UNDRIP Report - English FINAL - International Forum on Globalization

IN DI GEN OUS RESO URCE PERS ONS GU ID I NG THE DIS CUSS IO N
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Igorot) of the Tebtebba
Foundation in the Philippines, and the current
Chairperson of the United Nations Permanent <strong>Forum</strong>
on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), expressed the
strategic importance of this dialogue because
everyone need to focus how to implement the
Declaration. She said her life’s work has been with
community organizations in villages where fights
against dams, logging corporations, etc. taught her
about human rights. Many indigenous activists,
young and old, have been victims of military
harassments, arbitrary arrests and detention, tortures
and extrajudicial killings. These prompted her, along
with other activists, to bring indigenous issues before
the UN Working Group of Indigenous Populations
(UNWGIP), the first UN body set up in 1982 to
receive reports of human rights violations of
indigenous peoples At the first session of UNWGIP,
the only indigenous peoples' representatives present
other than North Americans, Australians, the Saami
and the Maori, were an Igorot from the Philippines
and the Juma from Bangladesh. Tauli-Corpuz had
been sent by her organization to work with the
drafting of the Declaration which started in l985. In
1994 she was invited to be a part of the IFG.
Joseph Ole Simel (Maasai) of the Mainyoito
Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization in
Kenya expressed his gratitude to the organizers of
this meeting, and agreed that this meeting is strategic
and timely because it brings indigenous and
nonindigenous people together to think as a team,
and to develop strategy based on solidarity. Ole
Simel expressed that, in Africa, <strong>UNDRIP</strong>’s adoption
was the easy part; its implementation will be harder.
In Kenya, he said, a country that was colonized by
the British in the mid ’60s, and where both European
and American investors still target the land, now for
biofuels production, indigenous people continue to
face threats. He said he hoped to get a better sense of
“how we move to actualize the implementation of
the Declaration, both at local level and international
levels.”
Chief Kokoi, aka Tony James (Wapichan), of the
Amerindian Peoples Association in Guyana, South
America, spoke about the importance of forests to his
people, and to all people. “I have an obligation to my
grandchildren, I have an obligation to teach them
how to hunt, to teach them how to fish, to teach them
to be able to use the leaves, the twigs, the roots, the
bark of the trees to survive. Our connection with the
environment is so different from what it is out here.
You have supermarkets, you have universities, and
you have all the other entities of life. We have ours
there, too. We have our supermarket— our river is
our supermarket because if we want to eat fish we
know where to get it. And if we are feeling sick, we
go know to go to the forest to get medicine. If we
want to teach our children how to survive as a
people, we must make sure our forest, our
environment, is intact, as we have it today.” He said
that implementing <strong>UNDRIP</strong> will help people
understand that they have the same rights as anyone
else. These rights include the right to a healthy life,
the right to pass on their knowledge, and the right to
the land.
Tom Goldtooth (Diné and Mdewakanton Dakota) of
the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) said
he thought the IFG was right on the mark when it
started addressing a new economic paradigm, which
would counteract the depletion of natural resources
and the effects of climate chaos and peak oil. He then
emphasized the importance of the values of the
relationship to recognize and maintain, land ethics.
Goldtooth introduced himself as a director of a
network of grassroots of indigenous peoples that
started in Minnesota. He explained that people had
come together to form IEN as a network, not an
organization. Goldtooth and the network have been
advising other groups of indigenous people, such as
the <strong>International</strong> Indian Treaty Council. Goldtooth
mentioned Roberta Black Goat, Gorgan Harney,
Kerry Dan, and some of the Diné people who had left
to go to the UN in Geneva, and said that they were
some of the founders of his network.
Juan Carlos Jintiach (Shuar) of the Amazon Alliance
spoke about the responsibility of being elected codirector
of an organization that unites both
indigenous and nonindigenous groups and brings
together the leaders of the indigenous and the
environmental movements in the Amazon to work as
equal partners in effectively addressing the
challenges facing the region. The Alliance is
governed by a Steering Council, a partnership of
prominent indigenous organizations and NGOs that
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