Native Rights And Modern American States
October 26th, 2010
I have long been an advocate for native peoples rights. This has sometimes been in contradiction with the unifying current of social progress. For instance in the battle between the Sandinista regime and the Contras, the Miskito Indians fought against the Sandinistas. Recently when Daniel Ortega was elected President of Nicaragua, a group of Miskito's declared independence from Nicaragua.
Generally though most socialist groups support the rights of native people. There is a distinction to be made between traditional indigenous people trying to live according the the rules of their culture and the nationalism of modern national groups attempting to use cultural survivals from pre-industrial period of their history to perpetuate an identity politics.
This is tricky ground. Move too far one way and you are in the land of national socialism with one identity being exaggerated over others to the point of oppression. Move too far the other way and you are in the land where cultural identification with any diversity is suppressed. The middle ground is one where a multiplicity of cultural identities are allowed to flourish in a federal system of a sort that has emphasis placed on diversity in unity, with a few basic principals being upheld as basic to all, like Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
Below are a few issues that have come up recently mostly dealing with conflicts between indigenous rights to apply native laws in cases involving native people and the nation states that have grown up around these people. America is an interesting case in point due to the 500 year history of colonialism and the outright conquest of the native people by Europeans. In Latin America there are still large populations of native peoples. In the USA as most of us know the native Americans were mostly wiped out in genocidal practices in the 19th century.
From Cultural Survival
United States: Urge President Obama to Sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
President Obama needs to hear from you—today. He needs to know that all Americans believe that the day has come for him to endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
This Declaration marks the first time the United Nations has agreed on a single set of values governing relations between national governments and Indigenous Peoples living within their borders. It promises that governments will respect tribal rights to lands and sacred places, and spells out Native Peoples' right to self-determination. It also prevents governments from using tribal land for military purposes. And, it prohibits any development projects on tribal lands-mines, logging, hydroelectric dams, etc- without the tribes' free, prior, and informed consent. The Declaration is a key step towards realizing full governmental recognition and respect for Indigenous Peoples' rights, including their rights to their languages, cultures, and spiritual practices.
For more of this
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action/united-states-urge-president-obama-sign-un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples
From Terraviva
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 16:34 GMT
VENEZUELA: Hunger Strike Off as Gov't Agrees to Talks on Native Demands
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 25, 2010 (IPS) - An 81-year-old Jesuit missionary in Venezuela ended a week-long hunger strike Monday after the government agreed to high-level talks to negotiate the release of three indigenous prisoners facing murder charges and to discuss land claims by Yukpa communities.
José María Korta called off his protest after Vice President Elías Jaua promised to meet with him to listen to his concerns and seek solutions to his demands, along with leftwing President Hugo Chávez, who returned from an 11-day international tour Sunday.
"We hope the dialogue and negotiations with representatives of the government and other branches of the state will bring about the release of Sabino Romero, Alexander Fernández and Olegario Romero," three indigenous men in prison for murder since a year ago, Lusbi Portillo, with Sociedad Homo et Natura, an environmental group that has been involved in the Yukpa cause for 25 years, told IPS.
But "We also need a road map to overcome the underlying problems, like the defence of indigenous forms of justice and the handing over of ancestral indigenous land occupied by cattle breeders or granted to mining companies in concession," he added.
Sources in Congress said legislators are working with Supreme Court judges on measures in favour of the three indigenous inmates.
This year, Homo et Natura has been fighting in the courts for the three men to be returned to their communities and tried under indigenous criminal justice systems, which were recognised by the constitution.
Article 260 of the constitution establishes that "The legitimate authorities of indigenous peoples can apply in their territory forms of justice based on their ancestral traditions (in cases) that only involve members of their communities, according to their own customs and procedures, as long as they do not run counter to the constitution, the country's laws and public order."
The Yukpa justice system is based on reparations rather than punishment. For example, it requires the offender to work several years for the victim's family, Portillo explained.
There are some 600,000 indigenous people from 36 different ethnic groups in this South American country of 28 million people. Just over half live in communities in border regions.
For More of this
http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=53290
From an Older Article Terraviva
LATIN AMERICA
`War on Terror' Has Indigenous People in Its Sights
By Gustavo González*
SANTIAGO, Jun 6 2005(IPS) - The "war on terror", identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and "neo-liberal" globalisation.
In the United States "there is a perception of indigenous activists as destabilising elements and terrorists," and their demands and activism have begun to be cast in a criminal light, lawyer José Aylwin, with the Institute of Indigenous Studies at the University of the Border in Temuco (670 km south of the Chilean capital), told IPS.
Pedro Cayuqueo, director of the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe, also from the city of Temuco, wrote that the growing indigenous activism in Latin America and Islamic radicalism are both depicted as threats to the security and hegemony of the United States in the "Global Trends 2020 - Mapping the Global Future" study by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC).
NIC works with 13 government agencies, including the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and is advised by experts from the United States and other countries. Cayuqueo described the report as "a veritable x-ray" of potential "counterinsurgency scenarios" from now to the year 2020.
In the process of drafting the report, NIC organised 12 regional conferences around the world, one of which was held in Santiago in June 2004.
The reporter said the emergence of increasingly organised indigenous movements and the strengthening of their ethnic identities become, in that view, targets of "the so-called low-intensity warfare doctrine, a renovated version of the National Security Doctrine" that formed the basis of U.S. interventionism in Latin America from the 1960s to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
The indigenous question would thus appear to form part of what the United States sees as future threats to its hegemony.
In Latin America, the Andean subregion is seen as the "hottest" area, because of the growing political role played by well-organised indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, but also because of the impact on indigenous peoples of armed conflict and drug trafficking in Colombia.
For more of this
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28962
From Spero News
Struggles in Latin America over rights of Indigenous and national priorities
Monday, June 21, 2010
By Abigail Griffith
Over the last twenty years, almost all applicable Latin American countries have been moving toward full recognition of their multiethnic citizenship.
Defining indigenous justice is a complex issue because each of the many different indigenous groups in Latin America has its own customary laws. The ever-changing nature of oral tradition further complicates such a definition. Rachel Sieder, author and senior lecturer in Latin American politics at the University of London, points out that "indigenous law is dynamic, not fixed, and often there is internal contention about its nature." This constant change makes it difficult to create a definition which would help modern governments decide what does and what does not constitute indigenous justice.
Guisela Mayén, as quoted in the Latinamerica Press, describes indigenous law as "a series of unwritten oral principles that are abided by and socially accepted by a specific community." She goes on to state that "indigenous law aims to restore the harmony and balance in the community…whereas the Western system seeks punishment." Compensation for wrongdoing in indigenous communities usually takes the form of community service or some type of finite retribution made available to the victims. Indigenous law, while practiced somewhat differently by each group, is almost always based on principles of oral tradition and community consensus.
Beginning in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, mass indigenous movements led to the codification of indigenous rights in a number of Latin American countries.
For more of this
http://www.speroforum.com/a/35271/Struggles-in-Latin-America-over-rights-of-Indigenous-and-national-priorities
For information about the Miskito peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miskito
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