White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"
Peggy McIntosh
Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."
Daily effects of white privilege
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.
For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
Earned strength, unearned power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.
We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.
Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $10.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.
This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.
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NATSILS Shadow Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Review of Australia
Posted on Fri 22 July 2011VALS, as part of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS), are extremely concerned over the level of protection afforded to the human rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in Australia, particularly in relation to their contact with the justice system.
As such, the NATSILS provided the Committee on the Rights of the Child with a Shadow Report for the upcoming review of Australia.
Collaboration and/or endorsement of this report was recieved from the following Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILS):
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (Qld) Ltd;
- Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc.;
- Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT);
- Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (Inc.);
- Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service;
- North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency; and
- Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service Co-operative Limited
Download document (1146 kb)NATSILS Shadow Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Review of Australia
Shadow Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding the Review of Australia 2011
Download This PaperA Right to Birth Registration in the Victorian Charter? - Seek and You Shall Not Find
Andy Gargett affiliation not provided to SSRNMelissa Castan Monash University - Faculty of LawPaula Gerber Monash University - Faculty of Law 2011 Monash University Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 25 Monash University Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2011
Abstract:
Many people have placed Victoria on a pedestal because it was the first (and still only) state in Australia have enacted human rights legislation. The Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 2006 (Vic) replicates many of the rights protected in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but notably fails to include art 24(2) which recognizes the right to birth registration. This omission is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on Indigenous Victorians who, it has recently been discovered, are experiencing difficulties in their dealing with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Many Indigenous people are being denied basic rights of citizenship such as obtaining a driver's license or passport because they are unable to provide a copy of their birth certificate; the universally accepted proof of identity document. This article explores the problems faced by Indigenous Victorians in relation to birth registration and birth certificates, and analyses the extent to which the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 2006 (Vic) can provide redress, notwithstanding the absence of a specific provision regarding the right to birth registration.Number of Pages in PDF File: 33
Keywords: indigenous Victorians, birth registration, human rights, Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities
JEL Classification: K00, K10, K19, K20, K29, K30, K33, K39, K40, K49
working papers seriesDate posted: September 19, 2012
Suggested Citation
Gargett, Andy, Castan, Melissa and Gerber, Paula, A Right to Birth Registration in the Victorian Charter? - Seek and You Shall Not Find (2011). Monash University Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 25; Monash University Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2148827
Abstract Views: 130
The University of Minnesota Human Rights Center has developed this Library with generous support from the Ford Foundation, Samuel Heins, the JEHT Foundation, the John Merck Fund, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the University of Minnesota Law School (including the University of Minnesota Law Library), the Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation, the West Group, JWECF (Japan World Exhibition Commemorative Fund), and other contributors. In-kind advertising support has been provided through a Google Grant award. The Library also commemorates the pioneering work of Diana Vincent- Daviss.
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the General Assembly on Thursday 13 September 2007, by a majority of 144 states in favour, 4 votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) and 11 abstentions (Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa and Ukraine). Click here to view the voting record.Since its adoption, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States have all reversed their positions and now endorse the Declaration. Colombia and Samoa have also reversed their positions and indicated their support for the Declaration.
During the Durban Review Conference in April 2009, 182 States from all regions of the world reached consensus on an outcome document in which they “ Welcome[d] the adoption of the UN Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples which has a positive impact on the protection of victims and, in this context, urge[d] States to take all necessary measures to implement the rights of indigenous peoples in accordance with international human rights instruments without discrimination…” (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Outcome document of the Durban Review Conference , 24 April 2009, para. 73).
Click here to download the text of the resolution (A/RES/66/142) adopted by the General Assembly to convene a high-level event during the eleventh session of the Forum to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in order to raise awareness of the importance of pursuing its objectives.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (A/RES/61/295) - Official UN languages
[AR] [EN] [ES] [FR] [RU] [ZH] (PDF version)
[AR] [EN] [ES] [FR] [RU][ZH] (Official Resolution Text)
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Note that these are unofficial translations provided to the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The terminologies used in the translations do not necessarily reflect that of the United Nations.
Arawok (spoken in Surname) - provided by UNDP Suriname
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Cha'palaa (spoken in Equador) - provided by UNICEF, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office
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Crimean Tatar, provided by the Foundation of Research and Support of Indigenous Peoples of Crimea
Degar (spoken in Vietnam) povided by the Montagnard Foundation.
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Other documents
>>>FAQs on the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
>>>PeRs Declaração das Nações Unidas sobre os Direitos dos Povos Indígenas
Message by Victoria Tauli Corpuz, Chairperson of UNPFII
Statement by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Statement by Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs
Statement by Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chairperson of UNPFII to the General Assembly
Coverage of GA meeting and vote
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Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) is an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), with a mandate to discuss indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights.
