CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

United Nations Commission on Human Rights 

7th Intercessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
January 27 - February 8, 2002
Intervention by the International Indian Treaty Council on Collective Rights as they relate to the Right of Self-Determination

 

Thank-you Mr. Chairman.  My name is Ron Lameman.  I'm from the Cree Nation.  I
bring the greetings from my brothers and sisters of the Indigenous Delegations to this very important meeting that will deliberate the Draft U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

It is our sincere hope that the governmental delegations present here will use good faith, and work with us in the spirit of cooperation so that we can collectively accomplish the task that has been bestowed upon us by the Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/32, to deliberate a Draft of Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People based on the text of the Sub-Commission.

 

I am making this statement on behalf of the International Indian Treaty Council and our affiliate organizations participating in this session: The Kuna Youth Movement, Napguana Association of Panama, Chickaloon Village Traditional Council of Alaska, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, U.S.A., Continental Network of Indigenous Women, Mexico, Coalition of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations of the Isthmus. Oaxaca Mexico, The Grand Council of the Crees, and my organization the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations of Western Canada.

 

Mr. Chairman, Collective Rights are a very integral part of our Right of Self-Determination as Indigenous Peoples and are not at the present time enunciated nor guaranteed in any instruments of the United Nations.  Throughout the more than two decades of our participation at the United Nations, we have made numerous interventions on these important and fundamental rights.  Even at the local level within our dealings with colonial governments our stand has always been constant.

 

The colonial governments can not give nor can they take away what has been granted to us by the Great Spirit or Manito as we know Him.  Self - Determination and the Collective Rights inherent within are Sacred, God-Given rights that we were blessed with as the Indigenous Peoples by Manito, the Great Spirit.  The only right and just thing that the colonial governments can do in this regard is to give formal recognition to these rights within their colonial and neo colonial systems.  However, because they don't
do that, does not mean that those rights do not exist.

In many cases the affluence and high standards of living that are now enjoyed by some colonial and neo colonial governments is a direct result of a recognition of the rights through the International Treaties signed and negotiated by our ancestors in good faith with the various colonial monarchies of Europe.

 

Mr. Chairman, in the Indigenous World the term "We the People" is taken  seriously and is what guides our interactions in our everyday lives and in our dealings with other peoples of the world.  Within the Indigenous Nations of the world you seldom hear the word "I" when it comes to dealings that have an impact on the common good of the Indigenous Nation. 

Within our Indigenous Nations, the collective good of the peoples is paramount over the
rights of the individual.  That is not to say that the rights of the individual are not respected.  On the contrary, the rights of the individual are respected as long as they do not take away from the collective good of the People.

 

This premise is the very key to the survival of not only our Peoples, but the survival of the planet as a whole.  The huge problems in this world with the environment are caused in most part by individuals who are not respecting the right to life of peoples as a whole.

 

Huge tracts of forest are being clear-cut so that multi-national and transnational corporations can profit.  In most cases these corporations are owned by a number of individuals.  So whole Nations of Indigenous Peoples are displaced and their traditional way of life either altered or destroyed so that individuals can benefit.

 

Mr. Chairman, it is not only for the benefit of Indigenous Peoples that the Collective Rights need to be recognized and respected, but it is also for the benefit of your children and grandchildren.  As the Caretakers of Mother Earth, we the Indigenous Peoples and Nations of the World have been successful caretakers since time immemorial, and it has taken colonial and neo colonial powers only a short period of time to bring us to the brink of environmental, socio-economic and cultural disaster.

 

The situation that we are faced with today is very clear to the Indigenous Peoples and Nations of the World.  The essence and respect of Collective Rights had brought us through untold thousands of years and the foreign, self-serving concept of individual rights has brought us to the brink of disaster in a few short years of colonial and neo colonial domination.  We leave it in the hands of the true great thinkers of this world to be enlightened and to decide for themselves which concept is more acceptable.

 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would like to remind this assembly that Indigenous Peoples were not involved in the drafting of the current international instruments and that is the reason why the Indigenous World View is absent from those instruments,  the missing piece of the puzzle you might say.  If your way was the only way or the right way we would not t be on the brink of global conflict and global environmental,
socio-economic and cultural disaster.

 

It is our sincere hope that these two weeks will bring us closer to an understanding.  As it has been foretold by the Elders of Great Turtle Island, "One day the white man will have no choice but to come to an understanding with the Indigenous Peoples."