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This opinion piece by Brye Marshall, an Aboriginal archaeologist, and Julie Nichols, an academic in architecture and digital humanities, explores the agency and authority of intangible cultural heritage [ICH], particularly from a First Nations’ perspective.

They consider how ICH is defined, valued, and supported within contemporary cultural institutions like galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM], which are custodians of Australian cultural heritage. The piece discusses the challenges of recording Indigenous arts and knowledge outside of Indigenous communities, without recognition or benefits to Indigenous people. The discussion extends to the Western-centric definition of cultural heritage and its limitation in recognising Indigenous world views. The authors acknowledge ongoing debates around best practice in acknowledging Indigenous knowledge and narratives in historical records.

This chapter concludes that redefining ICH from Indigenous perspectives could empower communities, redefine heritage definitions, and contribute to global conversations about heritage, climate change, urban development, and connection to land.

The indigenous peoples of the Philippines have had to struggle against historical injustices for centuries. They fought against colonization and the subjugation of their cultures and ways of life. Over the decades, their next generations are confronted with exclusion, discrimination, and encroachments on their ancestral domains which have resulted in social and economic disadvantages. An obvious case in point is the lack of sympathetic and affirmative policy directives for the culture-based education of indigenous children and youth. This paper reflects on the policy development processes undertaken to institutionalize inclusion and social justice in indigenous peoples education policies within the K to 12 Basic Education Program. Using the method of narrative inquiry, the stories of reform are told from the point of view of those who facilitated the crafting of these policies. Three narratives demonstrate that contextualized and empowering education strategies and processes transform not only policy but also the policy makers.

In 2010, the Canadian government introduced the National Action Plan for the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security. Approximately 24 countries have developed national action plans to evaluate and monitor the implementation of UNSCR 1325 that calls for the inclusion of all women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding and the protection of women. Refugee women were not included in the Action Plan as partners in peacemaking, mentioned only in sections referring to protection and post-conflict reconstruction. As such, refugee women are not considered key players in plans to bring about peace despite evidence that refugee women's organizations can participate in and even lead peacebuilding efforts.

This chapter analyzes the activities of three refugee women's organizations from Tibet, the Sudan, and Burma/Myanmar concluding that it is strategically important to support women's transnational networks and facilitate contact between diaspora, refugee, and local women's organizations interested in conflict transformation. A gendered analysis of refugee peacebuilding capacity reveals gaps in peacebuilding capacity approaches that become evident when female diasporas are the focus of the research. The women's refugee organizations show the capacity for transnational bridge building, that is, the capacity to build and sustain networks across geographical, social and political boundaries with the aim of bringing about nonviolent social change.

Indigenous health care models have continued to play significant roles in the development and sustenance of livelihoods in African communities. Such models are used not only to provide affordable community health care services but also as an employment resource for traditional practitioners within African communities. Yet, for lack of documentation and lack of discussion in the management and Indigenous Knowledge System literature, the models are hardly incorporated into the official health care services of African countries. This chapter addresses this problem by documenting the benefits and merits of the entrepreneurial principles embedded in the Tsonga traditional health care practice. First, it highlights how the unique indigenous traditional model is used for administering health care in a selected Tsonga-speaking community in South Africa. Second, it analyses the entrepreneurial principles embedded in the model. Finally, it discusses how such principles have been used as tools for entrepreneurship and enhancing the economic upkeep of the traditional health care practitioners (THPs). The chapter's main argument is that even though the Tsonga traditional health care practice model is complex, mystical, and in most cases challenging to explain to a non-native, it presents a great entrepreneurial opportunity for South Africa.

Africa's diverse geographic regions are replete with indigenous business knowledge and practices embedded in the traditions, values and culture of the people. Many of these practices have been explored in the previous chapters of this book. This final chapter provides viable recommendations for adopting and improving Africa's indigenous business practices and methodologies. We expect that these observations and recommendations will support Africa's educators', business actors' and policymakers' efforts to draw from and apply rich insights from indigenous business knowledge and practices. However, beyond this, we hope that international enterprises operating in the continent can learn about the uniquely African business values and incorporate them appropriately into a context that fits. This concluding chapter, therefore, discusses how these objectives may be achieved.

This chapter argues that sustainable development must be anchored on a human rights regime and that an integrated framing of human rights and sustainability in development policy and practice is crucial in the achievement of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Using data gathered from the author's field research during her US Fulbright Fellowship in the Philippines in 2017, the chapter examines the impacts of corporate mining on the Philippine Indigenous people using the United Nations Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous People as a framework for analysis. The experience of the indigenous people shows that large scale corporate mining – largely dominated by transnational corporations – threatens their right to life, right to ancestral land, right to a healthy environment, right to education and cultural rights, right to self-determination, and the right to sustainable development. The violation of these rights threatens the Indigenous people's survival and makes their situation even more precarious during COVID-19 pandemic. State and corporate recognition of these rights is crucial to building resiliency to the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and the survival of the indigenous people.

Africa's history of trade, production and financial services that propelled the continent's economic systems existed long before an era of colonisation commonly recognised as beginning in the nineteenth century. By the time the decolonisation of a majority of African countries was achieved in the mid-twentieth century, the African economic identity had been, to a great extent, relegated by Westernised methods and orientations. Today, Indigenous practices are once again resurfacing in Africa's ongoing search for sustainable development, with increasing calls to resuscitate and incorporate these age-long business orientations. This introductory chapter provides readers with a synopsis of all the themes of this second of a two-volume edited book with a focus on the philosophies and practices of Indigenous businesses, which, if successfully explored and scaled up, would make significant contributions to Africa's economic infrastructure.

For over 40 years in Nicaragua, the Mayangna indigenous group has fought for legal rights to traditional lands with the expressed purpose of protecting their rainforest. On December 21, 2009, the last of nine Mayangna territories were granted rights by Nicaragua to a majority of their historical claims, in addition to rights to have illegal colonists removed by Nicaraguan police and military. Indigenous leaders pursued land rights as a measure for cultural survival and the protection of their broadleaf rainforest, also the site of a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve, the BOSAWAS. While Indigenous lands are encroached upon by the frontline of imperialistic consumerism, people like the Mayangna ask for international and national respect for their autonomy, self-determination, land ownership, and even sovereignty.

The Mayangna lead the way to understand necessary steps for protecting the rainforest. Their actions demonstrate the possibility for social justice given respect for true ecologically sustainability. To begin, they fought to obtain ownership of their homelands, thereafter, they battled legally and even with their lives to defend their boundaries and everything within them. The Mayangna insist indigenous land ownership, the protection of their rights, and a respect for their traditional forms of management lead to the continued protection of the rainforest and other areas critical to the survival of the global ecosystem.

This chapter explores the governance structures of Indigenous societies with special focus on the Meru community in Kenya. The chapter reviews the elaborate structure of governance that ensured and entrenched the basic parameters of a fair society. It outlines the impact caused by colonization and the subsequent loss of social fabrics that bound individual members and the entire community. The colonizers looked at the Indigenous as primitive and backward. They therefore classified them as tribes, natives' ethnic nationalities all of which demeaned the Indigenous communities. From such derogatory perspectives, the Indigenous systems including governance, culture, social, legal and judiciary, philosophy, economic systems were replaced with supposedly more advanced systems to assimilate and “modernize” Indigenous peoples. The chapter will demonstrate how these critical aspects and components of governance existed within the Indigenous governance structures of the Ameru community long before the colonial government. The chapter by use of practical illustrations advocates for decolonial perspectives to the realization of fair governance.