It's time to adopt declaration on Indigenous rights

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is making its second trip through the Parliament of Canada, and hopefully this time it will receive the support of the Senate.

The history of the declaration goes back decades and Indigenous people from Canada played a significant role.

George Manuel from the Shuswap Nation in British Columbia played a major role in the early days of organizing internationally. He was the former leader of National Indian Brotherhood, which later evolved into the Assembly of First Nations. Manuel had a bigger vision than organizing nationally because all around the world there were Indigenous people who had been colonized and victims of state-sponsored racism.

In the 1970s, he met with leaders from South America, New Zealand, Australia and the Sami people of northern Scandinavia. The result was the birth of the World Council of Indigenous People. Now we had an international voice and realized that we were not alone in our struggle.

In the 1980s I attended meetings in Peru, Australia and Chile. The meeting in Chile took place during the time of the right-wing dictator Pinochet and the meeting was billed as a gathering of artisans and campesinos. I also attended a meeting in Cusco, Peru, where George Manuel was the keynote speaker. Cusco sits at 12,500 feet of altitude and he had suffered from tuberculosis as a boy so he felt the altitude and the thin air, but it was an example of his devotion to the cause of the world's Indigenous people.

In every case I was struck with the determination and resilience of the local Indigenous peoples. In some cases, like Bolivia, the Indigenous people formed the majority, and their vision was to form the country's government. In other countries, the Indigenous people were small populations fighting for survival, such as the Ainu of Japan who were an ancient and little known nation of Indigenous people.

In 1982 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations established the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. The initiative for this working group came from the results of a study on the problem of discrimination faced by Indigenous peoples throughout the world. The study outlined the oppression, marginalization and exploitation suffered by Indigenous peoples.

By 1994 the working group had developed the draft of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. From there, it went to the UN Commission on Human Rights for further discussion. Finally, in 2007, it was placed before the General Assembly of the United Nations and was adopted with the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada voting against it. Bolivia voted for it since the Indigenous people had taken power under the leadership of Evo Morales.

These four nations had fought against the adoption of the declaration although Indigenous people from those countries played an important role in its development. Indigenous lawyers like Wilton Littlechild from Alberta and Sharon Venne from Saskatchewan were tireless workers for the cause.

In Canada, the Harper government was against it and called it “an aspirational document.” In other words, it was a wish list and nothing more. To this day the Conservatives maintain that the declaration will allow Indigenous people to veto resource development.

In fact, the declaration further defines what we were promised in the treaties and strengthens Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution that guarantees treaty and Aboriginal rights. Under treaty, we were told that we would share the land with the newcomers, but instead the land was cleared and we became marginalized in poverty.

Now we have a chance to participate as equals in resource development.

Bill C-15 is slowly making its way through Parliament for the second time. Previously, it was stalled in the Senate and died on the order paper. This time it should go through since the elected members of the House of Commons should not be held back by an unelected body like the Senate.

George Manual defined the Indigenous Nations as people living in Third World conditions within the borders of First World nations. He called this the Fourth World. This United Nations declaration defines our rights and clarifies our status as nations within nations.