Indigenous Voices Shaping UNESCO Sites

UNESCO launches the flagship publication “Indigenous Knowledge, Ancestral Places: Navigating Change in UNESCO Designated Sites”

UNESCO has launched a flagship publication highlighting Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems and perspectives within UNESCO Global Geoparks, Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage sites.

The book, accompanied by an online resource, compiles 21 testimonials—environmental, cultural, philosophical, and intellectual expressions of Indigenous knowledge, values, practices, cosmologies, and governance systems. These accounts shine a light on the people who have intimately known, cared for, and evolved alongside some of the world’s most iconic sites for generations.  

Indigenous Peoples have long been integral partners in the conservation of UNESCO-designated sites, shaping the way relationships between nature and culture, as well as landscapes and identities are understood. This compendium represents years of relationship-building and cooperation with Indigenous Peoples across the UNESCO network, notably through UNESCO Field Offices and National Commissions.

The publication was officially launched at a side event during MONDIACULT 2025, the world’s largest conference on cultural policy, on 30 September in Barcelona and presented at the World Congress of Biosphere Reserves in Hangzhou a few days earlier. An all-Indigenous panel used the occasion to discuss the rights of Indigenous Peoples regarding culture, heritage, and the sustainable stewardship of cultural and natural resources, as well as the role of UNESCO and other international frameworks in supporting these efforts.

Side event “Indigenous Knowledge, Ancestral Places: Navigating Change in UNESCO Designated Sites”, 30 September 2025. From left to right: Nigel Crawhall (moderator), Emile Kairua, Thomas Johnson, Carmen Rosa Guerra Ariza and Gakemotho Satau.

While this publication does not aim to be exhaustive or fully representative of the diversity of Indigenous Peoples worldwide, it demonstrates how Indigenous Peoples draw upon ancestral knowledge and careful observation of the environment to address today’s challenges with dynamic and evolving skills.

“We do not only heal our bodies; we also heal the land.
As you follow the cosmic wheel—the natural environment, its resources, mountains and rivers—you learn that their beauty reflects how knowledge, stewardship, and heritage have been preserved through generations.”

Gakemotho Satau, San leader, knowledge manager, environmentalist

Faced with threats arising from climate change, biodiversity loss, natural disasters and overtourism, Indigenous Peoples are guiding forward-looking approaches for safeguarding species, lands, and waters through their traditional knowledge. This is why this book centres on navigating change, calling for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples as knowledge holders and as active partners in resilience.

Photos: © Cecilia Elvira Martinez Mesias (left) / © FUNDACION CONSERVACION INTERNATIONAL (right)

This publication tells an honest story of resilience from multiple perspectives: fishing communities, herders, farmers, weavers, craftspeople, women, men, elders and youth. From the high-altitude environment of Sagarmāthā (Mount Everest), to the Congo Basin, and from the Pacific Islands to the Amazon and the Arctic, a rich panoply of testimonies unfolds.  The stories convey lived experiences, and between them, the reader hears the silence of desert dunes, the hum of rivers, the crackle of bushfires, and the wind through the trees. Sit by the fire to listen to old stories that teach some of life’s deepest truths.

© UNESCO / Joan de la Malla