International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2012
9 August 2012 UN Headquarters, New York >>>Click here for more information
Twelfth Session of the Permanent Forum
20 - 31 May 2013
UN Headquarters, New YorkSpecial Theme: Review YearProvisional Agenda:
1. Election of Officers. 2. Adoption of the agenda and organization of work. 3. Follow-up on the recommendations of the Permanent Forum: (a) Health; (b) Education; (c) Culture. 4. Half-day discussion on the African region. 5. Comprehensive dialogue with United Nations agencies and funds. 6. Discussion on the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples. 7. Human rights: (a) Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; (b) Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the Chair of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 8. Future work of the Permanent Forum, including issues of the Economic and Social Council and emerging issues. 9. Draft agenda for the thirteenth session of the Permanent Forum. 10. Adoption of the report of the Permanent Forum on its twelfth session.
BIRATORI, Japan (AFP) - Shiro Kayano was once just like the millions of salarymen who populate Japan's neon-lit cities. He wore a suit and tie, bought the latest technology and earned a pay cheque in Tokyo's advertising sector.
But a chance visit to a Canadian indigenous household two decades ago set the now 54-year-old on a different path: seeking political power for the Ainu people, a tiny ethnic minority in the nation of 127 million.
Kayano's ambitious bid to win 10 out of 242 seats in the upper house for the newly created Ainu Party in next year's national elections -- as well as vast land claims for his people -- is the latest move aimed at boosting recognition for what was once a hunter-gatherer society in Japan's northernmost Hokkaido.
Fairer-skinned and more hirsute than most Japanese, the Ainu traditionally observed an animist faith with a belief that God exists in every creation -- trees, hills, lakes, rivers and animals, particularly bears.
Ainu men kept full beards while women adorned themselves with facial tattoos which they acquired before they reached the age of marriage. Ainu clothes were robes spun from tree bark and decorated with geometric designs.
But like many indigenous groups around the world, most of Japan's 24,000 Ainu have lost touch with their traditional lifestyle after decades of forced assimilation policies that officially banned their language and culture, leaving them a disadvantaged minority in modern Japan.
Earlier figures have pegged the number of Ainu at about 70,000 but the real figure is unknown since many have integrated with mainstream society and some have hidden their cultural roots.
"We think what is necessary for modern Ainus is our participation in politics," said Kayano, who now curates a museum of Ainu heritage in Hokkaido.
"Given the current political turmoil, I expect maybe we'll have a chance."
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has fallen under heavy criticism over tax hikes and the restart of two nuclear reactors after last year's Fukushima atomic crisis, opening a door for political newcomers, Kayano said.
"If I'm elected, I'd like to work on introducing Ainu language classes in elementary and middle schools -- I believe we will be able to recover our language."
But Kayano, whose father was the only Ainu lawmaker in Japan's history, has his sights on more than just reviving his ethnic group's traditions and all-but-extinct language.
He wants the Ainu to be granted their traditional homeland of Hokkaido island -- now a popular spot for skiing and wilderness-seeking tourists -- and even some two-thirds of Japan's territory, mostly national parks.
Historically, the Ainu dominated Hokkaido until the 19th century when Japanese were encouraged to settle there, pushing the Ainu off their land and further to the periphery.
Kayano acknowledged that his vast land claims idea was unlikely to succeed, and it was not even part of his new party's manifesto.
"I know it's a long shot, but nothing will begin without starting to say a word," Kayano said.
And there have been signs of change after decades of marginalisation.
In 2008, Japan for the first time recognised the Ainu as an indigenous people in a landmark parliamentary resolution, which pledged to support a community which has lower-than-average income and education levels.
Tokyo has been studying policies that would revive the Ainu language and create venues where traditions such as spiritual ceremonies could be held.
However, finding people who can speak Ainu fluently is no simple task.
In the small agricultural community of Biratori in Hokkaido, 81-year-old language teacher Sachiko Kibata is one of few who could pass along Ainu to the younger generation.
Kibata herself only learned the language about 20 years ago from Kayano's father.
"But I do have childhood memories of my grandmother speaking the Ainu language so that also helped me learn," she said.
For Kayano, his push started about 25 years ago after he visited a Canadian community populated by indigenous people, whose traditional lifestyles have also been diluted by historical assimilation policies.
"I realised the outrageousness of one ethnicity being deprived of its own language and culture by force," he said.
"I woke up to my identity as an Ainu."
The newly minted political party was inspired by a trip to a global indigenous people's conference in Peru last year neighbouring Bolivia, where Evo Morales is the South American nation's first indigenous president.
Despite his resolve, Kayano knows that he faces an uphill battle, even among some of his own people.
"There are some Ainu who say 'there is no discrimination against us anymore' while others say, 'why don't we instead make the effort to become winners in Japanese society?'" he told AFP.
"Those people think that making a claim for Ainu rights is harmful for them. And I can't force them to share my ideas."
Call for end to 'perverted' race-based welfareUpdated August 27, 2012 13:25:13
One of Australia's foremost Indigenous thinkers is calling for an end to race-based entitlement.
