Every August 9, the world marks the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. You’ll see statements about resilience, culture, and knowledge. All true. But all safely framed in the past tense.
We would rather use the day differently.
This letter is addressed to the delegates who will decide how the BBNJ Agreement (High Seas Treaty) will actually work in practice.
I write this as an Indigenous Alifuru man from Maluku. For us, the ocean is not a distant or abstract space. It is part of our territory, identity, food systems and way of life.
As Indigenous Peoples Advisor to the High Seas Alliance, I believe Indigenous Peoples must be part of building the BBNJ system from the beginning. HSA was in the negotiation rooms from the start, and we’ve remained at the table as its institutions and processes take shape. Many of you have taken our calls and engaged in good-faith debates with us between sessions. We deeply value that working relationship, which is why we’re using our platform today to focus on an issue that requires all our attention.
The first BBNJ Conference of the Parties (BBNJ COP1) decides who’s in the room, whose knowledge counts, and how two-thirds of the ocean gets managed for decades. Right now, Indigenous Peoples don’t have a seat, and we’re actively advocating to change that before January.
So here are three important facts to consider and two actions you can take to ensure Indigenous Peoples are partners in the conservation of the High Seas and its future.
First: the High Seas is not a world apart
You may think the High Seas is too far away to matter to Indigenous Peoples. That assumption is understandable, but when Treaty lawyers use the term, they’re drawing a legal boundary, not an environmental one.
Fish don’t check passports, and currents don’t stop at a line 200 miles offshore. What happens out there directly affects coastal waters, local food security, and whether an Indigenous community eats well in a given season. It’s true, no human lives on the High Seas–not scientists, not fishing fleets, not anyone– Physical presence has never been a test for who gets a say.
As Pacific nations have pointed out for decades, they’re large ocean states with marine knowledge spanning millennia. If no one lives on the High Seas, then standing shouldn’t be decided by geography or fleet size, it should be decided by stewardship and reliance. That framing is worth carrying into January, wherever your delegation sits.
Second: Indigenous knowledge comes with its holders
We’ve watched what happens when Indigenous knowledge enters these negotiations: a smile, filed under colour commentary, a good quote for the report before the “real” technical work begins. It stems from an assumption that Indigenous wisdom is merely nice to have, while modern science is what actually drives decisions.
Here’s the part that gets missed. Indigenous knowledge is generations of observation bound up with governance and responsibility: who’s allowed to take what, when, and why. Reducing it to simple environmental monitoring is its own kind of erasure.
And crucially, this knowledge cannot travel without the people who hold it. Taking their insights while leaving them outside the negotiating room isn’t collaboration,– it is harvesting. We use that word deliberately.
Third: observer status is only the starting point
A few of you have told us observer status is a solved problem. Partly, it is. Right now, the initial proposal of how this Treaty will run lists Indigenous Peoples separately from NGOs. Protecting that distinction at COP 1 is critical.
That distinction matters deeply. Indigenous Peoples don’t work like NGOs: no voluntary memberships, nor grant charters– they carry ancestral authority accountable to their own communities.
But a separate category on paper means very little if Indigenous Peoples cannot use it on their own terms. That means registering through their own institutions rather than squeezing into NGO accreditation, and choosing their own representatives rather than waiting to be nominated by a State Party.
Other international bodies, like the UN Climate Change process, have already proven this works by allowing Indigenous Peoples to accredit and represent themselves directly. The new High Seas Treaty doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, it just needs to adopt a standard that works.
Indigenous Peoples are rights holders, with their own governance and their own way of deciding who speaks for them. Setting up a category for them that reflects this is the first step, making it operational is what makes it meaningful, and that is why. COP1 is so important.
What we’re asking of you
Two clear, achievable priorities:
Make distinct status operational: allow Indigenous Peoples to register, represent themselves, and speak through their own institutions.
Establish the Indigenous Advisory Mechanism: embed traditional knowledge into scientific, capacity-building, benefit-sharing and compliance decisions
These are not new ideas. You’ve heard these priorities discussed in negotiations for a long time. We’re still here advocating for them alongside our Indigenous partners, and we look forward to continuing that work alongside you in January.
What’s at stake if you get this wrong
Whatever you build at BBNJ COP1 runs for years; these bodies don’t get rebuilt every session. Get it wrong, and you’ll have an Agreement that cannot protect marine biodiversity because it is sidelining the people who protected it longest.
Please keep that in mind before you take your seats in January. Say the statements on August 9. But mean them, and follow your words with action.
Negotiators have faced endless complex decisions over the years, but this is a priority that cannot be left behind.
Don’t invite Indigenous Peoples in after you’ve already built the system.
Build it with us.