198502GlennpresentationToUN

COAIM BLOG
(latest news,
updates, opinions,
etc.)

CO AIM
principles
councils
history
photos
in the media

LATEST NEWS
community
upcoming events
urgent issues

MEDIA
alternative
indigenous
mainstream

RESOURCES
educational
legal
perspectives
links

STRUGGLES
native struggles

THE RIGHT OF PEOPLES TO SELF-DETERMINATION AND ITS APPLICATION TO PEOPLES UNDER COLONIAL OR ALIEN DOMINATION OR FOREIGN OCCUPATION
Written statement submitted by the International Treaty Council Council, a Non-Governmental Organization in consultative status (Category II).

The International Indian Treaty Council has been participating in the meetings of the Human Rights Commission for seven years, and each year we become more dismayed by the duplicity of members such as the United States and Canada in their position on human rights,

These countries state both their concern for human-rights around the world and their commitment to historical accuracy, It is impossible for us as Indian peoples, and as the most immediate victims of Canadian and American neo-colonialism, to take their assertions seriously,

In this fortieth year since the defeat of Hitlerism, it is important to remember the historical accuracy of the fact, as documented by historian John Toland, that Hitler praised the efficiency with which the United States massacred and subjugated Indian peoples. It is not surprising to us that the policies of The United States, a country which even now refuses to ratify the Human Rights Covenants, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, were used as a model by the genocidal Third Reich.

More troubling than the desire of Canada and the United States to rewrite history, is their attempt to convince the international community that they have reversed or reformed their reprehensible practices as regards Indian peoples. Unfortunately, we .must inform this respected Commission that the colonization of Indian nations by the United States and Canada continues today, and the colonial oppression experienced by Indian peoples today exposes the hypocrisy of these countries in the human rights arena,

It should be enough that as a direct result of the policies of the United States and Canada, Indian peoples find themselves at the bottom of every Socio-economic category in those countries, It should be enough that our lands have been stolen or destroyed through government-sanctioned exploitation by multinational corporations, in contradiction to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CCPR-CESCR), Article I, paragraph 2. It should be enough that Indian women have been sterilized as a matter of policy, and our children have been removed forcibly from our families to be raised in non-Indian communities in direct contradiction to Article II, parts (c), (d), and (e) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,

It should be enough that our traditional governments have been destroyed and replaced by colonial puppet regimes in violation of Part I, Article ~ of CCPR and CESCR, that our religious ceremonies and traditional languages have been prohibited in contradiction to the Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Cooperation, and that we have been subjected to a concerted governmental policy of assimilation and cultural destruction.

It should be enough that Indians experience the lowest per capita income and the highest unemployment in the United States and Canada, at times exceeding ninety percent in Indian regions. It should be enough that health and housing conditions for Indian peoples are the worst in those countries, with the highest rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, cancer in women, diabetes, adolescent suicide, heart and liver disease, and that over sixty percent of Indian housing is substandard.

All of these disgraceful facts should be enough to prevent the self-congratulation and self-praise of the United States and Canada. Yet, apparently it is not. Today, the ethnocide and political and economic colonialism experienced by Indian peoples continues. More importantly, efforts by Native peoples to retain their sovereign dignity and to assert their right to self-determination as colonized peoples, as embodied in the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, are met with increasing oppression.

The indigenous peoples of Canada, represented by the Coalition Of First Nations continue to assert their right to self-determination despite Canada's assertion to the contrary. As a people in a colonized country, we have the inalienable right to choose freely and on terms of equality our own political, economic and social system, and our own international status. However, Canada continues to insist upon their right to define and determine the citizenship of the Indian communities. On 25 January 1985, the Canadian Minister of Indian Affairs announced his Government's intention to amend unilaterally, legislation which controls the definition and registration of indigenous peoples. This centralized control of Indian status and membership, along with the imposition of alien forms of government on Indian nations, and the control of Indian lands and resources, are the key features of Canada's assimilation policy.

Under the Canadian proposals, persons who are racially part Indian would be enrolled on the Indian lists, in complete disregard of the need of Indigenous Peoples to protect their political, economic, and social system, The position of the Canadian government is unacceptable because the proposed legislation, premised on the right to determine our group's identity on the basis of race, is contrary to the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Canada wishes to deal with Indigenous Peoples through an internal administrative system designed to promote termination of our landbase and governmental structure and assimilation of our people into the Canadian state. Canada cannot deny the fundamental right of Indigenous Peoples to enjoy and exercise our right to self-determination.

In the United States, Public Law 95-531 threatens 10,000 members of the Dine and Hopi nations with forced relocation from their territories by July,1986. Their only crime being the assertion of their sovereign right to territorial integrity, cultural independence, and the right to economic subsistence.

The repossession of the He Sapa (Black Hills) by the Lakota Sioux people has been met with threats of violence and imprisonment by the security forces of the United States, According to the United States Supreme Court, the He Sapa, the most important spiritual location to the Sioux Nation, was stolen in contradiction to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Although the Court acknowledged the theft of Sioux lands by the United States, they refused to return them to the rightful custodians. When members of the Sioux Nation returned to the He Sapa to reclaim their stolen lands, the United States unleashed its legal and military apparatus to deny the Lakota people their birthright.

For Indian nations of the Pacific Northwest, the exercise of their sovereign right to fish for their subsistence, a right guaranteed by international treaty with the United States, now results in the arrest and imprisonment of Indian fishers. This destroys Indian culture and means of subsistence in violation of Article I, Paragraph 2 of each of the International Human Rights Covenants. It has also prompted state initiatives to abrogate all 371 of the treaties' signed between Indian nations and the United States.

Both the United States and Canada have a history of ostracizing and ignoring the traditional governmental leaders of Indian nations. The colonial administrators of the United States and Canada favor the puppet regimes which have been imposed over the will of Indian people. Indian collaborators are promised federal funding and other favors to enlist support in a sea of poverty and colonialism.

Regardless of the attempts by Canada and the United States to break the will of Indian peoples, despite their self-praise for allocating monies allegedly for Indian programs that result only in the bloating of their own bureaucracies, despite the repression experienced by Indian nations both politically and economically, the struggle for Indian self-determination will be neither intimidated nor dissuaded from its goals.

Indian peoples refuse any longer to be denied our inalienable right to determine our destinies. We have entered the international arena to proclaim our position as the original sovereigns of our lands, and now to assume our rightful place among the community of nations; We will continue our resistance to all colonial attempts to deny our existence as peoples, and as sovereign nations. No longer will our people be killed and imprisoned and our lands stolen or destroyed without appropriate responses by Indian peoples, The United States, Canada, and other countries which oppress Indigenous nations would be better advised to try to prevent the sun from rising, or the wind from blowing, than to try to stop the groundswell of Indigenous nations in claiming our right to self-determination as dignified and free people.