Indigenous Peoples — Rights, Health & Documents

Declarations, charters and reference material on the health, rights and self-determination of indigenous and circumpolar peoples — primary documents reproduced as issued, alongside directories of the organisations working in the field.

This section brings together two strands that have long overlapped: the rights of indigenous peoples as asserted in their own declarations, and the public-health work that concerns indigenous and circumpolar communities. The documents are presented in full and attributed to the bodies that issued them; the resource directories point to the organisations, networks and reference collections active in the field.

The Indigenous Peoples' Seattle Declaration is the centrepiece of the documents. Issued during the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, it set out indigenous peoples' concerns about trade liberalisation, biodiversity and the right to self-determination, and it has been cited widely in the decades since. It is reproduced here in full. Around it sit Australian material on indigenous health and social development, and reference documents on the right to health.

Health runs through the whole section. The health of indigenous and circumpolar peoples is shaped as much by land, rights and self-determination as by clinical care, which is why a public-health library treats these documents and the bodies that work on them as a single subject. The directories below point to the current organisations — health-promotion networks, Arctic research bodies and national health authorities — that carry the work forward.

The collection reaches beyond any single region. The circumpolar North — the Inuit, Sámi and other peoples of the Arctic and sub-Arctic — has its own representative organisations, media and research tradition, gathered here in the node that continues the WWW Virtual Library: Circumpolar Peoples. North America is represented through resources on specific First Nations, and the Pacific and Australia through material on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and social development. What links them is a common concern: that the wellbeing of indigenous communities cannot be separated from their rights to land, language and self-government, and that documentation — declarations, charters, reference directories — is itself part of how those rights are asserted and defended.

Declarations & documents

Primary statements and reference documents — among them the **[Indigenous Peoples' Seattle Declaration](/indi99.htm)**, issued during the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial, and Australian material on indigenous health and social development. These are reproduced as issued, for reference.

Circumpolar peoples

The circumpolar North — the Arctic and sub-Arctic peoples — has its own body of representative organisations, media and research. These guides continue the tradition of the WWW Virtual Library: Circumpolar Peoples.

First Nations of North America

Resources on the First Nations and tribal peoples of North America, including community and cultural documentation for specific nations.

Networks & organisations

Networks and organisations concerned with the health and rights of indigenous peoples worldwide, including health-promotion bodies and policy task forces.

Last reviewed April 1, 2026.