Peru faces human rights court over protections for isolated Indigenous people
PARAMARIBO, Suriname (AP) — Peru faced the final day of a landmark hearing before a regional human rights court Friday over allegations that it failed to protect Indigenous peoples living in isolation in the Amazon from logging and other activities encroaching on their territory.
The two-day hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Montevideo, Uruguay, marks the first time the tribunal has considered a case involving Indigenous peoples living in isolation in Peru.
The case centers on the Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca peoples, who live in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon. Indigenous organizations say logging concessions and other incursions have pushed outsiders deeper into forests used by the groups, increasing the risk of violent encounters and exposure to diseases to which isolated peoples may have little immunity.
“Many of our brothers and sisters have already disappeared, and we don’t want the Mashco Piro to suffer the same fate,” Maglin Alvarado Vargas, a leader of the Yine Indigenous people from the Native Community of Monte Salvado, told the court. “It is in your hands whether they can survive."
Peru has argued that it has adopted laws, protocols, monitoring systems and other measures to protect isolated Indigenous peoples. The Peruvian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Julio Cusurichi, part of the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries, known by its Spanish acronym FENAMAD, said those protections were not being implemented in practice.
“The government is not taking action to safeguard the rights of these peoples,” Cusurichi said. He warned that continued incursions into their territory could threaten their survival.
The case dates back decades. FENAMAD has raised concerns about logging in Mashco Piro territory since the 1990s and sought emergency protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2005. The commission, a separate body from the court, granted protective measures in 2007.
FENAMAD brought a formal petition to the commission in 2011. In 2022, the commission found Peru responsible for violating the rights of the Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca. The case was sent to the court in 2024 after the commission concluded Peru had not complied with its recommendations.
Teresa Mayo of Survival International, an Indigenous rights organization supporting the case, said Indigenous communities and their allies want the court to hold Peru responsible and require stronger protection of the Mashco Piro’s territory and their right to remain isolated.
“This is a historic hearing,” Mayo said, adding that the groups want the court to guarantee the Mashco Piro can “remain uncontacted, with their land fully protected.”
At the center of the dispute is the territory available to isolated peoples and whether extractive activities can be permitted there.
Maritza Quispe, a lawyer with Peru’s Legal Defense Institute representing the Indigenous side, said the case could establish an important precedent over the ancestral land rights of peoples living in isolation and whether governments can authorize extraction in their territories.
Peruvian law generally bars outside activity in reserves established for isolated Indigenous peoples, but contains an exception allowing natural resources to be exploited when authorities determine there is a public necessity, Quispe said.
One of the lawyers representing the Indigenous groups told the court that Peru had “flagrantly violated” principles intended to protect isolated peoples, including avoiding contact with them and keeping their territories free from outside activity.
The Mashco Piro number more than 750 people and live in southeastern Peru and across the border in Brazil, according to Indigenous organizations. Encounters with outsiders have already turned deadly. In 2024, two loggers were killed in bow-and-arrow attacks after entering Mashco Piro territory, and subsequent sightings have placed members of the group close to active logging areas.
Contact also poses a potentially deadly risk to the Mashco Piro themselves. Indigenous peoples who have lived in isolation have little immunity to common illnesses brought by outsiders, meaning even diseases such as a cold or flu could kill them.
The parties now have until Oct. 26 to submit their final written arguments. The court will then deliberate and issue a judgment, though no date has been set for a ruling.
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Mohegan Tribes sells WNBA team Connecticut Sun
By SAVANNAH PETERS
Associated Press
For Cass Meehan, childhood visits to their Mohegan homelands meant family time and basketball. At 6, sporting a red jersey that hung past their knees, Meehan joined a roaring crowd at some of the Connecticut Sun’s first WNBA games.
Two decades later, the Mohegans have sold the Sun to the Houston Rockets and the Sun is relocating.
“I remember the energy in the arena,” Meehan said. “I knew it was Mohegan’s team we were cheering for.”
Now 29, Meehan is among a loyal group of Mohegan fans preparing to say goodbye to a team that became a point of community pride.
The Mohegan Tribe purchased its WNBA franchise for $10 million in 2003, becoming the first Native American tribe to own a professional sports team. Over 24 seasons, the Connecticut Sun connected generations of tribal members and gave Mohegan people a platform to share their language, culture and values with the league and its fast growing fan base.
But in May, the tribe’s business arm closed a $300 million deal with Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta to sell the Sun and relocate the team, with proceeds going to help strengthen the tribe's balance sheet as it digs out from substantial debt.
