In Chile, expansion of the extractive and forestry industries continues. Combined with the slow progress in resolving land claims, this creates ongoing tensions between the authorities and Indigenous Peoples, particularly the Mapuche.

In a worrying development in 2008, a regional prosecutor tried to use an anti-terrorism law against protesters supporting Mapuche claims.

Residents of the mainly Indigenous Mixteca town of Santo Domingo Ixcatln, in Oaxaca State, came under siege by about 50 men armed with rifles and AK-47s. The attackers were working for a local political boss closely connected to municipal officials, who stood to profit from the sale of communal lands.

For months, the group threatened those who opposed the sale and killed three of them in April 2008. Before the siege, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had ordered Mexican authorities to provide protective measures to 177 people in the area.

Conflict has erupted in other communities over the operations of mining companies. Members of the community of Huizopa, in Chihuahua State, demanded that a mining company's operations on communal lands respect the agreements the company had made with the community. Those supporting the protests faced threats and police repression.

In Colombia, members of Afro-descendant communities living in the Jiguamiandó y Curvaradó River Basins are trying to protect their lands from the expansion of illegal African Palm plantations.

This has led to threats against community members and the killing of leaders like Walberto Hoyos Rivas on October 14, 2008.

Subsistence farmers and Indigenous communities living in other areas of economic interest also have been attacked in order to force them to flee, clearing the way for large-scale economic development.

In Canada, large-scale oil and gas development has drastically reduced the ability of the Lubicon Cree to maintain their traditional economy and way of life. The result has been severe impoverishment and devastating levels of poverty-related disease.

The value of oil and gas extracted from Lubicon lands has been estimated to exceed $14 billion. None of this wealth has been shared with the Lubicon.

Almost twenty years ago, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that the scale and pace of development on the Lubicon territory endangered their culture and way of life. The Committee said that this development would be an ongoing violation of the Lubicon's fundamental human rights, unless the Lubicon and the federal government reached a negotiated settlement. The last negotiations broke down in 2003 over issues such as compensation. Oil and gas development on the disputed land continues.