U.S. Position On UNDRIP Under Review By Obama Administration

U.S.: Obama Urged to Sign Native Rights Declaration

By Haider Rizvi
IPS - Inter Press Service


UNITED NATIONS, May 6 (IPS) - The United States is considering whether to endorse a major U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for the recognition of the rights of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples over their lands and resources."

The position on [this issue] is under review," Patrick Ventrell, spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the U.N., told IPS about the Barack Obama administration’s stance on the non-binding U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Approved by a vast majority of the U.N. member states in September 2007, the General Assembly resolution on the declaration was rejected by the George W. Bush administration over indigenous leaders’ argument that no economic or political power has the right to exploit their resources without seeking their "informed consent."

Three other "settler nations" of European descent, namely Canada, New Zealand and Australia, also voted against the declaration, which states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain their cultures and remain on their land.

However, last month, the new left-leaning government in Canberra reversed its position, announcing support for the declaration.

"We show our respect for indigenous peoples," said Jenny Macklin, a member of the Australian parliament. "We show our faith in a new era of relations between states and indigenous peoples in good faith."

The new government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has also offered an apology to the indigenous communities who suffered at the hands of European settlers for decades.

Indigenous rights activists in the United States say they want the new liberal democratic government in Washington to make a similar move to address the grievances of native communities who have long been subjected to abuse and discrimination.

"The U.S. [should] become a resolute supporter of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," argued James Polk, who writes for Foreign Policy in Focus, a progressive periodical published by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

"It’s a comprehensive document that affirms that indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, and that, in the exercise of their rights, they should be free from their discrimination," he added.

The declaration reflects growing concerns of aboriginal communities about the continued exploitation of their resources and suppression of their cultural vales and practices by commercial concerns and governments that are alien to their cultures.

According to many scientists, the traditional knowledge and cooperation of indigenous communities are vital elements in the global fight against climate change and loss of biodiversity.

During his election campaign, President Obama repeatedly said that he cared about the issues facing Native American communities and insisted that they could trust him – pledges that are now being watched closely.

As [he] reached out to new voter blocs last summer, Obama made a campaign stop at an Indian reservation in Montana, where he told the audience, that, as an African American, he identified with their struggles.

"I know what it’s like to not have always been respected or to have been ignored and I know what it’s like to struggle and that’s how I think many of you understand what’s happened here on the reservation," Obama said.

In his speech, Obama added: "A lot of times you have been forgotten, just like African-Americans have been forgotten or other groups in this country have been forgotten."

In the Nov. 4 presidential elections, a vast majority of Native people voted for Obama, according to Frank LaMere of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, who led the American Indian delegation to the Democratic Convention.

On the campaign trail in Montana, Obama was adopted as an honourary member of the Crow Tribe, a ceremony that natives say is reserved for special guests. On that occasion, he was given a new name, "Barack Black Eagle."

Before Obama became the first-ever non-white president of the United States, the country faced scathing criticism from a Geneva-based U.N. rights body for its treatment of the indigenous communities and objectionable use of their traditional lands and resources.

In March 2006 and again in 2008, a panel of U.S. experts analysed the U.S. government’s treatment of indigenous citizens and ruled that it was guilty of racial discrimination.

Canada, another settler-nation founded on the indigenous territories in North America, has also been scolded by the U.N. Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for its abusive and discriminatory treatment of acts of native communities.

The right-wing government in Ottawa continues to justify its current policies towards the native population as just and fair with no indication whatsoever of a willingness to sign the U.N. document on indigenous peoples’ rights.

In the United States, there appears to be some signs of policy shift with regard to the U.S. government’s relations with the American Indian communities. Some representatives of indigenous tribes are currently working with Obama as advisors.

However, it remains unclear when and if the Obama administration would sign the declaration. "I can’t comment further," said Ventrell about the outcome of discussions on possible U.S. support.
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Article: Copyright © 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service
Image: Copyright 2009 TPM Media LLC

Native Rights News is making this material available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.
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Indigenous Peoples Educate, Inform & Warn at Largest Climate Change Demonstration in U.S. History

First Nation Delegates Deliver Letter to Senator Kerry in Advance of Visit from Canadian Environment Minister

More than 12,000 young people from all corners of the continent gathered in Washington, D.C. over the weekend to take part in today’s second Power Shift Conference.

The blizzard pounding the nation’s capitol apparently has not cooled the ardor of the young climate activists, who seek to change Washington’s "business as usual" attitude toward climate change and clean energy.

Various groups have scheduled more than 350 lobbying meetings with U.S. Congressmen and Senators and their staffs. An estimated 2,500 demonstrators organized by Capitol Climate Action, successfully blocked the five gates leading to the Capitol Power Plant.

