Steven Newcomb: US undermines indigenous rights declaration

At this year’s UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (May 20-May 31), the United States revealed its latest strategy for undermining Article 3 of the UN Declaration. Recruit Indian leadership. At the May 22, 2013 session of the Permanent Forum, the United States said that it wanted to ‘reiterate’ its position that “self-determination as expressed in the UN Declaration is not the same as self-determination in international law.”

Six days later, on May 28 at the UN Permanent Forum, the US said that it is time for the United Nations to give “Indian tribes” an “appropriate” status in the U.N. system. During the delivery of her remarks, Ms. Laurie Phipps placed verbal emphasis on the word “appropriate.” When we combine the U.S. government’s 2010 statement and its May 22 UNPFII intervention on the Declaration, an “appropriate” status can only be interpreted to mean a status in the UN that is “consistent with the United States’ recognition of, and relationship with, federally recognized tribes…”, i.e., domestic dependent nationhood under U.S. plenary power.

A couple of hours after the United States’ statement, the National Congress of American Indians—in partnership with several other organizations and Indian “tribes”—issued its statement at the Permanent Forum calling for U.N. recognition of American Indian governments “as observers with, at a minimum, the same participatory rights as non-governmental organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council,” according to an accompanying document issued by the Indian Law Resource Center.