In a landmark speech at the Melbourne Writers' Festival on Sunday night, the University of Melbourne's Chair of Indigenous Studies, Professor Marcia Langton, proposed a social security and wider policy system based only on economic need, and not Aboriginality.
She said it would help end a "perverted" sense of entitlement, as well as stop the perception that non-Aboriginal people may be taking advantage of the system.
What do you think of the proposal? Read ABC reader comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.
In an interview with the ABC before her speech, which was part of the "Big Ideas" series, Professor Langton explained how she hoped to help end what she calls the "friction" between bringing Indigenous people into mainstream society, but also continuing to acknowledge their status as essentially different.
If we dispense with that definition of Aboriginal people and treat Aboriginal people as First Peoples - that is our status derives from us being here before settlement - not on the basis of race but an historical argument, then Aboriginal people become citizens with an attribute that is political, not racial.
Professor Marcia Langton
"The Constitution and scores of Parliamentary acts at the federal and state level define Aboriginal people as a race," she said.
"If we dispense with that definition of Aboriginal people and treat Aboriginal people as First Peoples - that is our status derives from us being here before settlement - not on the basis of race but an historical argument, then Aboriginal people become citizens with an attribute that is political, not racial.
"And if we make that the definition of being Aboriginal ... then a lot of rubbish in the policy world falls away.
"It's not possible then for Aboriginal people to argue that perverted sense of entitlement to government largesse on the basis of race.
"They should only be able to argue for that kind of largesse on the basis of need, in other words economic disadvantage - actual economic disadvantage."
Professor Langton said these changes would mean less misinformation being spread about Indigenous people and welfare.
"You won't have what Andrew Bolt, Pauline Hanson and so many Australians are angry about, and that is a resentment towards people claiming to be Aboriginal, purportedly in order to gain some financial benefit," she said.
I heartily approve without any reservations. We are Australians and that is the end of the matter. There should be no exceptions based on colour, race or creed.
"Of course it's not true in the main, but there is an element of truth with it.
"But my concern is not with them, my concern is with Aboriginal people themselves who add to their own distinctly unfortunate position in society by being complicit in what is essentially a racial construct and then not stepping up to the mark."
Limited by race
Professor Langton said that some Indigenous people unwittingly and unconsciously allow themselves to be limited by race notions.
"Of course many Aboriginal people are awake to this problem and vote with their feet - they walk away from this kind of categorisation," she said.
There's a growing Aboriginal middle class who pay for their children to go to private school, for instance, and they don't accept government benefits, and that section of Aboriginal society is ignored by the media and by the public and by government policy.
Professor Marcia Langton
"There's a growing Aboriginal middle class who pay for their children to go to private school, for instance, and they don't accept government benefits, and that section of Aboriginal society is ignored by the media and by the public and by government policy."
When asked to give examples of "rubbish" policies which might be eliminated under this new philosophy, Professor Langton drew on CDEP or "work for the dole" initiatives.
"The impact of policies like the Community Development Employment Program, which allows Aboriginal people to stay on the netherworld of welfare dependency as if that was some kind of real job and not be forced out into the economy to find a job - wages which are paid for by some actual productivity," she said.
"Welfare dependency has a large reach in the Aboriginal world - much larger than in the rest of Australia - because there are so many programs, and all these programs are constructed, when you get down to the essence, on the belief that Aborigines can't do it because they are racially different."
But what of government policies which are designed to preserve Indigenous cultural heritage? Professor Langton says they would not be lost.
I am an Aboriginal man with two teenage sons, please tell me where I can go to join this line for "black money"... I have never been eligible for welfare... To perpetuate the myth that the contrary is the case is bell ringing.
"If we define Aboriginal people as descended from the First Peoples, then yes, cultural heritage, language maintenance and a range of issues become very important policy issues," she said.
"They have to do with the right to identify as Indigenous and to maintain cultural and linguistic traditions and other traditions like land traditions - and these are all set out in the Declaration on Human Rights.
"They would be legitimate policies argued on the basis of a first people status and not a race theory."
Topics: aboriginal, welfare, australia
First posted August 26, 2012 20:37:28
By S. James Anaya
On a recent late morning in Nicaragua I landed in a Soviet-made helicopter (a remnant of the revolutionary Sandinistas’ 1980s past) in the remote community of Awas Tingni to witness a historic event, the handing over of the long sought after title to the community’s traditional territory, an area of some 74,000 hectares, or 285 square miles. For the first time ever Nicaragua would formally recognize that these lands belong to Awas Tingni, a Mayangna community of about 1,500 people and one of the many Mayangna, Miskito, and Rama communities that are indigenous to the country’s vast Atlantic Coast region. This day would be the culmination of a struggle that has been at forefront of efforts by indigenous peoples worldwide to reverse historical trends and regain control of ancestral lands and full respect for their human rights. Read more
As the helicopter circled the village hamlet on the banks of the winding Wawa river, searching for a safe place to land amid the dispersed houses; cows, chickens and pigs fled in all directions. With community members congregating below us to greet our landing, I thought back to my many previous treks to this isolated spot surrounded by dense tropical forest. Instead of the 25 minutes by helicopter from Bilwi, the major northern Atlantic Coast town, the trip from there had previously taken me 3 to 6 hours by truck and walking, depending upon road and weather conditions.
