Inside Russia's War on Indigenous Voices

A letter to Daria Egereva — arrested at dawn, charged with terrorism, guilty only of defending her people

Background: Daria Egereva is a Selkup Indigenous leader from Western Siberia, a mother, a climate activist, and one of the most respected Indigenous rights defenders in the world. On December 17, 2025, Russian authorities broke down her door in the early morning hours and arrested her. She has been detained in a Moscow prison ever since — charged with terrorism for the crime of defending her people.

Dear Daria,

I first heard your name in December shortly after your arrest. I saw your beautiful face many times while scrolling social media. Arrested. Detained. Russia. Help.

Since then I’ve heard about you more. And I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Taken from your home, your children, your husband, your life, your freedom, your advocacy, your people. Jailed. You are not being jailed alone. You are being held with all of us, on behalf of us — and it breaks my heart to know this.

I was arrested in January 2024 on my home territories in Treaty 6, Alberta while doing my job. I felt the startling and jarring reality of how lightly Indigenous rights are hanging by a thread. Although I was only held in a cold and bare and lonely cell room for half a day, it stung deeply. I felt the intense uncertainty and pain and fear. Even after, for months before the charges were dropped against me, I felt the intimidation, the depression and heaviness of it all. So I cannot imagine what it’s like for you in Russia — one of the worst places on earth to stifle human rights. In their prison. The darkness. The stripping of who you are. But I know you have a strength, a sacred strength in you carried from your ancestors. This is something we share in common.

From how people around the world adore you and are pleading and advocating for your release — our people around the world have been stifled for hundreds of years, and you have risen up in your work to gracefully and powerfully defend your people, rights, traditions and cultures.

Right now, as I write this, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is convening in New York City. Leaders, advocates, knowledge keepers and warriors from every corner of the earth have gathered — from the Arctic to the Amazon, from the Pacific Islands to the plains of Siberia. Your plains. Your people’s home. And you are not there. Your seat is empty. Your voice — one of the most important in global Indigenous climate advocacy — is absent from rooms where it is desperately needed. Where decisions are being shaped that will affect the Selkup people, and every Indigenous nation fighting to survive on a heating planet. The world is meeting without you, Daria. And that absence is not just a loss — it is a wound. It is a message from the Kremlin that your voice is dangerous enough to silence. And in that, they have told us everything we need to know about how powerful you truly are.

Your wisdom belongs in those halls. Your presence belongs at that table. Instead, Russia has locked you in the dark while the world gathers in the light. That is not justice. That is not law. That is fear — their fear of you.

If you don’t know Daria Egereva’s name, learn it. Say it. Shout it. She is one of us — a mother, an Indigenous woman, a defender of the earth and the peoples who have always protected it. Her imprisonment is not a distant geopolitical story. It’s an attack on every Indigenous person who has ever dared to stand up, speak out, or show up at a table where power would rather not see them.

I don’t know you, Daria. But I too adore you. I am thankful for you. I’m praying for you from afar. The world demands your immediate and unconditional release. You must be free.

Courtesy of IISD/ENB Angeles Estrada

From left: Olga Kostrova, Aviana Enmynkau and Pavel Sulyandziga. Photo: Brandi Morin.

They Came to New York to Speak for You

At the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City, I sat with your colleagues — people who know you, who have stood beside you, who are now standing in the gap your absence has torn open. They asked me to bring their words to the world. So here they are, Daria. Testimony. Witness. Love.

Aivana Enmynkau, a Siberian Yupik Indigenous leader, told me she has known you since 2021. She remembered meeting you when she was a student at the Russian People’s Friendship University — and you were already deep in your work, engaged in youth programs at the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North. She described you simply, and it moved me. “She’s a very friendly person,” Aivana said. “A very helpful person.” She told me you were targeted precisely because you were prominent and independent — a leader whose work could not be controlled by Russian authorities, and that is exactly what made you a threat in their eyes. Aivana herself is now living outside of Russia. She told me she cannot go back. She told me she believes she too is at risk of retaliation simply for being here, at the UN, speaking your name. She is taking that risk anyway. For you.

Olga Kostrova, an Indigenous Chulym woman representing one of Russia’s critically small Indigenous peoples — a nation of only 382 people, whose language is almost completely lost, with only around ten fluent speakers remaining — spoke with a quiet and devastating clarity. She said that on December 17, 2025, the same day you were arrested in Moscow, searches were conducted across at least ten regions of Russia. At least 17 Indigenous leaders and activists were questioned and interrogated. And then she said something that stopped me cold. Her home was searched too. For seven hours. They took her phone. They took her devices. They took her human rights literature — books and reports on human rights, carried out of her home like evidence of a crime. “All this is being done to silence our voices,” she said. “To prevent us from our human rights activities. But we understand that if we stop speaking out, these human rights violations will continue.” She is here in New York, Daria, still speaking. Still standing.

Pavel Sulyandziga — PhD in Economics, Chairperson of the Board of the International Development Fund of Indigenous Peoples in Russia (BATANI), currently a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, and a political refugee living in exile in the United States — leaned forward and told me what happened to you the morning of your arrest. It’s the detail I cannot shake. He told me it is standard Russian practice — the security forces come in the early hours. Four, five, six in the morning. When people are sleeping. When families are home. That is when they came for you. He said you and your family were sleeping when they began breaking down your doors. Everyone who entered was armed. Guns. Ammunition. Into your home. Into your family’s sleep. I thought about your children. I could not stop thinking about your children.

Pavel hasn’t been home since 2016. When his mother died, he couldn’t go back to bury her. His son remains on their home territory and is still called in, from time to time, to the offices of Russia’s Federal Security Services for interrogation. His family is still being used as leverage. Russia has formally designated him a terrorist and opened a criminal case against him — not for violence, not for conspiracy, but for the same thing they are holding you for. Speaking. Defending. Refusing to be silent. And still, he shows up. A scholar, an exile, a witness. At the UN. At every multilateral space where truth is still allowed through the door. Defending Indigenous rights, he told me, is not terrorism. And he wanted me to make sure the world knows what is happening in Russia. “A lot needs to be written and spoken about this in the media,” he said. Because that — the witness, the record, the noise the world makes — is one of the few tools left.

All three of them, Daria, speaking in rooms you should be standing in. Carrying your name through halls your feet should be walking. And they are not alone. Amnesty International has issued an urgent action calling for your immediate and unconditional release, declaring you a prisoner of conscience — imprisoned solely for your peaceful human rights work. Cultural Survival, one of the oldest and most respected Indigenous rights organizations in the world, has been amplifying your case globally, refusing to let the world look away. Human rights defenders, Indigenous leaders, diplomats, and advocates from across every continent have raised their voices — at the UN, in open letters to President Putin, in petitions, in press conferences, in the streets. The international solidarity campaign #FreeDariaEgereva grows louder by the day. The world is watching, Daria. The world is not letting go.

They have not forgotten you. They will not stop.

And neither will I.

Daria speaking on International Biodiversity Day 2024.

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Brandi Morin is an award-winning Cree and Iroquois journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta and the founder of Indigenous Insider. To take action for Daria Egereva’s release, visit daria-egereva.org.