As we celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People this year, many of the estimated 370 million indigenous peoples around the world have lost, or are under imminent threat of losing, their ancestral lands, territories and natural resources because of unfair and unjust exploitation for the sake of ‘development.’ On this day, let us ask the crucial question: who actually benefits from this so-called development, and at what cost is such development taking place?...Many such projects result in human rights violations involving forced evictions, displacement and even loss of life when social unrest and conflict over natural resources erupt. This is certainly not what we mean by development. Natural resource extraction projects such as mining...often directly affect the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and territories. All too often we see conflict between corporations, indigenous peoples and the State over development projects which are initiated without consultation or consent of the very people who are dispossessed of their land.