Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Wachiya!

[Remarks in Cree.]

Please consider for a moment how the world would react if the United Nations General Assembly declared that “all women”, or “all blacks people”, have no fundamental human rights, except as determined in “negotiations” with state parties. This would not be tolerated. Yet this is exactly what is being done to Indigenous peoples in the current World Conference Declaration.

Paragraph 27 of the current draft of the World Conference Declaration, which was adopted at the Third Preparatory Committee meetings in August 2001, contains a paragraph which constitutes a racist attack by the U.N. on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

I will read you one sentence from this discriminatory paragraph:

"The use of the term “indigenous peoples” in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance Declaration and Programme of Action cannot be construed as having any implications as regards the rights that may attach to the term under international law." (End of quote.)

In this technical language, Indigenous peoples all over the world, are being told that the status and fundamental rights that inhere in “All peoples” according to the International Covenants do not inhere in us. Indigenous peoples are being told at this Conference that that our status and human rights as peoples are not recognized and are not applicable. We are being told that our peoples, numbering 400 million or more, are not being recognized as equals among other peoples of the world.

Elsewhere in the same discriminatory paragraph, Indigenous peoples are also being told by the U.N. that the fundamental human rights of all peoples are not universal – but are rather to be determined in “negotiations” that will be subject to the prejudices and self-interest of U.N. state parties.

The U.N. is proposing to contradict the rulings of its own U.N. Human Rights Committee, the body that rules on State Party compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Human Rights Committee has clearly and repeatedly recognized Indigenous peoples as peoples in international law.

There is also other text in the draft declaration that singles out indigenous peoples for restrictive treatment. If the final Declaration contains any language which denies the rights of Indigenous peoples as peoples in international law or subjects our peoples to other restrictions on our rights and protections, the United Nations will be guilty of practising and perpetuating racism and discrimination in its own system. Ironically, this is taking place at a World Conference Against Racism.

These developments, which are taking place at the insistence of the United States with the involvement of a few other states, are unprecedented in modern international law. They reflect some of the worst aspects of colonialism, racial discrimination and official denial of access to universal human rights. If adopted, the paragraphs concerned would be illegitimate and illegal, and would contradict the overall purposes of the World Conference itself.

The government of Canada’s official position is that the right of self-determination applies to all peoples, including indigenous peoples. We applaud this position, which is one of international leadership. However, so far, the Government of Canada has not insisted that these discriminatory paragraphs be deleted from the World Conference Declaration. We do not know of any government at this Conference that is insisting that our right to equal access to universal human rights be upheld.

In the early 1980's, my generation of Cree people in northern Canada learned of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. We invited an African National Congress Representative to address our Cree Annual Assembly in Eeyou Istchee, our subarctic traditional territory.

We heard of systematic oppression, dispossession, discrimination and violation of human rights. The courage of the people struggling against apartheid inspired us. But the story we heard from South Africa also saddened us because this oppression was being undertaken so massively against the black population in South Africa.

We also recognized the racist and colonial syndrome of dispossession and discrimination that was taking place in South Africa from our own experience. As indigenous peoples in North America, this is our story too. My own people, the James Bay Crees, have been virtually completely dispossessed of our lands and resources in the second half of the last century. Like all of the other indigenous peoples in Canada and the Americas, we have been deprived our means of subsistence and our lands, and are being denied our right to benefit fully and equitably from our natural wealth and resources.

Right across Canada, we have been assigned to tiny, marginal areas of land called “Indian reserves”, less than a few per cent of our traditional lands. The Canadian state has retained for itself the resource rights, even under our feet. Our communities are overcrowded. They often lack adequate sanitation and clean drinking water. Many of our people are homeless. Our dwellings are often substandard and dangerously overcrowded. We suffer very high rates of tuberculosis, HIV and other infectious diseases. In some Canadian provinces, although our people are 10% or less of the overall population, we make up the great majority of the prison population.

