DEVELOPMENTS
The indigenous rights movements of the Americas are experiencing a renaissance. Indigenous peoples of the Americas are increasingly reasserting their claims to sovereign rights of self determination and resource governance.
All over Latin America the effects of the indigenous rights movement can be felt. In Ecuador, the Shuar have begun to defend their hunting grounds and traditional territory. In Chile, the Mapuche are occupying ranches in a effort to gain necessary human resources. In Bolivia, a new constitution gives the country’s thirty-six indigenous peoples the right to self-rule. All over Latin America a political awakening is emboldening Indians who have been regulated to second-class citizens in their own countries since the Spanish invasion.
This awakening is not limited to Latin America but extends into the United States as well. President Barack Obama recently announced November as American Indian Heritage Month and gave a speech to 564 Tribal Representatives reaffirming the U.S.’s commitment to maintaining tribal sovereignty and the United States’ unique trust relationship with the tribes of the United States of America. The National Congress of American Indians has even recently opened an Embassy on Washington, DC to provide a bridge for American Indian Tribes to national levers of power.
BACKGROUND
The indigenous people of Latin America have seen an unprecedented interest in and recognition of their sovereign rights as indigenous peoples. As Latin American countries seek to develop their natural resources, indigenous people are demanding a seat at the negotiating table believing that their historical lands should not be exploited nor polluted without their consent.
Recently, the Shuar of Ecuador put up roadblocks on highway bridges in Ecuador’s southeastern jungles to protest mining on Indian lands without their consent, and the placement of water under state control. An indigenous schoolteacher was killed in a battle with riot police over the protest of the mining. After the killing, President Rafael Correa agreed to reconsider the laws after consulting indigenous leaders on the subject, a marked shift in approach since Correa had previously referred to the same leaders as “infantile.”
Correa’s attempts at rapprochement make sense politically, since indigenous peoples compose a third of the population in Ecuador. They are an important constituency in Correa’s left-leaning government, and moreover played an integral role in helping topple the Ecuadorean government in 2000.
Meanwhile, Chile passed a law in 1993 that has facilitated efforts to gradually returning land to indigenous Chilean peoples, particularly the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group, whose name means the “people of the land.” In order to have land returned under the 1993 law, indigenous communities must prove that title was granted to them in the late 19th century, when southern Chile was finally subdued after over three centuries of Mapuche resistance. In order to make that determination, the moderate government of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has commissioned a study on the history of land ownership in the region. The Mapuche are making their own efforts to regain all of their ancestral land, which has sometimes lead to violence.
Bolivia has also seen an indigenous revolution of sorts, albeit through elections and institutional reform. Bolivia elected its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in December 2005. Morales dissolved the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and Original Peoples, calling it a racist institution in a country where a majority of the citizenry are indigenous. Voters recently approved a constitution that created a ”plurinational” state and returns sovereign status to indigenous people. Indigenous government and community justice are legally on equal footing with modern Bolivian law. These efforts have raised constitutional and property right concerns in Bolivia’s more wealthy and European-influenced lowlands, which in turn has fueled increasing cries of political autonomy in those regions.
The United States is also beginning to see a resurgence in Native American rights. Indigenous communities and reservations played an unusually prominent role in Obama’s primary and general election campaigns, providing numerous opportunities for the then presidential candidate to vocally express his support for strong tribal governments. The feeling was largely mutual – Obama was even adopted by Hartford and Mary Black Eagle of the Crow tribe in Montana during the course of his presidential campaign.
Since assuming the presidency, Obama has decreed the month of November as Native American Heritage Month. Recently, Obama met with the leaders of 564 federally recognized tribes as part of an effort to take native voices in to account in governing native communities. Obama wanted to understand the issues affecting Indian country and how he plans to assist tribal governments in lifting the lives of their people. In his speech Obama acknowledged the difficult past relations of American Indians and the United States Government. Obama referred to the summit saying “Today’s sessions are part of a lasting conversation that’s crucial to our shared future.
While these recent efforts by the have been largely welcomed by American Indian governments and organizations, American Indians have been more than active with their own efforts protect tribal sovereignty and culture. One recent example of this was the decision of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) to open an Embassy in Washington, DC November 3, 2009. The NCAI has long existed to protect Indian rights and benefits, including treaties or agreements with the United States, and to promote a better understanding of the American Indian people, however the decision to open an embassy was a major milestone for the organization. “For the first time since settlement, tribal nations will have a permanent home in Washington, D.C., where they can more effectively assert their sovereign status and facilitate a much stronger nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government,” said NCAI President Jefferson Keel.
ANALYSIS
Indigenous peoples compose up to ten percent of Latin America’s half-billion inhabitants. In some parts of the Andes, Mexico and Central America, they make up a much larger percentage of the population. In Guatemala and Bolivia, they form an absolute majority of the population. In the United States, American Indians make up about one percent of the population.
All across the Americas, indigenous people remain much poorer and less educated than the general population. In Latin America, eighty percent of indigenous peoples live on less than two dollars a day — a poverty rate double that of the general population. Meanwhile, forty percent of indigenous peoples in Latin America lack access to adequate health care, a problem also faced by indigenous peoples in Canada and the U.S.
Yet the challenges faced by the indigenous people of the Americas are not limited to disparate levels of wealth and education. With shrinking global oil reserves and growing demands for minerals, fuel and timber, miners and oil companies are joining loggers in encroaching on traditional Indian lands. This has been just as much the case in the U.S., where U.S. courts have widespread mismanagement of Indian owned resources spanning decades, as in Latin American nations such as Ecuador, where oil extraction efforts by U.S. corporations have been linked to pollution that has been alleged to have caused a number of indigenous Ecuadorian deaths.
The governments of the Americas should respect Indian peoples claims of sovereignty and their right to exercise dominion of their natural resources, not merely because of the legal merits of their claims, but because promoting development and prosperity in indigenous communities helps resolve major longstanding sources of structural inequalities throughout the Western Hemisphere. While this is particularly true in Latin America, such deeply entrenched structural poverty exists in the U.S. and Canada as well.
By working with indigenous groups, the federal governments can assist in promoting stability and investment in indigenous communities that are desperate for development opportunities, jobs, and education. Recognizing indigenous sovereignty there for has the potential to be a win-win situation for all of the peoples of the Americas, since the economic spill-over efforts of development efforts can help spur development and prosperity in adjacent non-indigenous communities as well.
Indigenous people remain cautously optimistic towards the possibility of future progress with regard to tribal soverignty. Caroline Cannon, president of the Native Village of Point Hope in Alaska said “Overall, I’m very excited that we’ve been heard (from President Obama), a record was made today and we’ve been acknowledged by the administration. My people are waiting to hear about this, and then we will wait to see what happens.” If the Obama administration manages to live up to the high expectations that have been set for it, it will be able to stand alongside many of the governments, organizations, and individuals throughout the Western Hemisphere that have taken a stand for indigenous rights.
Matthew Lamm is the former Europe Russia Regional Editor of Foreign Policy Digest.
