What have I been doing instead of working? The list is long, ending with reading the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was signed by 144 nations and pointedly NOT signed by 4. The U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. What? We didn’t sign something that says “rights of indigenous peoples?!?”
Clearly, the world would be a better place if most of the articles were adopted. Many of the points (e.g., granting indigenous peoples the right to determine their own form of autonomous government and be selectively exempt from federal law, while still having access to all federal benefits, or the provision that any federal law that “may” affect indigenous peoples would have to be approved specifically by them), if implemented in the U.S., would grant Native American groups more official political rights and benefits than any other comparable group. I dunno. maybe that’s how compensation should proceed, since our great-great-great-great grandparents stole the land from theirs. Justice can be looked at from many points of view, and that’s one of them. Going further, the Delaration reads:
Article 26: Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.
There’s also an option for redress for all lands taken. Like much of the Declaration, this is some very vague language. In the narrowest sense, in the U.S., it might mean that the government couldn’t encroach on Indian Reservations (not even for eminent domain, which would give Native Americans one protection not available to any other citizen, FWIW). In a broader interpretation, the U.S. would have to give back total political, economic and resource control of most of the nation to the various nations of Native Americans. Down with the government and democracy, unless the Mohican Nation decided to let Mayor Bloomberg and the city council keep their jobs. Alternatively, the U.S. would have to compensate Native Americans for the value of their lost lands. I’m guessing that this value would exceed the current federal budget and deficit, put together.
I don’t know if this Declaration is intended to apply to surviving Celts, Saxons, Picts, etc. (what is Europe to do?) I also do not know how, exactly, it applies in the Hispanic world, where there is often a majority of the population whose lineage contains both conquerors and conquered. Who gives what back to whom?
I say “most” of the U.S. would have to be given back, because several groups of Native Americans have been effectively exterminated. Perhaps this underlines the seriousness of the points this Declaration addresses.
There are lots more problematic sections sandwiched between the laudable ones. Maybe, in a transgenerational sense, all these changes are due. But I really don’t think it’s going to happen, and I don’t think it should.
Indigenous peoples are widely abused and exploited, but pursuing justice by handing them large chunks of the world that was stolen from their ancestors will not make the world a better place. The four non-signers of the Declaration did a sensible thing for their constituent nations by refusing to sign a document that looks really wonderful as a text blurb on a newsfeed, but is seriously problematic in detail. Perhaps they should now get together and draft something (probably less idealistic, more messy, and less sexy) that will balance the clearly underchampioned rights of indigenous peoples worldwide with the political and economic realities in historically colonial nations.
I don’t blame the four nonsigers. I wouldn’t have signed this paticular document, either. A healthy historical conscience is not an unrestricted license to ignore the consequences of one’s actions in the present.
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