These conditions, coupled with our mass poverty and unemployment, often lead to hopelessness and despair among our peoples. Sadly, many of our youth are choosing death over life, and we are experiencing epidemic rates of suicide. In some cases we have the highest suicide rates anywhere in the world.

Often, when we protest and assert our rights against our marginalization, landlessness and dispossession, the Canadian state has used force against us -- even lethal force. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, this pattern of state and police violence against indigenous peoples in Canada seemed to worsen.

Most recently, force was used to prevent our people from exercising marine fishing rights. These rights, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, have all been assigned by the Canadian state to non-Aboriginal fishermen, while affected indigenous people are 80 to 90 per cent unemployed. When our people tried to obtain a moderate livelihood from the sea, white mobs burned our boats and beat our people.

The Canadian government intervened only to ram our boats at sea. Many charges laid were laid against our people, who are only trying to survive, through the exercise of fishing rights we have enjoyed for thousands of years. Few if any charges have been laid against those responsible for the violence against our people. As we speak today, this particular situation is flaring up, and we yesterday received an appeal that international monitors be sent to Eastern Canada to ensure that the government and non-indigenous mobs do not repeat last year’s violence against our fishermen.

I realize this may be surprising news for some of you. Canadians, and the government of Canada, present themselves around the world as upholders and protectors of human rights. In many ways, this reputation is well-deserved. In South Africa, the government of Canada played a prominent role in isolating the apartheid regime. In many other countries, Canada provides impressive international development assistance.

However, at home in Canada, the oppression, marginalization and dispossession of indigenous peoples continue.

In 1991 the Canadian federal government appointed a Royal Commission of Inquiry on Aboriginal Peoples to investigate our situation. It included a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1996 this federal Royal Commission of Inquiry reported that (and I quote):

"gross disparities persist between the quality of life of Aboriginal peoples and that of most Canadians. Aboriginal peoples in Canada need much more territory to become economically, culturally and politically self-sufficient. If they cannot obtain a greater share of the lands and resources in this country, they will be unable to build their communities and structure the opportunities necessary to achieve self-sufficiency." (End of quote.)

The Royal Commission went onto deliver an important warning to the government of Canada (and again I quote):

"Currently on the margins of Canadian society, aboriginal peoples will be pushed to the edge of economic, cultural and political extinction." (End of quote.)

I repeat: a federal Commission in Canada has recently warned that our peoples are facing economic, cultural and political extinction.

In 1998 and 1999, the two most important United Nations human rights committees reviewed Canada’s compliance with the International Covenants. These committees ruled that Canada was violating its international human rights obligations towards us, stating:

“There has been little or no progress in the alleviation of social and economic deprivation among Aboriginal people. In particular, the Committee is deeply concerned at the shortage of adequate housing, the endemic mass unemployment and the high rate of suicide, especially among youth in Aboriginal communities, [and] the failure to provide safe and adequate drinking water to Aboriginal communities.”

Canada is one of the most developed and largest countries in the world, with one of the highest standards of living in the world. The situation facing Aboriginal peoples in Canada, however, has correctly been referred to as “Canada’s hidden shame”. [I commend to you an excellent brief report on the situation facing Aboriginal peoples in Canada, prepared by the Grand Council of the James Bay Crees. It is called “Pushed to the Edge of Extinction”. I believe that copies are available at this session and elsewhere.]

Every year, the Canadian government’s own federal Human Rights Commission draws attention to this discriminatory situation, one that stunts and takes the lives of thousands and thousands of our people. Yet little progress is made in addressing the fundamental, underlying cause of our poverty, hopelessness and despair.

This root cause is the one that the South African anti-apartheid representative described to our Cree people in Eeyou Istchee over 20 years ago: landlessness, dispossession, and the social marginalization and exclusion of our peoples.

As an Aboriginal political leader, I have traveled to south-east Asia, to central and south America, and now to Africa. I have seen and heard of conditions that are much worse than those that we face in Canada, including genocide and killing fields against indigenous and other peoples.

