Related Issues : International Indigenous Rights
Quoted from the Indigenous Overview of Decolonization: Remarks before the UN Special Committee on Decolonization by the WCIP, full document at the Fourth World Documentation Project.
International relations and rules of conduct among nation-states have historically developed with many contradictions. Such
contradictions have been typically a result of efforts among
powerful states to compromise with opposing states while
attempting to maintain and insure the status quo. No other issue
of international relations suffers more from contradictions, over-
simplifications and pressures to maintain the status quo than the
question of the political status of indigenous nations. As
distinct political, social, cultural and economic groupings of
human beings, indigenous nations have born the brunt of
inconsistent and contradictory doctrines of international
relations like no other peoples in the world during the last 2000
years. No other peoples of the world have experienced such
sustained exploitation by others as have the peoples of indigenous
nations and yet continued to endure.
The conventional wisdom of the modern era divides human kind
into a range of strata typically blocked into two categories:
civilized nations and primitive nations. The wayward concepts
born from Social Darwinism have been dangerously applied to insure
the oppressive dominance of one part of human kind over another.
The so-called civilized nations have themselves been divided into
a political and economic hierarchy with the "developed" nations
working to control or manipulate the "developing" nations. The
combined energies of the established nation-states are all too
frequently put to the repression and denigration of the so-called
uncivilized nations. Indeed the nation-states of the world have
entered into a conspiracy of silence regarding the condition of
indigenous nations, so much so as to bring about their final
destruction in the shadows of nation-state exploitation.
The nation-states which dominate the international community
would deny the existence of indigenous nations by first
superimposing arbitrary colonial boundaries across and through
indigenous territories, and then by proclaiming the indigenous
peoples subjects under the control of another nation. As if to
add further insult the colonial nation-states have created nation-
states on the top of indigenous nations, thereby, establishing
neo-colonial states directly suppressing indigenous peoples. The
result of this process is that indigenous peoples have been denied
their own national identity, their territories have been
fragmented and their ability to survive as peoples exercising a
collective will has been dangerously undermined. While this
process has indeed completely destroyed whole cultures -- whole
nations -- thereby consigning them to ancient history or
relegating them to a forgotten past, numerous nations survive.
Indigenous nations are today made up of the descendants of
much older nations predating the modern nation-state. Indigenous
peoples make up nations which are the successors of the peoples who
occupied their territories for thousands of years. Indigenous
peoples are those peoples who are as a result of imposed
colonialism denied access to or control over their own national
system of governance. Indigenous peoples have been coerced into
becoming involuntary citizens of a foreign state and condemned to
the status of a "minority" in their own homeland.
If there are "crimes against humankind" which demand
restitution or wrongs which demand correction the situation of
indigenous nations is one of these which demands to be recognized.
The wrongs done to indigenous nations are so clearly related and
so fundamental to the overall future of humankind that to ignore
them any longer is to permit and condone the gravest crime against
humanity. If the rights of humankind are to be insured and
preserved then the rights of indigenous nations must be placed
upon the table of international debate to aid in the refinement
and full application of international rules of conduct which are
designed to promote respect for basic human values and insure the
right of self-determination of all peoples. The political,
economic, social and cultural future of all peoples are
unalterably linked to the future of indigenous nations, as is the
future of indigenous nations linked to the future of the rest of
humankind. Surely the nations of the world can be moved to leave
the dark ages behind to embrace a new age where instead of
narrowness, standardization, and centralization, human variety,
diversity and difference will be recognized as positive assets
most appropriate to human survival.
 UNPO Monitor, July 2002, The 20th Session of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, offsite transcripts of July 22nd to July 26th meetings.
World Council of Indigenous Peoples, Fourth World Documentation Project, Resolutions and Papers.
International Indigenous Rights Calendar maintained by the Indigenous Peoples' Center for Documentation.
Becoming Visible - Indigenous Politics and Self-Government. A report from a conference held in Tromsø in 1993.
Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization. UNPO is an international organisation created by nations and peoples around the world
who are not represented as such in the world´s principal international organisations,
such as the United Nations.
List of UNPO Publications
Researching Indigenous Peoples Rights Under International Law. Offsite link to a revision of a document prepared for the presentation at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries.
Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism opposition to the Human Genome Diversity Project
Transnational Corporations and Their Effect on the Resources and Lands of Indigenous Peoples, World Council of Indigenous Peoples
The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in International Law
Rights of Indigenous Peoples Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network
International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
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