On this visit I was arriving with Hernan Estrada, Nicaragua’s Attorney General, and Lumberto Campbell, an envoy of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega. Campbell, who looks a bit like Barack Obama and has a similar charisma, holds the venerated title of Comandante because of his role in the Sandinista revolution; he is the president’s chief advisor on indigenous and Atlantic Coast matters. Several other dignitaries were among the entourage of visitors, including Joel Dixon, the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs for Indigenous and Ethnic Issus, and Brooklyn Rivera, the region’s most well-known indigenous leader. In the 1980s, Rivera led an armed group of indigenous fighters in rebellion against the Sandinistas. Today, in a sign of the remarkable political transformation that is occurring in many countries where indigenous people press for a greater say in their lives, he is now a member of Nicaragua’s National Assembly, elected to that position with the backing of indigenous voters in 2006.
The collective presence of these distinguished visitors marked the significance of the event, not just for Awas Tingni but for a new era of government and international policies towards indigenous peoples in Nicaragua and beyond.
Upon landing at Awas Tingni, we were ushered to the center of the village and a freshly made wood-plank stage, decorated with palm leaves and haphazardly exploding balloons tethered unstrategically to them. Banners proclaimed that finally the community’s land title was in hand. The ceremony that ensued combined hospitality for the guests and reflection on the struggle that went before. During the hour-long event, presided by Awas Tingni school teacher Jhili Nelson, the weather vacillated from intense heat by the midday sun, to a welcomed cool breeze under the cover of morphing clouds, to drizzling rain. I was reminded of the vacillation in the political and legal environment that shaped the struggle over the years since 1993, when I first visited Awas Tingni.
An Awas Tingni elder, Charlie Mclean, spoke of that day in 1993 when leaders of the community and I met in the very spot where we were now all assembled - although in a much less auspicious setting. They were about to embark on the effort to secure the community’s land rights in the face of government initiatives to allow large-scale logging of the dense tropical forest within the community’s traditional lands. With the help of the University of Iowa College of Law where I then taught, the Indian Law Resource Center, and the New York law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, a team of lawyers, students and social scientists would be assembled that would help see the community through to this day.
In the 1990s, the Nicaraguan government granted concessions to log on Awas Tingni traditional lands to multinational companies, without the community’s consent. It was following a pattern of neglect that has plagued indigenous peoples worldwide since colonizing outsiders first made contact with them. The taking of indigenous lands and resources is linked to a range of discriminatory acts, undergirded by a philosophical posture that regards indigenous cultures and ways of life as inferior to that of the encroaching societies. As a result of such histories of discrimination and oppression, indigenous peoples worldwide, practically as a matter of definition, are now the poorest among the poor, exist at the margins of power, and are vulnerable to a range of social ills and human rights violations.
Indigenous peoples, whose traditional lands are the depositories of much of the world’s remaining valuable natural resources, are today facing renewed threats to their survival. Resource-hungry economic forces, fueled by transnational trade liberalization, target indigenous territories, often with impunity and the aid of all-too-compliant governments. For indigenous peoples, the problem is not so much that major investors and industry are targeting their lands and resources, but that these economic forces are doing so without adequate regard for the indigenous presence.
When confronted by government-authorized logging on its traditional lands, without having agreed to the terms of the logging or secured benefits from it, Awas Tingni leaders decided to take a stand. After their appeals to government officials and the Nicaraguan judicial system went unheard, they took their case to the human rights protection institutions that are linked to the Organization of American States, the hemispheric inter-governmental body. The case eventually made its way to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
On Aug. 31, 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued its historic decision in the case of Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua, finding that Nicaragua had violated the rights of the community for both its granting of concessions to log on Awas Tingni traditional lands and its failure to recognize Awas Tingni property rights in those lands. In its decision, the Inter-American Court found that the right to property, as affirmed in the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, protects the traditional land tenure of indigenous peoples.
This was the first case in which an international tribunal with legally binding authority found a government in violation of the collective land rights of an indigenous group. The judgment set an important precedent for the rights of indigenous peoples in international law, signaling to governments that a new era of respect for indigenous rights was in the making.
The United Nations followed the trend signaled by the Awas Tingni decision and on Sept. 13, 2007 adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, upholding the “right to self-determination” of indigenous peoples within the framework of the states in which they live. The Declaration calls for measures to secure indigenous peoples cultural identities and rights to traditional lands, and for concerted action domestically and internationally to improve their social and economic conditions.
