Saturday, March 10, 2018

Urgent Call for Solidarity: Mother Earth Defenders Labeled as Terrorists


Dear sisters and brothers,

Nya wenha Skanonh

Warm and respectful greetings. We write to you an urgent message and request for solidarity. Two of our indigenous sisters, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Kankana-ey- Igorot, Special Rapporteur to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues and Joan Carling, Kankanaey, Igorot co-convener of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group on Sustainable Development have been placed on a list including 600 people declared by the Philippine government as terrorists.

These Mother Earth and human rights defenders must be protected and it is time we rise up collectively to ensure that no harm comes to them. We all know they are now in grave danger. As the Human Rights Watch stated it is a “Government hit list”. They will be targeted.

During the UN International Expert Group Meeting, held 23-25 of January 2018, the American Indian Law Alliance and the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee recommended that a reporting and monitoring system be developed by the United Nations when threats of violence are made by Member States and organizations to Indigenous Mother Earth and Human Rights Defenders. These threats and attacks need to be fully documented and followed by UN mechanisms.


The recommendation was derived from a threat one of our brothers received after posting his statement to social media.

Lists of these threats must be completely transparent and made available to all Member States, UN Agencies, Organizations and NGO’s. A formal penalty or sanctioning system must be developed as retribution for offenses and be implemented by UN Mechanism to sanction these violators. These sanctions must also be made public.

Utilizing the UN Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the General Assembly on Thursday, 13 September 2007, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, United Nations Charter and international Human Rights Laws, overseen by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples, Nations and Organizations with the full, prior and informed consent to any processes that are discussed and later agreed upon.


We need to send a clear message that violators are put on notice that we as Indigenous Peoples, Nations and Organizations will not tolerate threats and attacks to our people or lands.

We need to identify and enlist all Indigenous Peoples, Nations, Organizations, UN Agencies, UN departments and Member States willing to assist in these efforts.

We look forward to your feedback and working with all of you on this very important issue facing all Indigenous Environmental and Human Rights Defenders.

During the UN International Expert Group Meeting, Joan Carling stated that there is always an expectation of a trade-off when working within these systems and by Member States. I say to all of you we have nothing left to give this includes our lives.

Lastly, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, stated during this same UN International Expert Group Meeting “The protection of our rights must come first”.

Please share this.

With love and solidarity, 

Warm regards,

Betty Lyons
President/Executive Director
American Indian Law Alliance 
315-382-9888




The American Indian Law Alliance (AILA) is an Indigenous NGO in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, (ECOSOC).

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

DACA: Human Rights Cannot Be Deferred

American Indian Law Alliance
 

DACA: Human Rights Cannot Be Deferred

For those who know the Americas as the Great Turtle Island - Abya Yala, DACA is not an immigration crisis – it is a matter of simple human rights

As we approach the March 5th date for expiration of the legal immigration status of so-called DREAMERS – those who came to the US as children and now fall under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, or DACA – we as citizens of the original Indigenous Nations of this continent have been watching closely.

We have dealt with these issues ever since the first Europeans crossed the Atlantic and claimed the right of “discovery” over lands to be called the Americas, a continent known to us for millennia as the Great Turtle Island - Abya Yala. Since the founding of the United States on our lands in 1776, these policies and practices have had a devastating impact on the territories and Human Rights of our Original Nations and our relatives from both north and the south of the US borders.


For us, DACA is not an immigration crisis. It is a human rights crisis. And human rights cannot be deferred. Every day approximately 122 people lose DACA protection. This cruel policy immorally punishes and traumatizes innocent young people and their families.

As Indigenous Peoples, we know our history and we know our relatives.  Many so-called “undocumented” people are in fact Indigenous Peoples, children of Original Nations with a millennial history of travel across the continent to trade and engage in cultural and ceremonial obligations at sacred sites of their traditional territories long before the US (and its international borders) even existed.

The US-Mexico border is not an indigenous border. Similarly, to citizens of the Onondaga Nation – part of the Six Nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whom the European Americans call the Iroquois – the US-Canadian border runs through our traditional lands that we view as one inseparable nation.

O'otham Nations
Sin Fronteras
[Arizona-Sonora]
 Dividing families is something we cannot imagine doing to others, because we have been through this pain many times at the hands of the same government. That is why we as Indigenous Peoples support immediate passage of a “clean” Dream Act, and it should definitely not be linked to funding a wall along the US-Mexico border that Indigenous Nations never consented to in the first place. A border wall will exacerbate human rights violations and bring horrendous environmental destruction to the land.