But often, the social and other conditions I have seen in Mexico, Thailand and Brazil, for example, are familiar to me as a Canadian indigenous person.

The lesson for me is that colonial and discriminatory policies and practices are not restricted to less-developed parts of the world. They are also to be found in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Scandinavia, to name a few examples. Indigenous peoples everywhere are being “pushed to the edge of extinction” -- even in Canada, where the plentiful land, resources and capacity exists to correct these ongoing injustices.

There is a single, fundamentally important measure of prevention and protection in respect of the status, rights and situation of indigenous peoples everywhere. It is contained in the Draft Programme of Action of this World Conference, where it is urged that “all States ratify without reservations all international instruments providing for equality and non-discrimination”, including the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic Social and Cultural Rights.

In Canada’s case, the government of Canada has signed and ratified most if not all of these instruments. Canada declares that its policy is to regularly submit its human rights record to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, for example, for periodic review, as an example to other states, which Canada sometimes criticizes for failing to do so.

However, as I have mentioned, Canada’s human rights record in respect of its treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada was most recently submitted to the U.N. human rights committees in 1998 and 1999. The U.N. Human Rights Committee issued stinging criticisms of Canada’s policies and practices against indigenous peoples in Canada. It criticized Canada for the incompleteness of its report in respect of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Most importantly, it reminded Canada of its obligation to report fully on its respect for the right of self-determination of indigenous peoples, which is contained in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In meetings with senior officials and even Cabinet Ministers of the Canadian government, I have since been told that the Canadian Government -- while it is willing to discuss such issues as social conditions -- has “no taste for a rights agenda” in respect of indigenous peoples in Canada. This view has been repeated in the last few days in the Canadian press, in response to my participation at this conference.

Here we have the Canadian government, as an international advocate of respect for human rights and United Nations human rights review and enforcement, officially stating at home that it has “no taste for a rights agenda”. It is doing so in respect of the “most pressing human rights challenge facing Canadians.”

If the government of Canada has no taste for a human rights agenda at home, and if the government of Canada has no will to disseminate the critical findings of the United Nations about its human rights record, what example can we use against governments with far worse human rights records?

The U.N Human Rights Committee reminded Canada that indigenous peoples’ rights not to be deprived of our own means of subsistence and to be afforded the benefit of its natural wealth and resources are part of our fundamental human right of self-determination. As stated by the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, if indigenous peoples are not afforded adequate access to lands and resources, our societies face economic, political and cultural extinction. This is true in Canada and it is true everywhere else. For indigenous peoples, this is a matter of our survival.

This is the importance of full international recognition of our right to self determination, at this Conference and everywhere. Our peoples must have the fundamental protections that these rights afford. As some of the most marginalized and dispossessed peoples in the world, we must be able to insist, from a position of enforceable rights, to full access to our lands and resources, and to full respect for our rights as peoples to meaningfully determine our own political futures.

This has nothing to do with secession and indigenous independence movements. There are certainly no such movements among indigenous peoples in Canada, and I have not heard of them anywhere else. The Indigenous peoples I have met from all parts of the world are asking only for just and equitable treatment within the states in which they now live as vulnerable and threatened nations. International law, as all governments know, provides very strong protections for the territorial integrity of all states.

Sadly, for indigenous peoples, however, as a result of the shameless actions of a few powerful states, there is now language in the draft World Conference texts that is a shocking manifestation of international racism and discrimination.

For indigenous peoples, the steps now being taken at this Conference seem to go backwards. It seems to me there is little purpose in discussing other, broader positive measures if discrimination and racism against the most fundamental rights of indigenous peoples is now being put into U.N. General Assembly texts.

There is no place for discriminatory and harmful language of any kind at the World Conference Against Racism, whether it affects indigenous peoples or any other peoples. The measures that need to be taken in Canada and in every other country, must be steps that move indigenous peoples, and all peoples forward.

Thank you. Giyabonga. Miigwetch.