Activists targeted the plant as a symbol of what is wrong with government because it burns coal and natural gas and is used to heat the Capitol’s buildings. No arrests were reported, and after four hours, the activists declared victory and raised the blockade.

Among the activists were Indigenous Peoples delegations sent by several Canadian First Nations and Native American tribes from Alaska and the "lower 48" states. One of the major purposes of the Indigenous delegations was to educate, inform and warn both the young climate activists and members of Congress about the catastrophic effects the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is having on their people and their environments.

Jessica Lee, in a post to the Indy Blog this morning reports:

"You have come here to have a voice about the environment. Our ancestors have been telling the government for 200 years to protect the environment," said Travis Brown, a student at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, to a room of more than 175 students who attended a workshop titled, "Decolonizing Our Minds: How Colonization Affects Us Today." Brown noted that native communities across the continent are being adversely impacted not only by mineral and fuel extraction companies, but now are also suffering the effects of climate change on the landscape and eco-systems. "Our people are at the risk of being exterminated."

"Representatives from several Arctic region indigenous communities explained about how the effects of climate change — which are more extreme at the earth’s poles — including melting sea ice, eroding shorelines, thawing tundra and changes to fish, seal, whale and caribou migrations are threatening their entire way of life."

And Mike, in a post to the Environmental Age Dot Com blog, also this morning, reports:

"A delegation of Indigenous youth from Alberta went to Senator Kerry’s office outlining the devastation that is tar sands and rallied with supporters today ahead of Canad’s Environmental Minister, Jim Prentice’s visit to Capitol Hill today and tomorrow.

"They hand delivered a . . . letter express[ing] concern that Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice will misrepresent the disastrous environmental and human rights record of the tar sands to US Congressional leaders."

Following is the letter.

March 2, 2009

Senator John Kerry
Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee
218 Russell Bldg.
Second Floor
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

Please allow us to present you with a different perspective on Canada’s tar sands than you are likely to hear from Canadian Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice.

We came together this year at the Powershift gathering in Washington, DC, as members of Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Lubicon Cree Nation to share our stories with 11,000 youth from across North America. We came with messages of destruction and devastation wrought by the tar sands in our communities, but also feelings of hope that together we can contribute to building a more sustainable world for our communities and future generations. These ideas of a greener sustainable world are familiar to us as an ancient First Nations way of life.

Dangerous toxic chemicals used in the extraction of tar sands are contaminating water systems stretching all the way to the arctic basin and adversely affecting communities along the way including Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Expansion of the tar sands is a direct attack on who we are as a people. Many First Nation peoples believe in the medicine wheel with four elements: earth, water, air and fire—three are polluted by these projects. Destroying these elements destroys who we are. The tar sands are killing us.

Beaver Lake Cree Nation is also being encroached upon by rapidly expanding tar sands infrastructure and development. Natural gas wells used to power oil production in the tar sands are almost literally in the community’s backyards. Pollution from these projects adversely affecting peoples’ health, way of life and violate established treaty rights. Animals are dying, disappearing, and being mutated by the poisons dumped into our river systems. If there is no fish, we cannot fish, if there is no more game, we cannot hunt. Our traditional lands and water houses our culture. They are one and the same. Once we have destroyed these fragile eco-systems we will have also destroyed our peoples and trampled our treaty rights.

Construction of the Transcanada North Central Corridor pipeline, set to cross through the traditional territory of Lubicon Lake First Nation without the consent of the community is an outright violation of human rights and inherent rights of the community as Indigenous peoples. With oil and logging already impacting this territory, expansion of oil infrastructure will continue to wreck havoc on the land and displace even more wildlife.

Our communities are looking for energy solutions that provide a healthy sustainable community for our future generations. The sustainable future for First Nations in Alberta, Canada and the United States of America alike, cannot be achieved by further exploiting one of the dirtiest, most energy intensive and destructive sources of oil on the planet. It's time we focus our efforts on building a clean sustainable future that puts our people to work in a safe, green energy economy.

Senator Kerry, we urge your leadership in the Congress to:

• 
  Respect and recognize established treaty rights during the Clean Energy Dialogue: These discussions will surely frame the future of energy in our countries. They will also determine the whether culturally significant and bio-diverse regions of our respective countries, as well as the livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples that inhabit this turtle island, are preserved.
• 
  Focus the Clean Energy Dialogue on renewable energy and energy efficiency: The main focus of the dialogue should be on clean energy efforts and include wind, solar, and other renewable fuels and on transportation solutions such as electrified transportation and high speed rail.