While an overwhelming majority of the 192 UN member states voted in favor of the Declaration, four voted against it – unfortunately the United States among them – for reasons that only a lawyer accepting of an extreme version of legal formalism could buy. But changing political climates in each of the opposing states provides hope that those four will eventually reverse positions and join in the march toward greater enlightenment in human rights, with expressions of support for the Declaration.
But it is one thing for governments to profess support for lofty principles of human rights or adherence to the decisions of tribunals. It is quite another thing for the rhetoric to translate into the reality of people’s lives.
Shortly after the decision of the Inter-American Court in the Awas Tingni case was announced, the government of Nicaragua publicly stated that it would adhere to the court’s order to demarcate and title Awas Tingni’s land and to develop a procedure to title all indigenous lands of the country. But for a number of years that commitment was slow to be fulfilled, as competing economic and political forces continued to pull against effective recognition of indigenous land rights. With the Sandinistas back in power as a result of national elections in 2006 and a coalition pact they had made with the YATAMA indigenous party headed by Brooklyn Rivera, the land titling process under a new law and administrative procedure started to move forward more deliberately.
A complicating factor in the land titling process were the claims of neighboring Miskito communities for lands that extend into those claimed by Awas Tingni. After closely examining the competing land claims, the Nicaraguan titling agencies resolved them in a way that apparently has left some individuals among the Miskito communities dissatisfied. These individuals have protested with a road blockade and public statements of discontent, in a sign of the continuing complexities faced by the Nicaraguan government in securing communal indigenous land tenure throughout the Atlantic Coast region and of the need for it to remain vigilant to eliminate such tensions.
Whatever one might think in other respects of the current Nicaraguan government under the Sandinistas, its policies and now actions on indigenous rights are to be encouraged. It should be congratulated for making good on the commitment to recognize and title Awas Tingni traditional lands in accordance with international standards, and to move decidedly with that act toward securing the rights of indigenous peoples more broadly. Governments around the world should take note of what happened recently at Awas Tingni, to see that the way those in power treat indigenous peoples can take a new and better course.
Evelyn Taylor, an official of the Nicaraguan government titling agency, clearly understood the significance of the title document she held in her hands as she stood before those recently gathered at Awas Tingni. She read the entire document, making her way through its legalistic and sometimes impenetrable wording as community members looked intently on. The Attorney General then took the title document and ceremoniously handed it over to Jonathon Levi, Awas Tingni’s current Sindico, or principal leader, who in turn made an impassioned speech about the meaning of the title to the community.
The Attorney General and Jonathon physically embraced and jointly gripped the title document. Brooklyn Rivera, Lumberto Campbell, others, and I joined in the embrace, to the applause of all, for all of us recognized something important, with implications far beyond the tiny village of Awas Tingni on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, had transpired on this historic day.
S. James Anaya is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, and is the James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy at the University of Arizona. He was the lead attorney for the Awas Tingni community and is the author of “Indigenous Peoples in International Law” (Oxford, 2d. ed. 2004).
Source
Indian Coutry Today
Story Published: Jan 5, 2009
Statement of the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya,
upon conclusion of his visit to the United States4 May 2012
Washington, D.C.– "In my capacity as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, I am concluding my official visit to the United States of America, which I have been carrying out over the past twelve days. During my mission, I have held consultations with indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations in Washington, D.C.; Arizona; Alaska; Oregon; Washington State; South Dakota; and Oklahoma, both in Indian Country and in urban areas. I also had a series of meetings with representatives of the executive branch of the federal government and with state government officials. I regret that my efforts to meet with members of the U.S. Congress were unsuccessful, especially given the prominent role of Congress in defining the status and rights of indigenous peoples within the United States.
I would like to thank the U.S. Department of State and other parts of the government administration for the cooperation they have provided for the mission. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to representatives of indigenous nations and peoples whose assistance in planning and carrying out of this visit has been indispensible. I am honored to have been welcomed into their communities and am humbled by the hospitality I received. I am grateful that they shared their still vibrant cultures and stories, and also their concerns with me.
My mission has been carried out against the backdrop of the United States' endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in December 2010. Over the past twelve days, I have collected a significant amount of information from indigenous peoples and Government representatives across the country, with a view to assessing how the standards of the Declaration are reflected in United States law, policy and programs at both the state and federal levels, and to identify needed reforms as well as good practices.
In the following weeks, I will be reviewing the extensive information I have received during the visit in order to develop a report to evaluate the situation of indigenous peoples in the United States and to make a series of recommendations. This report will be made public, and will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, most likely at its plenary session in September. I hope that that this report will be of use to Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian peoples, as well as to the Government of the United States, to help find solutions to ongoing challenges that indigenous peoples in the country face, and to advance their rights in accordance with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Over the past twelve days, I have heard stories that make evident the profound hurt that indigenous peoples continue to feel because of the history of oppression they have faced. This history—as is widely known but often forgotten—includes the dispossession of the vast majority of their lands and resources, the removal of children from their families and communities, the breakdown of their traditional structures, the loss of their languages, the breaking of treaties, and numerous instances of outrights brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination.
