Indigenous languages quietly die
For nearly two decades, Lorena Lynn Cote believed she was helping safeguard a living inheritance. At First Nations University of Canada, she taught Anihšināpēmowin, the Saulteaux language, with the hope that students would not only relearn their ancestral tongue but carry it forward. Today, that hope is fraying, reported CBC News.
“I’m losing faith in the university’s commitment,” Cote says, after watching the program she helped sustain steadily dismantled, according to CBC News. Once, Indigenous students could pursue degrees in multiple Indigenous languages. Now, Cree is the only language degree offered. Anihšināpēmowin survives only at the most basic level.
“Our language classes have been getting cancelled,” Cote said. “We do offer the 100 and 101, and that’s just basic introductory language.”
What followed was not an expansion, but contraction. The degree program disappeared. The certificate program was reduced to five courses — and even that pathway collapsed as upper-level classes were routinely canceled before enrollment could materialize. Without 200-level courses, students are structurally blocked from completing credentials.
“I’ve been here 23 years and I don’t have one graduate under my name,” Cote said, according to CBC News. “The last one who got a degree here was when my late aunt was here… late ’90s, early 2000s.”
Students feel the loss acutely. Brianna Brass, who completed the introductory sequence in 2018, committed herself fully to the language. Today, her degree audit shows she is 78 percent complete, stalled not by lack of effort, but by absent courses.
“I felt let down by FNU,” Brass said, according to CBC News. “I was very disappointed.”
Cote recalls advocating for three students in 2021, all capable of completing their studies. None could proceed. Classes were canceled for “insufficient enrollment,” even as funding confirmations for many Indigenous students arrive late in the summer — after course schedules are finalized.
The result is a quiet erosion. Languages tied to ceremony, worldview, and identity are reduced to introductory fragments, unable to sustain fluent speakers or future teachers.
“Languages are important,” Cote said. “They’re our lifeblood.”
Brass is more blunt. “The university needs to do better. Find more instructors, find elders and speakers… I am angry and very disappointed with how the university has treated the Anihšināpēmowin program. They let it fall apart.”
CONGO: Forests versus minerals in global resource rush
In southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Valery Kyembo was walking the boundary of his community’s forest when armed soldiers stopped him. One raised an automatic weapon. The message was clear: titled land does not always protect those who live on it, Mongabay reported.
“We are visiting the boundaries of our community’s property,” Kyembo said, according to Mongabay, before being forced to turn back.
The land is the Lukutwe community forest concession, created by local leaders to protect miombo forests against mining expansion in the copper-cobalt belt. The DRC holds roughly 70 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves, making these lands central to global clean energy, weapons, and technology supply chains.
Ten years earlier, neighboring villages were displaced by a mining company searching for copper and cobalt. Lukutwe responded by securing formal title — one of the few legal shields available to communities whose customary rights are otherwise vulnerable.
“These concessions constitute a guarantee against land pressures,” said Héritier Khoji of the University of Lubumbashi, according to Mongabay— though he warned that mining law often overrides forest protections.
Community forest concessions allow Indigenous and local communities to hold up to 50,000 hectares in perpetuity. They come with management plans: reforestation, agroforestry, conservation zones, and controlled resource use. Since 2016, Lukutwe alone has received $4.5 million in international funding to restore degraded forest.
Yet pressure is relentless. Mining licenses blanket the region. Chemical spills have contaminated waterways. Charcoal production and logging hollow out forests meant to be protected.
“Today, there are no more mushrooms. Medicinal plants are becoming rare,” said Hester Kyaushi, a forest monitor.
Though 227 community forest concessions now cover more than 4.48 million hectares nationwide, enforcement remains fragile. Communities report mining licenses issued without consent. Armed actors restrict access. Funding gaps leave forests vulnerable to fire and encroachment.
“This is the kind of situation these concessions are meant to address,” said Stéphane Banza of APRONAPAKAT, according to Mongabay. “Yet access to property duly obtained from authorities is becoming difficult.”
