The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops praised the new ombudsperson office, noting it “has called attention to concerns and complaints involving Canadian-based and/or Canadian-registered companies which operate in other countries."

"Today, Indians are the poorest of all American ethnic groups," said Father Michael Carson, a Choctaw Indian who is assistant director of Native American affairs for the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church.

Francis is the first pope to come to the Amazon region, and he insisted that his first event and major speech of his visit to Peru should be to this place.

The Uluru Statement proposed a constitutionally embedded, national Indigenous body (“the voice”) that would advise parliament on matters relating to Indigenous peoples.

In 2010, Canada endorsed the declaration as “aspirational” without beginning a process for its practical implementation.

Approximately 5,000 indigenous Tzotzil Mayans have been scattered in small refugee camps in the area surrounding the town of Chalchihuitán, in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas. They say they were chased out of their homes by unknown gunmen after the escalation of an old land dispute.