It is clear that this history does not just blemish the past, but translates into present day disadvantage for indigenous peoples in the country. The intergenerational trauma suffered by indigenous societies is deeply felt and manifested in deep social ills that afflict indigenous Americans in ways not experienced by others.
I have heard countless accounts of the ongoing problems that indigenous peoples face as a result of historical injustices, problems of deeply troubling economic, health, education, and development disparities. In all my consultations with indigenous peoples in the places I visited it was impressed upon me that the sense of loss, alienation and indignity is pervasive throughout Indian country. It is evident that there have still not been adequate measures of reconciliation to overcome the persistent legacies of the history of oppression, and that there is still much healing that needs to be done.
I believe that an important step in the still needed process of reconciliation is the statement of support of the Government of the United States for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the United States should be commended for joining the rest of the countries of the world in its support for this instrument. The Declaration affirms fundamental human rights in relation to the particular historical and contemporary circumstances of indigenous peoples. It echoes fundamental values, embraced by the American constitutional tradition, of self-determination, equality, local decision-making and secure property, and respect for cultural identity. The United States must also ensure that international relations and laws governing corporate activities affecting indigenous peoples in other countries are consistent with, and promote, the application of the Declaration.
I have also heard about initiatives the Federal Government has taken in recent years to improve the conditions of indigenous peoples, which can be seen as advances towards the implementation of some provisions of the Declaration. These include initiatives to develop consultation policies and open spaces of dialogue with tribes; to settle outstanding claims; to increase funding for federal programs; and to improve education, economic development, and law and order in Indian Country. These initiatives build on some already important recognition of, and in some cases exemplary laws, policies, and programs that promote the rights of indigenous peoples in the country. I will continue to study these and other initiatives and will be reflecting positive developments in further detail in my report.
However, from the information that I have gathered, it is evident that more robust measures are needed to address the serious issues affecting Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian peoples in the United States, issues that are rooted in a dark and complex history whose legacies are not easy to overcome. Continued and concerted measures are needed to develop new initiatives and reform existing ones, in consultation and in real partnership with indigenous peoples, to conform to the Declaration, with a goal towards strengthening indigenous peoples' own self-determination and decision-making over their affairs at all levels. The Declaration provides a new grounding for understanding the status and rights of indigenous peoples, upon which the legal doctrines of conquest and discovery must be discarded as a basis for decision-making by judicial and other authorities.
I have seen that many tribes across the country have capable institutions of self-governance and tribal courts, self-administered social and economic development programs, which have demonstrated significant successes and, with an understanding and knowledge of tribal realities, function at the same time to promote and consolidate indigenous cultures and values. During my visit, I heard almost universal calls from indigenous nations and tribes across the country that the Government respect tribal sovereignty, that indigenous peoples' ability to control their own affairs be strengthened, and that the many existing barriers to the effective exercise of self-determination be removed. It should be noted that the Violence Against Women Act, which is currently pending reauthorization before Congress, contains important provisions recognizing the jurisdiction of tribes to prosecute perpetrators of violence against Indian women and to hold them accountable for their crimes, which is a good step towards addressing this distressing problem. Also, adequate funding should be provided to ensure the welfare of indigenous Americans in accordance with historical obligations, especially in areas of health, housing, and education.
I cannot conclude without providing some brief comments on issues I have heard related to the lands and resources of indigenous peoples across America. The widespread loss of indigenous peoples' lands and resources is well-documented. The negative effects of this loss are compounded by past and ongoing activities that diminish or threaten the remaining lands and resources upon which indigenous peoples depend. Across America, past uncontrolled and irresponsible extractive activities, including uranium mining in the Southwest, have resulted in the contamination of indigenous peoples' water sources and other resources, and in numerous documented negative health effects among Native Americans.
In Alaska and the Pacific Northwest especially, I heard about how Native peoples continue to depend upon hunting and gathering wildlife, and fishing marine resources, and how the maintenance of these subsistence activities is essential for both their physical and their cultural survival, especially in isolated areas. However, indigenous peoples informed me that they face ever-greater threats to their subsistence activities due to a growing surge of competing interests, and in some cases incompatible extractive activities, over these lands and resources. In Alaska, indigenous peoples complain about a complex and overly restrictive state regulatory apparatus that impedes their access to subsistence resources.
I also heard many stories about the significance of places that are sacred to indigenous peoples, places like the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona and the Black Hills in South Dakota, which hold profound religious and cultural significance to tribes. During my visit, indigenous peoples reported to me that they have too little control over what happens in these places, and that activities carried out around them at times affront their values and beliefs.
