diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index fad1c77db7..6e5b4adc1c 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -623,6 +623,9 @@ Release 2.6.0 - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-10873. Fix dead link in Configuration javadoc (Akira AJISAKA 
     via aw)
 
+    HADOOP-10968. hadoop native build fails to detect java_libarch on
+    ppc64le (Dinar Valeev via Colin Patrick McCabe)
+
 Release 2.5.0 - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/JNIFlags.cmake b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/JNIFlags.cmake
index 8333285f2f..c558fe8c55 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/JNIFlags.cmake
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/JNIFlags.cmake
@@ -78,6 +78,12 @@ IF("${CMAKE_SYSTEM}" MATCHES "Linux")
         SET(_java_libarch "amd64")
     ELSEIF (CMAKE_SYSTEM_PROCESSOR MATCHES "^arm")
         SET(_java_libarch "arm")
+    ELSEIF (CMAKE_SYSTEM_PROCESSOR MATCHES "^(powerpc|ppc)64le")
+        IF(EXISTS "${_JAVA_HOME}/jre/lib/ppc64le")
+                SET(_java_libarch "ppc64le")
+        ELSE()
+                SET(_java_libarch "ppc64")
+        ENDIF()
     ELSE()
         SET(_java_libarch ${CMAKE_SYSTEM_PROCESSOR})
     ENDIF()