The forest title offers documents, not power. As global competition for cobalt intensifies, the struggle reveals a deeper truth: environmental protection without political weight remains precarious.
INDONESIA: Forest crackdown raises power, justice questions
Indonesia has reclaimed more than 4 million hectares of land used illegally inside forest zones — exceeding its own enforcement target by more than 400 percent in under a year. Officials describe the operation as historic. Critics call it opaque, reported Mongabay.
Led by a task force formed under President Prabowo Subianto, the crackdown targets oil palm plantations, nickel and coal mines, illegal tourism structures, and encroachment into national parks. Administrative fines totaling 2.3 trillion rupiah have been collected. Millions of hectares have been seized.
But questions mount.
“The public only sees the numbers,” said Achmad Surambo of Sawit Watch, according to Mongabay. “We don’t know what lies behind them.”
Previously, the government estimated 3.4 million hectares of oil palm overlapped forest land. Now officials suggest up to 10 million hectares could be reclaimed — implying that over half of Indonesia’s plantations may be unlawful, without transparent explanation.
What happens after seizure is even less clear.
Roughly 1.7 million hectares have been handed to state-owned palm oil company PT Agrinas Palma Nusantara, rapidly transforming it into the world’s largest palm oil firm by land area. Less than a fifth of seized land is earmarked for ecological restoration.
“Administrative fines and land takeover are being carried out,” Surambo said, according to Mongabay. “But restoration is not.”
Civil society groups warn that monoculture palm oil under state management perpetuates ecological harm. Others fear new conflicts, as land is transferred without verifying customary or smallholder claims.
“This gives legitimacy to seize assets without checking whether communities live there,” said Difa Shafira of ICEL, according to Mongabay.
The task force’s militarized composition deepens unease. While officials insist communities can report wrongful seizures, critics argue consent and participation remain secondary to enforcement optics.
My final thoughts
Across Canada, Congo, and Indonesia, a shared pattern emerges: institutions claim protection while quietly hollowing out what they claim to defend.
In Canada, a university devoted to Indigenous renewal allows language to survive only at the level of symbolism. Introductory classes remain, but pathways to fluency are systematically blocked. This is not overt hostility; it is administrative suffocation. A language does not die from one act of violence — it dies when systems stop making completion possible.
In Congo, communities do everything they are told to do. They organize. They title land. They follow conservation plans. And still, armed power overrides paper rights. The forest concession becomes a moral document without teeth, respected only until minerals beneath the soil become more valuable than the people above it.
In Indonesia, the state demonstrates power at scale — seizing millions of hectares — yet fails to answer the most important question: what justice looks like after enforcement. Restoration lags. Community consent is secondary. Forests change hands, but ecosystems remain broken.
While geography doesn’t connect these stories, structural asymmetry does.
Languages are protected rhetorically, not structurally. Forests are titled, but not defended. Land is reclaimed, but not healed.
Each case reveals a preference for visible action over durable commitment. Certificates instead of degrees. Documents instead of enforcement. Seizures instead of restoration.
And beneath it all lies a deeper discomfort: true protection requires patience, funding, and the willingness to subordinate power to continuity. That is harder than issuing policies or staging crackdowns.
When Lorena Cote says, “Without language, we have nothing,” she is not speaking metaphorically. She is naming the boundary between cultural survival and institutional neglect.
When Congolese villagers rely on concession papers as their “support,” they are naming the fragility of legality without power.
When Indonesian activists warn that forests may be lost even after seizure, they are reminding us that control is not the same as care.
These are not isolated failures. They are warnings.
If institutions continue to confuse the appearance of protection with conditions for survival, languages will fade, forests will thin, and communities will learn again that recognition without commitment is another form of abandonment.
What is being asked, quietly but insistently, is not charity. It is continuity.
And continuity, unlike policy, cannot be postponed.
The post GLOBAL INDIGENOUS: Reclaiming land, Indigenous language classes getting cut appeared first on ICT.
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