A Right to Media? Lorie M. Graham - Columbia Law School

434 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [41:429
undesirable . . . and they have been accepted as the genuine
ideological condition for consumption. Thus, the Indian not
only works a month in order to buy a kilo of salt, but for
three years to acquire a transistor [radio] which places him
in a situation of passive communication, as a mere receiver
of the stimuli of the national society; thus . . . the more
products he consumes from the outside, the more exploited
he becomes. 16
The Cobo Report argued that the absence of indigenous
voices in mass media threatens the very existence of indigenous
peoples by undermining their languages, customary law, and cultural
traditions, as well as effective participation in the social, economic,
and political activities of the State. 17
The Cobo Report also served as a catalyst for action. In 1982,
a U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was
established with a mandate to develop, among other things, human
rights “standards concerning the rights of indigenous peoples.” 18 The
first draft of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples included a provision aimed at addressing the discrimination
against indigenous peoples in media that had been earlier identified
in the Cobo Report.
Like the other articles in the draft Declaration, the media
article evolved as a result of several discussions among U.N., state,
and indigenous representatives. 19 In response to suggestions from
16. Martinez Cobo June Report, supra note 8, para. 71 n.31.
17. Part IV of this Article will discuss ways in which domestic legal
systems can address these structural and cultural inequities that have been
identified by the Cobo Report and other studies. Moreover, within the Cobo
Report we can also find some recommendations on addressing these inequities.
See Martinez Cobo Sept. Report, supra note 6, paras. 145, 461.
18. Under the auspices of WGIP work on the draft declaration on the rights
of indigenous peoples began in 1988. Prior to that, at its fifth session, in 1987, the
WGIP adopted 14 draft principles in preliminary wording. This working paper
was adopted as a preliminary draft declaration and formed the basis of what
would one day become the Declaration. For a detailed chronology of the
Declaration’s evolution, see ECOSOC, Sub-Comm’n on the Promotion and Prot. of
Human Rights, Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Annotations to the
Provisional Agenda, paras. 4–22, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2000/1/Add.1
(June 22, 2000).
19. In an early iteration, indigenous peoples’ right to media was framed as
“the right to the use of and access to all forms of mass media in their own
languages.” ECOSOC, Sub-Comm’n on the Promotion and Prot. of Human Rights,
Working Group on Indigenous Populations, annex 1 para. 12, Standard-Setting
Activities: Evolution of Standards Concerning the Rights of Indigenous