Why Indigenous Peoples Day matters

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

A day to recognise Indigenous cultures, knowledge, rights and futures

Every year on 9 August, the UN marks the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

It’s a day to celebrate Indigenous cultures, knowledge and contributions around the world. But it’s also a day to pay attention: to land, to language, to culture, and to the right of Indigenous Peoples to protect their communities, knowledge and ways of life on their own terms.

Why the day exists

The UN describes Indigenous Peoples as “inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment”. It’s a simple sentence, but an important one. Indigenous knowledge lives in food, medicine, language, farming, care and community, and in the way land and the planet are understood and looked after.

The day is also about rights. The UN notes that Indigenous Peoples have long sought recognition of their identities, ways of life and rights to traditional lands, territories and natural resources. Those rights have not always been respected. Many Indigenous communities continue to face discrimination, economic exclusion, insecure land rights, pressure from deforestation and extractive industries, loss of language, limited access to culturally appropriate services and the effects of climate change. The day exists because these issues are still urgent.

What is at stake

There are an estimated 476 million Indigenous Peoples living across 90 countries. They make up less than 6% of the global population, but account for at least 15% of the world’s poorest people. They also speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures.

Indigenous Peoples’ relationship with land is globally significant too. Their territories cover 28% of the planet’s surface and contain 11% of the world’s forests. The UN calls Indigenous Peoples guardians of most of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

So when we talk about Indigenous rights, we are also talking about forests, biodiversity, languages, culture and the future of knowledge that has been carried for generations. When Indigenous communities are pushed from land, excluded from decisions or forced into systems that do not value their knowledge, the loss is human, cultural and environmental. As the UN puts it: “We need Indigenous communities for a better world.”

Land, livelihood and coffee

For many Indigenous communities, protecting land means protecting the conditions that make community life possible. Land can provide food, medicine, materials, income, cultural identity and spiritual continuity. It can hold memory and future at the same time. So threats to land are never only environmental threats; they are threats to rights, autonomy and everyday life.

Livelihoods matter here too. When communities can earn an income in ways that respect their land and knowledge, they are better able to shape their own futures. When markets undervalue that work, or treat products as anonymous commodities, the people and places behind them can become invisible.

Coffee is one small example of this bigger picture. We often talk about coffee through flavour, roast and origin. But before it ever reaches a roastery, it has already been shaped by land, climate, farming knowledge, harvesting decisions, processing skill and community labour. The value does not begin at the point of sale; much of it already exists at origin. Recognising that is part of taking Indigenous coffee-producing communities seriously.

Mayni as one example

The Mayni Indigenous Community in Peru shows how deeply land, livelihood and knowledge can be connected. Mayni coffee grows beneath the canopy of the Amazon cloud forest in eastern Peru, around six hours’ drive from Satipo, the nearest town. The forest is not a backdrop to the coffee; it shapes how the community lives, farms and protects the land around them.

For coffee producers in forest regions, the question is not only how to grow a crop; it’s how to build a livelihood without separating that livelihood from the health of the land. Coffee grown with respect for the forest can create income while keeping the surrounding ecosystem standing. But that depends on relationships and markets that properly recognise the people behind the coffee.

Indigenous communities should not have to disappear behind the finished product, and their stories should never be used as decoration. Visibility should mean respect for their skill, their agency, their knowledge and their right to decide their own future.

Why this matters to Easy Jose

Easy Jose’s relationship with the Mayni Indigenous Community is one of the reasons this day feels so important to us. It has shaped how we think about coffee, responsibility and partnership. The coffee we roast is exceptional because of the work, knowledge and care that exist long before it reaches us; our role comes later.

So our commitment is simple: build long-term relationships, create dependable markets where we can, value the coffee properly and keep the communities behind it visible in a way that respects them. Indigenous communities don’t need rescuing by coffee companies. The people who grow exceptional coffee deserve to be recognised as the reason for it.

This isn’t about charity. It’s about better coffee.

A day to look properly

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples asks us to look properly at what Indigenous communities protect, practise and contribute. It asks us to recognise the pressures they continue to face, and to understand that rights, land, culture, livelihood and biodiversity are bound together.

That feels worth marking: not with a gesture, but with attention.