She Stands Up to Power. Now, She’s Afraid to Go Home.

This article features the story of Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a UN special rapporteur for Indigenous rights, who has recently been targeted on a suspected terrorist list in her home country of the Philippines. Ms.Tauli-Corpuz is from the nation’s largest island, Luzon, and is part of the Kankanaey Igorot Indigenous community. She began her career in activism at a young age by protesting the Vietnam War at sixteen. Later in her life, she became a nurse but continued her activist work by organizing protests against a hydroelectric dam project proposal and campaigning against logging. During that time, however, the Philippines was under martial law, a period which has left Ms.Tauli-Corpuz worried about the present, as current events conjure memories of the past. At the time of the article’s publication, Ms. Tauli-Corpuz had not been back home in two months and had not received any public support from the United States, nor from the head of the United Nations.

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