"Hundreds of indigenous leaders and activists from all across the world are gathering in New York City this week for the 11th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. We speak with Dalee Sambo Dorough, an Inuit from Alaska who teaches political science at the University of Alaska-Anchorage and serves as vice chair of the Permanent Forum. Sambo Dorough discusses the range of hardships faced by indigenous peoples in Alaska today, from environmental devastation and threatened land ownership in the Arctic to rampant sexual violence. "In these various different political and economic agendas, indigenous peoples in the United States are at the bottom of the bottom. They always have been," Sambo Dorough says. "The issues facing Alaska Native communities, indigenous communities across the United States, never appear on the radar screen as a priority issue.""

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Sexual Violence and Natural Resource Pillaging Top Hardships Facing Alaskan Natives (Democracy Now 5/11)