Summit yields human rights violations report

Summit yields human rights violations report

Tribes urge US adoption of UN Declaration

By Gale Courey Toensing

Story Published: Jun 30, 2010

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. – A group of southwestern tribes has filed a collective report for the United Nations Human Rights Council, documenting the human rights violations imposed on the indigenous peoples of the area by the United States government.

The 125-page report was filed with the U.S. State Department and will become part of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, a process created by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 as a mechanism by which the human rights records of all 192 U.N. member states are reviewed every four years.

The report emerged from a historic meeting June 11, called “Southwest Tribal Summit: Enough is Enough – Tribal Voices Must be Heard.”

Tribal leaders, citizens, and tribal organizations representing dozens of southwestern nations attended the event, which was organized by San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr. The summit took place at the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s Hon-Dah Resort.

Nosie said he was prompted to reach out to the international body because of the non-responsiveness of federal and state governments to the repeated concerns of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, Navajo Nation, Colorado River Indian Tribe, Hualapai Tribe and other tribes in Arizona about the toxic effects of mining on the lands and waters.

“Our rights are continually being trampled on and there is no one taking the responsibility to correct what is wrong. Perhaps the United Nations’ Human Rights Council can get the attention of the governments.”

The report documents the federal government’s human rights violations against the tribal nations under four overarching themes: The federal government’s failure to consider and protect the tribes’ right to religious and cultural freedom; its failure to enforce its own laws to protect natural resources; its failure to conduct formal consultation regarding development that impacts tribal lands and peoples; and the lack and suppression of education about tribal history in U.S. public schools and the existing political relationship between tribes and the federal government.

Many of the human rights violations relate to the degradation and destruction of natural resources – water, land, forests – and the desecration of sacred sites by the mining, logging and extraction activities of multinational corporations, which the federal government exempts from laws and restrictions meant to protect the environment.

“While the United States of America has come a long way from its original policy of seeking the direct extermination of Indian people, we continue to suffer from the institutionalized wrongs of the past. The insatiable appetite for tribal resources, the lack of the American people to consider the future consequences of their actions upon the environment and other cultures, and then historical prejudices toward Indian people which continue to infiltrate the federal, state and local governments, regularly result in violations of our fundamental human rights,” Nosie wrote in the cover letter to the report.

The report also urges that “the United States swiftly adopt the Declaration (on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and join the rest of the world in recognizing that indigenous people around the globe, including those within its own boundaries, are entitled to freedom, religion, culture, autonomy and resources which we require for our continued existence.”

The summit report includes statements from a number of tribes and a transcript of testimonies from the summit. The documents detail the specific human rights violations regarding religious rights, protection of sacred lands, repatriation of ancestral remains and items of cultural patrimony, the wholesale destruction of lands through the appropriation of resources by mining and logging companies that are given permits by the federal government, and the absence of consultation or what the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples calls “free, prior, and informed consent” – a requirement that recognizes indigenous peoples’ inherent and prior rights to their lands and resources – whether those lands and resources are their aboriginal territories or are currently “in trust” by a nation state’s government – and respects their legitimate authority to require that third parties enter into an equal and respectful relationship with them, based on the principle of informed consent. Among the statements were:

* San Carlos’ opposition to Resolution Copper’s plan to conduct large scale block cave mining on the tribe’s sacred ancestral land, which was taken by the federal government and designated as “public land” and the lack of consultation about the project. The tribe, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups attest that the project will devastate the land and potentially contaminate the water supply.
* Yavapai-Apache Nation and Western Apache Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act cited the practice by some museums to label sacred objects as “cultural items” and refuse to return them to the nation.
* Yavapai also cited the decades-long violations of its water rights that have been upheld in federal courts and the desecration of Dzil Cho (San Francisco Peaks), a holy mountain. The federal government approved a plan for a commercial ski resort to use reclaimed sewerage, including human waste, to be sprayed on the mountain to make fake snow. The courts upheld the government’s decision.
* White Mountain Apache cited federal government’s breach of its trust responsibilities by failing to protect the tribe’s natural resources, especially its water rights, by massive developments to benefit non-Native interests.
* The Western Shoshone National Council cited the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination regarding federal government policies involving uranium extraction, mercury contamination of water, water rerouting, restrictions on hunting and gathering rights, and more, that indicate environmental racism.

The U.S. became a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009 and the first review of its human rights record will take place this December.

Interview with San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr.

Indian Country Today: Was the Southwestern Tribes Summit successful?
Wendsler Nosie: I was really happy with the summit, which involved so many different tribes to bring our concerns together and really voice as one our displeasure and disagreement over the way Indian tribes have been dealt with by the United States over all the years.

If you look at the chronology of all the things that have been set in place for Indian tribes, and especially for Apaches, we’ve been good, we’ve been obedient, we followed the rules, but in all the things we’ve done and all the things we’ve asked, we’ve always been put to the back and there’s no real success for us. The people in Congress who have the authority to do what’s right have never really supported those major changes that are needed.

So one of the things we’re saying is enough is enough. We’re not going to take this anymore. I told the tribal leaders that I know it’s a new era, it’s a new time, and we’re pioneering in one voice that is now going to hold the United States responsibility for the past and the present because it affects our future.

The summit was well received and well supported and the tribes have indicated to me, please don’t stop here, we need to keep going.

ICT: What happened on your recent trip to Washington?
WN: One of the things I’ve been saying to people in Washington is, ‘Tell us the truth. Either you support or you don’t support Indian tribes; because the propaganda is over for me. I want the truth so that I can know how to rear my children.’

It’s so easy for Congress to put aside laws like the National Environmental Protection Act, the cultural protection laws, the historic preservation laws – it’s still so easy for them to ignore all those things that protect Indian people. When there’s something that affects Indian country and the lives of Indian people then the trustee, which is the federal government, should first consult with Indian tribes and bring the issue to the table with those investors, like Resolution Copper (the multinational corporation that plans a massive copper extraction project on Apache aboriginal territory). But that’s when you find the federal government doing the disappearing act. We’re left out there along with people who have financial back.

We’ve been playing in their ball park all these years and it’s time to change. This (summit) group will be asking for a direct meeting with President Obama. I’ve done that several times, but now collectively with the tribes speaking in one voice I can’t see how they can turn it down.

ICT: You said at the summit that this is a ‘dangerous time,’ and ‘we are at that fork in the road. We totally assimilate or we don’t and we maintain what we have.’ Can you talk about that?
WN: This is what I told Interior Secretary (Ken) Salazar. I told him if the Indian people were to disappear in this country, there’d be no more respect, no more moral perspective, no more integrity, that Indian people here are protecting the earth –even though the abuse continues – and once we’re disappeared, there’s going to be a free for all with all the natural resources that are left, because nobody’s going to say no, nobody’s going to say stop, nobody’s going to say enough is enough.

And I said that’s what worries me today in Indian country. You’re a good Indian if you abide by the federal government and allow them to shove you around every which way, but you’re not a good Indian when you stand up for what is left for us all to preserve life. But if we disappear the U.S. is going to chaos. And they don’t understand.

We were told that the last battle would be our religion and now our religion is under attack, our religion that holds all the morals and all the creation from God’s blessed gifts is under attack. That means we have to stand together and that’s basically what the summit was about, to bring that one voice together to go over the human rights violations that have occurred and to acknowledge we’ve been victimized in the past and we’ve victimized today but we want to heal for tomorrow.

As I mentioned to all the tribes, it’s time for us to begin to dictate to this country that they are not adhering to our requests even within their own formalities. They aren’t listening, and we need to start taking things into our own hands.