The experience of Indigenous Peoples, both in society and in the life of churches, is still to a great extent a story of continued exclusion and oppression. Marginalization is their continuing reality around the globe. Indigenous struggles for justice and for preservation and protection of their rights, cultural identity, spirituality, and traditional sustainable lifestyles are fundamental to their human dignity and survival.
The worldviews, spiritualities, cultures and experiences of Indigenous Peoples are distinct. At the heart of their struggles for survival as self-determining people is maintenance of spiritual, cultural, social, economic, and political integrity. Indigenous concerns are therefore central not only to the WCC’s Mission from the Margins programme but also to the whole ecumenical fellowship and its Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.
Indigenous Peoples invite all Christians to envision with them "a new earth and new heaven" as promised in the Bible and as seen in the common vision of marginalized peoples' everywhere.