Opinion

Chris Stearns: Self-determination a right of indigenous people





"On a sunny September day in New York City in 2007, the United Nations General Assembly gathered to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). The event marked the culmination of three decades of intense international work by thousands of indigenous leaders and the start of a new chapter in human rights.

Nearly 40 years earlier, in March of 1968, a troubled Lyndon B. Johnson stood in the White House surrounded by a nation engulfed in turmoil. Both the launch of the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre had occurred in Vietnam just a month earlier and student and civil rights protests were now turning violent across the country. At the end of the month, President Johnson stunned the nation by announcing on television that he would not seek re-election.

Seemingly lost in the events of that March, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King weeks later, was a watershed moment in American history."

Get the Story:
Chris Stearns: Self-Determination, LBJ and UNDRIP (Indian Country Today 5/10)

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