Sincerely,

Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Lubicon Cree Nation
Gitz Crazyboy, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Myron Lameman, Beaver Lake Cree Nation

cc:
Minister Jim Prentice
Secretary Steven Chu
Secretary Kenneth Salazar
Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley
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News Sources: Environment News Service, The Indypendent, The Environmental Age Dot Com

Image Source: Capitol Climate Action

Native Rights News is making this material from the news oganizations and blogs listed above available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Recent Legal Victories Uphold Indigenous Land Rights

Recent legal victories affirm rights of indigenous peoples to ownership and control of their ancestral lands - pressure on holdout nations mounts

by Perry H. Chesnut, Editor NRN

Published January 14, 2009


On January 8, 2009, we published the UN press release in which the special rapporteur for indigenous rights praised the Nicaraguan government for demarcating and granting legal title to ancestral lands belonging to the Awas Tingni Community, an indigenous people who occupy an area on the Atlantic Coast of the country.

This victory of a small indigenous community came after more than a decade of struggle and is important for indigenous people not only in the Americas, but around the world because, as stated by the press release, "This was the first case in which an international tribunal with legally binding authority found a Government in violation of the collective land rights of an indigenous group, setting an important precedent in international law."

Although the United States and Canada are members and purport to be staunch supporters of the Organization of American States (OAS), both have failed to ratify the organization's American Convention on Human Rights. Such ratification not only adopts the articles of the convention that define the duties and obligations of nation-states to indigenous peoples, but also serves as a legally binding acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.

Despite their much-trumpted claims of being champions of human rights, the U.S. and Canada have a long history of rejecting international declarations of the rights of indigenous peoples. As everyone who follows these issues knows, out of the entire UN General Assembly, only the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against the UN DRIP that was enacted on September 13, 2007. And as we reported recently in OAS Moves Forward on DRIP Tailored to Needs of Indigenous Peoples in Western Hemisphere - U.S. Expresses "Reservations", the "U.S. government has submitted statements to the [OAS] working group outlining its general reservations about the outcome of each negotiation session" in the drafting of an OAS American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It seems obvious that the U.S. and Canada are unlikely to ratify any human rights treaty that would allow aggrieved Indian tribes and nations to bring cases against them in any international tribunal - for the very reason that such tribunals are not captive instruments of the powerful global corporations that control U.S. and Canadian policy. For the present, U.S. and Canadian indigenous groups must resort to their own national courts and legislatures, which are riddled with obvious conflicts of interest and hardly unbiased.

Having said this, however, I should note that of the OAS' thirty-five member nations, twenty-four have ratified the Convention on Human Rights and twenty-two have officially accepted the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. For these nations, the decision is a legally binding precedent that upholds the right of indigenous peoples to ownership and control of their ancestral homelands. As James Anaya, who was present at the land titling ceremony said, "In addition, it provides a model for other Governments to comply with their international legal obligations to recognize and protect the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands and resources in practice."

This landmark decision upholding Indigenous land rights is the first to come from an international tribunal. But there have been similar decisions won by indigenous groups in the supreme courts of their own countries (Mayan Indians in Belize in October 2007, and Indians in Brazil in December 2008). One suspects that a tidal wave of international public opinion recognizing the important role that indigenous peoples play in the protection of the planet and its ecosystems, as well as the growing global demand for basic human rights is now beginning to drive court decisions. If so, it will not be long before countries that refuse to sign and live up to human rights and indigenous rights treaties will be seen as pariah states that intend to continue their past practices of genocide, colonialism and exploitation of their native populations. Eventually, the citizens of hold-out countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand will demand that their governments sign and ratify the various human rights treaties and live up to their responsibilities as members of the greater global community.

One final point I would like to make regarding the Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua case. The Awas Tingni Community would not have made it to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights had they not received the ongoing legal assistance of the Indian Law Resource Center with offices in Helena, Montana and Washington, D.C. Mr. James Anaya, Professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and member of the Indian Law Resource Center; Ms. Maria Luisa Acosta, associate attorney in Nicaragua; and Mr. Todd Crider of the firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett all assisted the Awas Tingni in bringing their case before the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and served as "Legal Advisors to the Commission" in its pursuit of the case in the international court.

For more information about this landmark case in international law upholding the land rights of indigenous peoples, you can find links to copies of the complaint and the court's decision, as well as an archive of articles that have been written about the case on this page at the Indian Law Resource Center.
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© Copyright Alliance for Indigenous Rights 2009

Native Rights News hereby grants permission for this article or portions of it to be copied and republished on condition that the author and Native Rights News is given attribution. In addition, if the article or a portion of it is published over the Internet, a link to this page must be included.

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Posted By Perry Chesnut, Editor to Native Rights News at 1/14/2009 09:41:00 AM