30-1 Bridging the Gap Between Law and Reality

The Story of Ten Brothers and the Sea Lion

The following story is a Hul’qumi’num legend recorded by Ella Elizabeth Clark in 1960. Once upon a time there lived near Cowichan a family of 10 brothers, who were noted for deeds of daring and skill in spearing sea lions. Not far off there lived a rival family, consisting of five brothers. They were terribly jealous of the 10 brothers, as they could never secure any good sea lion hunting as long…

Speaking Out

The Maori Party formed in 2004 around Tariana Turia, a former Labor Party member and cabinet member, largely in response to the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. At the abbreviated hearings about the bill in November 2004, Turia gave an impassioned speech against the legislation. Excerpts from that speech appear below. The last time that I was granted leave to speak on the Foreshore and Seabed…

Review: The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America

The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America is a collection of seven separate country case studies and is the result of a 2003 conference at Cochabamba that discussed the diversity of indigenous struggles throughout the region. The subject countries are Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico. The introductory chapter, written by the editors, evaluates…

Review: Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance

Sincerity and a willingness to travel literally and metaphysically to the farthest reaches of humanity define Bradford Keeney’s Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit Through Ecstatic Dance. Keeney’s work is a deeply personal story of one non-indigenous man’s spiritual exploration and maturation. It is marked by his willingness to make himself vulnerable to and participate in other…

Profits of Bloom: How indigenous people can save the world, and make money doing so

It is now an accepted fact that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are changing the global climate. Indeed, the climate may be changing with greater speed and intensity than scientists previously thought. The negative effects of climate change are most severe among the world’s poor, and indigenous people make up a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poorest people…

New Treaty, Same Old Problems

For most native peoples in Canada and the United States, treaty negotiations are the stuff of history—vital history to be sure, and a cruel history of lands stolen and promises breached. For the Hul’qumi’num Mustimuhw (Hul’qumi’num peoples) of British Columbia, however, the concept of a treaty is utterly contemporary, as they are now negotiating their first one with the Canadian government.…

Cultures Within Cultures: When laws ignore reality

When compared to the Americas, African practice on indigenous rights protection is unguided by law. This state of affairs is largely the result of Special Rapporteur Martínez-Cobo’s famous 1984 Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, which literally made all Africans indigenous, without any need for extra protection of any particular group. That mindset, which is…

An Imbalance of Powers: Maori Land Claims and an Unchecked Parliament

Aotearoa/New Zealand is not known for egregious breaches of indigenous peoples’ rights. Nonetheless, New Zealand’s legal system is ineffective at implementing international and domestic laws that protect the rights of Maori. This has been seen most starkly in the Foreshore and Seabed Act of 2004, which had the effect of extinguishing Maori aboriginal title to the foreshore and seabed areas and…

After the Verdict

Nicaragua is a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual nation. Internally it is divided into 16 departments, nine regions, and three special zones. In 1987, with the proclamation of a new political constitution and the approval of the Statute of Regional Autonomy of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, the eastern coast of the country (referred to in the legislation as the Atlantic coast, but on…

A Snapshot of the Nu

There is scant literature in English about the Nu people of China, but the mention of poison arrows and the Nus’ odd way of cutting notches in sticks to mark significant events made me curious about them. According to English-language accounts, the Nu have one of the smallest populations among the minorities of China—only 27,000 people, almost all of whom live in the steep mountains drained by…

The Current State of International Law

Largely as a result of their own advocacy at the international level, indigenous peoples are now distinct subjects of concern within the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and other international institutions. Through their efforts over the last three decades especially, indigenous peoples have been able to generate substantial international sympathy for their demands. These…

Ombuds Offices: A Handrail on the Bridge Between Law and Reality

Notwithstanding the many programs that have been implemented throughout Latin America to reform the administration of justice, in most countries judicial systems cannot yet guarantee that the rights of indigenous peoples are respected. In addition, there continue to be tensions between national justice systems and indigenous conflict-resolution methods. One new institution that has been widely…

Indigenous Leader Elected President of Bolivia

In the election of December 18, 2005, Bolivians made history, as 54 percent of the country’s voters chose Evo Morales, the Aimara leader of the combative coca-growers’ unions. “500 years of campaigning and popular resistance by indigenous people has not been in vain,” Morales said at his inauguration. “We are here, and we say that we have achieved power to end the injustice, the inequality, and…

Guatemala Radio Project Goes on the Air

Cultural Survival’s Guatemala Community Radio Project (see the summer 2005 issue for a full description) was officially launched in January when representatives of six community radio station associations and their larger umbrella organization, Consejo Guatemalteco de Comunicación Comunitaria (CGCC), signed an agreement with Cultural Survival. The agreement establishes a five-year partnership…

East African Drought Takes a Toll on Maasai Cattle

The ongoing drought in East Africa has dealt a devastating blow to the survival of pastoralists in the area. Seasonal rains in November and December didn’t fall, leaving an already arid land parched and lifeless. “This drought, it has made all people poor in this community,” said John Mopel, a Maasai from Kajiado district in Kenya. “When livestock have problems, families have problems—and that…

Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The following text is the version of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, proposed by Luis Enrique Chavez, Chairman of the Working Group on the Draft Declaration, and submitted to the Human Rights Commission in February 2006. The commission may decide the text needs to go back to the working group for more revision, or it may choose to send it on to the General Assembly…