Beth Regan, chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribe’s Council of Elders and a self-proclaimed “Day 1” Connecticut Sun fan, said the team’s last game on Mohegan land on Thursday night will be emotional.
“Family and community mean everything to us,” Regan said. “The Connecticut Sun are part of our cháhshayooô, our family.”
Tribal members embraced the team
Basketball is not a particular passion for Meehan. Their loyalty and enthusiasm for the Sun is an exception.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s not a good year and they’re not winning or whatever,” Meehan said. “The team is special and the fan base is special.”
Meehan remembers wearing their hair in space buns like their favorite Sun player, Nykesha Sales, and flocking to the tunnel with other tribal members to ask for players’ autographs.
Players visited tribal youth camps and the annual Mohegan Wigwam Festival. The Sun’s fiery, free-spirited mascot, Blaze, made appearances at social dances.
Generations of Heather Landry's Mohegan family connect over their love of the Sun. Landry bought season tickets this year, giving her 10-year-old daughter Emersyn an opportunity to meet favorite players and even score a selfie with Brittany Griner and Saniya Rivers.
But Landry said her favorite memory of the team came when her family stopped by the Mohegan government center, happened upon a Sun practice session in the community gym and got invited to watch from the bleachers.
“I’m sure my daughter will cry when we walk out of the arena on Thursday,” Landry said of the team's last game in Connecticut.
The Sun “Moheganized” the WNBA
In April, when WNBA guard Charlisse Leger-Walker learned she had been drafted by an Indigenous-owned team, she felt it was “meant to be.”
Leger-Walker, who is Māori and Samoan, said Mohegan elders often visited Sun practices to welcome new players and offer blessings and prayers for the team’s success.
“It was cool for me to come to that realization, that a lot of my values that I carry with me from home are the exact same here,” Leger-Walker said.
From halftime performances featuring tribal singers and dancers to a team logo styled after a traditional Mohegan symbol, the Connecticut Sun brought Mohegan culture to the WNBA and to a national stage.
Regan has smudged the team with sage during losing streaks, a cleansing practice meant to help the players let go of poor performances. She has also gifted injured players sweetgrass braids and laughed when she remembered athletes including 6’6” center Jonquel Jones hugging their knees to squeeze into the community’s sweat lodge.
In 2021, when the WNBA and Nike gave team uniforms an upgrade, Regan said it was the perfect opportunity to “Moheganize” their uniforms with imagery like the “trail of life” motif, which is traditionally painted on woven baskets, and alternating purple and white trim styled after a wampum collar. One of the team’s alternate jerseys displays the word “Keesusk,” the Mohegan word for “Sun.”
“Our languages were taken from us in colonization,” Regan said. “So to see ‘Keesusk’ on those uniforms is so joyous, so validating for our tribe.”
The tribe took an early bet on the WNBA
The Mohegan Tribe purchased the WNBA’s Orlando Miracle in 2003 amid a financial crisis for the league with no clear path forward. That's when the team relocated to Uncasville, Connecticut and became the Sun.
By 2010, the Sun had made deep playoff runs, ranked near the top of the league in game attendance and became the first WNBA team to turn a profit despite playing in the league's smallest market.
Following the Mohegans' lead, other tribes have since invested in professional sports to diversify their economies. Wilton Rancheria is now majority owner of Major League Soccer's Sacramento Republic FC. The Seneca Nation recently purchased the National Lacrosse League’s Rochester Knighthawks. And the Pechanga Band of Indians' business arm is a founding partner of the LA Clippers' Intuit Dome arena.
Regan said the “writing's been on the wall” since the WNBA exploded in popularity and players negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement that requires teams to provide state-of-the-art practice facilities among other expensive upgrades that the tribe would have struggled to afford.
The Mohegan Tribal Council declined an emailed interview request Wednesday. In selling the team, Meehan trusts that the council made the right business decision. But they called the WNBA's move to effectively block a deal that would have sent the Sun to Boston, a much closer venue, a “betrayal" of the tribe that they say rescued the franchise.
Ahead of Thursday's final game, Meehan is gathering 24 years of Connecticut Sun mementos — ticket stubs, their original 2003 team jersey — to keep in a framed shadow box signed by the 2026 team's players.
Regan fought tears while explaining what Mohegan people will lose when the team relocates. She said her people should be proud of the role they played in shaping the WNBA's success story.
“Before all the attention, when the WNBA needed investment, who stepped up?” Regan said. “Mohegan did.”
This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.
