Sofia Kounti
July 1, 2025
In a remote community enveloped in cloudforest, a whistled form of the Indigenous Chinantec language is perfectly adapted to the land and its weather. But who needs whistles when you can use WhatsApp?
Medicinal wisdom is embedded in Indigenous Mixe languages. By sustaining their mother tongue and practices involving herbs and healing rituals, Mixe people keep alive a cosmovision in which they speak to Mother Earth.
When foreign companies restarted mining operations that had been shuttered since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Vareš had high hopes of economic revival. But as the state fails to take a stand against pollution and deforestation, optimism has given way to nostalgia for the socially owned mines of the communist era.
Roma people are routinely excluded from jobs, housing and public services. Yet tens of billions of euros to promote Roma inclusion are vanishing into projects with no transparency or measurable impacts. Our investigation found evidence of some of this EU money being spent on displacing or demonizing Roma communities in Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechia and Italy.
In communities shaped by redlining and disinvestment, the only places to shop are often dollar stores – stocked with plastic goods that have crossed oceans on container ships and rolled across states on eighteen-wheelers. These journeys are long, carbon-heavy, and almost invisible, but their impact is felt from Suzhou to Chicago, from the global climate to the human body.
India and Bangladesh share a 4,000 kilometer-long border, which looms large for children of living alongside it, particularly those whose parents have suffered abuse at the hands of the Border Security Force.
