United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act has celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, Indian Country Today Media Network's Rick Kearns reports. The law allows American Indians to repatriate ancestral remains, burial objects and other sacred ceremonial objects from the archives of museums.

There may be as many as one million indigenous ancestral remains and cultural objects internationally, the director of the Association on American Indian Affairs’ (AAIA) International Repatriation Project estimates. The right to ancestral remains and cultural objects also has been recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
 

Canada's Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett says that her country will implement the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Metro Toronto reports. Bennett is part of new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.

The UN Declaration goes further than the constitutional protection requiring the Canadaian government to consult with indigenous peoples on issues that might affect their interests.

Yesterday was the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, which was focused on the health of indigenous peoples, their access to health services and gaps in social services.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007, "'affirms the right to maintain indigenous health practices as well as to have access to all social and health services for the enjoyment of the highest standards of physical and mental health,"' Merh News Agency reports.

Inter Press Service's Aruna Dutt reports that climate change could have a disproportionate impact on the health of indigenous peoples because of their "'dependence upon and close relationship with the environment and its resources.'"

There have been a lot of headlines about a Canadian truth and reconciliation commission taking that country to task for how it has treated its indigenous peoples.

The Truth and Reconcilaition Commission has called for Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, The Toronto Globe and Mail's Kim Mackrael reports. But critics are raising the concern that the declaration isn't compatible with Canadian law: "At issue is a legal requirement to consult and accommodate aboriginal people in circumstances in which their rights may be affected. Ottawa has argued that a shift to free, prior and informed consent – a concept envisioned in the UN declaration – could go further, possibly giving aboriginal people the power to veto a proposed project," Mackrael reports. But aboriginal groups point out that the rights in the document are relative, not absolute.

Even though Canada endorsed the non-binding declaration, it has not taken any steps to implement its protections for indigenous peoples.

The landmark World Conference of Indigenous Peoples has been far from the limelight "during a frantic week in New York when world leaders gathered to discuss climate change and the security situation in Syria and Iraq," Radio Australia reports. Kalama Oka Aina Niheu, who is from Hawaii, told Radio Australia that the conference did not provide an avenue for indigenous peoples to voice their concerns about climate change and demilitarization because those issues were kept off that UN conference's agenda. The North American Indian Peoples caucus withdrew its support from the conference, she reports. As a result, she expressed a concern that the conference would be turned into an international version of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and "people who are going to be supported and uplifted in this process are going to be people who support extractive industries and who support mechanisms that actually disempower indigenous peoples," she said in the interview.

The United National General Assembly "approved a document strengthening the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. The Outcome Document was endorsed by consensus at the start of the first World Conference on Indigenous Peoples," the Associated Press reports. Seven years ago, the UN also adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

According to the AP, Aili Keskitalo, president of the Sami Parliament in Norway, said that the outcome document recognizes that indigenous peoples will be allowed to participate in UN actions that affect their communities.

Intellectual Property Watch reports that "a panel addressing negotiators this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization asserted the property rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities over traditional knowledge and genetic resources and called on delegates to draft an international instrument compliant with their internationally recognised rights." The WIPO meeting took place this week.

James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, "criticised a proposal to exclude from disclosure requirement traditional knowledge in the public domain, and considered that databases or similar mechanisms might be useful but may not always be culturally appropriate, for instance where customary laws forbid disclosure to non-community members," Intellectual Property Watch further reported.

United Nations Special Rapporteur James Anaya said at a meeting earlier this month that one of the challenges for indigenous peoples' health is "how indigenous women living near oil, gas and mining operations are '"vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, which are often introduced with a rapid increase of extractive workers in indigenous areas,'" The First Perspective, Canada's source for news about indigenous peoples, reports. Anaya, who is the rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, also noted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires "'in its articles 21, 22(1), 23 and 24 a framework for protecting and promoting indigenous peoples’ health. Together, these articles affirm indigenous peoples’ equal right to the 'highest attainable standard of physical and mental health' (art. 24); their right to improve their economic and social conditions (art. 21); and their right to 'determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development' (art. 23)."

Oxfam's Emily Greenspan writes about threats to a Peruvian law requiring the consultation of indigenous people before development occurs. Peru is apparently considering foregoing such consultation in its most productive oil block. "This would violate Peru’s indigenous peoples’ consultation law and the human rights of the indigenous communities inhabiting the area, as articulated in the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," Greenspan writes. There already has been extreme pollution in that block: "Oil companies have dumped millions of barrels of production waters directly into the Tigre, Corrientes, Pastaza, and Marañon rivers in Block 192 over the last four decades," Greenspan further writes.
 

Matthew H. Birkhold, a visiting scholar at the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, writes for Bloomberg that it was a double-edged sword for the Annenberg Foundation to purchase 24 sacred American Indian objects that were auctioned off by a Paris auction house. The foundation plans to return the objects to the Hopi and the San Carlos Apache tribes. Even though the foundation denounced the sale of cultural property, it legitimized commerce in cultural property by participating in the auction, Birkhold opines.

The best solution for indigenous peoples to regain their cultural property that is not protected by intellectual property law is to work within the legal system, Birkhold argues: "The best bet for indigenous people to secure their cultural property is through the legal system, where taking a principled stand could pay dividends. A developing legal framework provides the tools to restore cultural artifacts to their rightful owners. In addition to the 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Convention, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples explicitly establishes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain, control and protect their cultural heritage and obligates signatory states to take effective measures to protect their right to do so. This framework needs to be strengthened. In the meantime indigenous groups can further develop the law while making progress in its shadow."