It is important to note, in this regard, that securing the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands is of central importance to indigenous peoples' socio-economic development, self-determination, and cultural integrity. Continued efforts to resolve, clarify, and strengthen the protection of indigenous lands, resources, and sacred sites should be made.
I look forward to developing more detailed observations and recommendations beyond these initial comments in my report to the Human Rights Council. As I noted, my observations and recommendations will be aimed at identifying good practices and needed reforms in line with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I hope that this process will contribute to ensuring that the first Americans can continue to thrive and maintain their distinct ways of life as they have done for generations despite significant challenges, preserving this fundamental part of American history and enriching American society for the benefit of all."
***
22 August 2012 22 August 2012. A United Nations independent expert today called on the United States Government and authorities in the state of South Dakota to start consultations with indigenous people on a land sale that will affect a site of spiritual significance to them.
Five tracts of land in the Black Hills area in South Dakota are scheduled to be auctioned on Saturday. The tracts lie within a site sacred to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples, known as Pe' Sla, said the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, in a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
According to Mr. Anaya, the indigenous communities are concerned that the sale of the land will result in restrictions to their access and the use of Pe' Sla for ceremonial purposes. They are also concerned that it may lead to a road development project that would diminish the cultural and spiritual integrity of their sacred site.
Read more and see the News release
29 August 2012 Last updated at 16:35 ETAn attack by gold miners on a group of Yanomami tribespeople in Venezuela has left up to 80 people dead, according to campaign groups.
The attack is reported to have taken place last month in the remote Irotatheri community, close to the border with Brazil.
The miners allegedly set fire to a communal house, with witnesses reporting finding burnt bodies.
The Yanomami have previously complained of miners encroaching on their lands.
Due to the community's remote location, it took those who discovered the bodies days to walk to the nearest settlement to report the incident, according to campaign group Survival International.
So far three survivors have been accounted for, according to Yanomami organisations.
A statement from a network of Yanomami groups called on Venezuelan authorities to investigate the incident and to co-operate with Brazil to "control and watch the movement" of miners in the area.
Yanomami activists say that the tribe has previously been targeted with threats and violence by illegal miners.
"All Amazonian governments must stop the rampant illegal mining, logging and settlement in indigenous territories," said Stephen Corry, director of Survival International.
In recent years the soaring price of gold on world markets has driven a surge in unlicensed gold-mining in many parts of the Amazon.
Members of the Yanomami tribe. The tribe says it has repeatedly warned Venezuela’s government that conflicts with miners are intensifying. Photograph: Sipa Press/REX FEATURES
Brazil is pressing Venezuela to determine whether Brazilian gold miners crossed the border and massacred a village of about 80 indigenous people from a helicopter.
The alleged assault, which a tribal group says could have killed more than 70 people in early July, came to light this week when the group asked Venezuela's government to investigate. Because of the remoteness of the region and the scattered nature of the native settlements, fellow tribe members were able to alert the government only on Monday.
Brazil's foreign ministry said on Friday that its embassy in Caracas had asked the Venezuelan government to provide it with any information that could help it determine whether the attack had happened and whether Brazilians had been involved.
Brazil's National Indian Foundation, a government body that oversees indigenous affairs, said it would seek a joint investigation by officials from both countries at the site.
The border area between the two countries – a long, dense swath of the Amazon rainforest – has increasingly become the site of conflicts between indigenous people, gold miners, and others seeking to tap jungle resources.
The tribe that was allegedly attacked, the Yanomami, says it has given repeated, but unheeded, warnings to Venezuela's government that the conflicts are intensifying.
On Wednesday, Venezuela's public prosecutor said it would investigate. By late Friday, however, Venezuela's government still could not confirm whether the attack had occurred.
The Venezuelan interior minister, Tareck Al Aissami, said in televised comments on Friday that officials had managed to speak with seven of the nine known groups of the Yanomami tribe and thus far had no proof of an attack in any of their settlements. Officials would soon meet with those and the other two groups to further clarify the matter, he said. "God willing, there won't have been any violence among the other two groups either."
In the document presented to Venezuelan authorities this week, Yanomami leaders said tribe members in the area had spoken with three villagers from the community where the attack allegedly took place.
The three villagers, the only inhabitants of the community known to be alive, said they had been hunting away from the settlement when they heard a "tokotoko" – their indigenous word for helicopter. They also heard gunfire and explosions, the document said. Other Yanomami who visited the village later said a communal hut had been burned and that they found charred bodies and bones.
The attack was the latest in a growing number of conflicts with Brazilian gold miners, the Yanomami said in the document. The tribe alerted soldiers in the region in late July about the attack and the soldiers interviewed some of the tribespeople who had seen the destroyed village, according to the document. Venezuela's army has not commented.
The remote settlement is a five-hour helicopter flight, or 15-day walk, from Puerto Ayacucho, capital of the southern Venezuelan state of Amazonas. Because of the distance and isolation of many indigenous settlements, the government is often unable to protect tribes from incursions by outsiders. Much of the violence goes unreported, and followup investigations are difficult once conflicts take place.
DEEP in the rainforest, the village of Sarayaku is two days by river from the nearest town. But its 1,200 Kichwa Indians are now in the spotlight. On July 25th the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Ecuador’s government had ignored the rights of Sarayaku’s residents when granting permission for an energy project—putting governments in the Americas on notice that big physical investments are not legal until the indigenous people they affect have had their say.
The dispute began in 1996 when Petroecuador, the state oil firm, signed a prospecting deal with a consortium led by Argentina’s Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC). Much of the area it covered was the ancestral land of Sarayaku’s residents, who were not consulted. CGC later offered locals medical aid for their consent. Some villages signed up, but Sarayaku held out.
Nonetheless, by early 2003 CGC had drilled 467 boreholes around the town for seismic surveying, and packed them with 1,433kg of high explosives. They were never detonated, and remain buried in the forest. As well as felling trees and destroying a sacred site, the company ruined some of Sarayaku’s water sources. Work ceased in 2003, and CGC’s contract ended in 2010.
The court found that the state had breached the villagers’ rights to prior consultation, communal property and cultural identity by approving the project, and that CGC’s tests had threatened their right to life. It ordered the government to pay damages, clear the remaining explosives and overhaul its consultation process. In future affected groups must be heard in a plan’s “first stages…not only when the need arises to obtain the approval of the community.” However, the judges did not ban prospecting on Sarayaku lands. The right to consultation does not grant a veto.
The ruling will be studied closely in the myriad Latin American countries struggling to balance big investments with local rights. A narrow reading of the decision suggests that governments must tiptoe around indigenous concerns, but can act more boldly when other groups protest, since the ruling was based partly on the International Labour Organisation’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.
The ruling also shows that the regional justice system has not lost its mettle. In 2011 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which litigates cases at the court, asked Brazil to halt work on the huge Belo Monte dam because its neighbours were not given a sufficient chance to speak up. Brazil’s government, which had authorised the dam only after a long public debate, saw this as a violation of its sovereignty. It did not comply, and stopped contributing money to the commission.
The commission was weakened by angering the region’s biggest country and by the criticism that it had exceeded its mandate. After Brazil presented new evidence in the case, the commission reversed its stance on Belo Monte. Moreover, last month the Organisation of American States voted to draft a reform plan for the commission, which some fear could strip it of important powers. Ecuador was among the commission’s loudest critics.
The Sarayaku case was not as heated as Belo Monte, since Ecuador’s government had already promised to pay damages. However, the court’s decision did strongly reassert its right to intervene in development cases. Moreover, Ecuador’s government plans to tender a big chunk of the Amazon for oil exploration later this year, despite indigenous opposition. If neither side backs down and the protesters appeal, the court’s next ruling on development in Ecuador may be far more contentious.
Correa said in remarks broadcast on Friday that the samples were taken from members of the Waorani community in the early 1990s by two U.S. nationals on the premise that the community is particularly resistant to disease and this merited medical research, AFP reported.
In July 2012, the 3,000-member group filed a complaint with the Ecuadorian ombudsman's office, and in response the government decided to take action after some 20 years, Correa stated.
According to the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, biopiracy is forbidden.
The indigenous group said in the complaint that the samples were taken using the pretext that the U.S. citizens, one of them a doctor, wanted to perform a routine medical checkup of the indigenous people, but the people whose samples were taken had never been recontacted.
The blood samples finally ended up at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, based in Camden, New Jersey, the complaint stated.
The complaint alleged that since 1994 the institute had sold many Waorani cell cultures and blood samples to other researchers.
In a statement, the institute said it had one cell line from the Waorani that was acquired from a Harvard Medical School researcher in 1991.
Coriell admitted that from 1994 to 2008, it distributed seven cell cultures and 36 DNA samples from the Waorani line for scientific research in eight different countries.
But the institute "received no commercial benefit associated with the receipt, storage or distribution of these specimens,” the statement added.
Coriell also claimed that since 2010 the cell line has no longer been part of the institute's genetic material repository.
(Source: Press TV)
27 August 2012
The Special Rapporteur travelled to Australia from 20 to 24 August 2012 as part of his ongoing study on the thematic issue of extractive industries affecting indigenous peoples. During his time in the country, the Special Rapporteur participated in Melbourne in a roundtable discussion entitled “First Peoples and Extractive Industries: Good Practices,” hosted by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. The roundtable was attended by key representatives of indigenous peoples, extractive industries, and the Government. The Special Rapporteur also travelled to the city of Perth and the Pilbara region in Western Australia, where he learned about models for benefit-sharing and other arrangements under which mining affecting indigenous lands is taking place throughout the region. These examples of models will provide an invaluable contribution to the Special Rapporteur’s report on the issue of extractive industries.
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