There is a twisted irony at play here. As original Nations our ties to the land emerge from time immemorial. Today however we are forced to call for justice from the international arena in order to restore our rightful stewardship over our territories.

In 2014 the Onondaga Nation filed a land rights action against the US government with the Organization of American States (OAS) for the illegal taking of our lands. We had taken our case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear our case in part because "it would be too disruptive to the full use and enjoyment of the non-Native people who now live on our lands."


While the US constitution says that treaties – such as the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua with the Haudenosaunee, signed by George Washington for the United States – are the supreme law of the land, the United States has failed to enforce the promised recognition and protection of our lands from illegal invasion by settlers. As we have sought justice in the US courts for this illegal theft of our land, the courts refused to hear the case, citing the Doctrine of Discovery and claiming “it would be too disruptive” to the “justified expectations” of non-native people now living on our lands.

To be clear, the Onondaga Nation explicitly stated we do not want to “deport” people from our lands, the way we have been displaced historically. Yet while the US claimed it feared disrupting our non-native neighbors, they would hypocritically deport young Dreamers who have grown up in the US, with no regard for disrupting their lives and families.

We have had to face the fact that our legal case has no further recourse in the U.S. court system.  The "American Dream" of justice for all is simply not true, and for the Indigenous Peoples, it never has been.


If we are to truly discuss US immigration, we should start in 1493 with the “Doctrine of Discovery”, a series of Papal Bulls declaring lands not occupied by Christians could be claimed in the name of the explorers’ European sovereigns. Far from ancient history, the doctrine to this day underlies the law and policy related to Indigenous land rights and human rights in US courts and across the continent. The lingering racism underpinned by the doctrine is the real “constitutional crisis” unfolding before us daily, a symptom of the underlying crisis of self-definition of the US body politic that lies at the root of the tree of the American “experiment” in democracy.

If the US congress is incapable or incompetent to protect the Human Rights of the DREAMERS and their families, where shall we turn for justice? The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted in 2007, proclaims in Article 36:

Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.”

In the spirit of responsibility for caretaking the land for future generations, we call upon leadership from all sectors of society to live up to the ideals of democracy and decency, of human rights and justice and act immediately to protect the DREAMERS and their families, and to recognize, respect and guarantee the basic dignity and inherent human rights of all peoples, including Indigenous Peoples’ equal right of self-determination.

The time has come for our brothers and sisters of the United States to finally and for the first time discover the basic law of respect for our shared and common humanity which binds us all together as equal relatives of the Human Family.  The time has come to supersede the racism of the Doctrine of Discovery.

No one is illegal. Human rights cannot be deferred. 

Betty Lyons, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation, is president of the American Indian Law Alliance



March 23, 2012
Arizona State Capitol -  House of Representatives
A forum to address the implications of the Doctrine of Discovery in context of the standards established by the adoption on September 13, 2007 of the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
Local - Regional - Continental - Global
Professor Robert Miller:
“How Euro-Americans claimed new territories just by showing up with their flag.”


United Nations Preliminary Study on the Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery 

This preliminary study establishes that the Doctrine of Discovery has been institutionalized in law and policy, on national and international levels, and lies at the root of the violations of indigenous peoples’ human rights, both individual and collective. This has resulted in State claims to and the mass appropriation of the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples. Both the Doctrine of Discovery and a holistic structure that we term the Framework of Dominance have resulted in centuries of virtually unlimited resource extraction from the traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This, in turn, has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples, and the host of problems that they face today on a daily basis.




POHUALLATOAYAN
ABYA YALA
September 16, 2017 

Monday, March 5, 2018

DACA: Human Rights Cannot Be Deferred



American Indian Law Alliance

DACA: Human Rights Cannot Be Deferred
Betty Lyons
March 3, 2018

For those who know the Americas as the Great Turtle Island - Abya Yala, DACA is not an immigration crisis – it is a matter of simple human rights

As we approach the March 5th date for expiration of the legal immigration status of so-called DREAMERS – those who came to the US as children and now fall under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, or DACA – we as citizens of the original Indigenous Nations of this continent have been watching closely.

We have dealt with these issues ever since the first Europeans crossed the Atlantic and claimed the right of “discovery” over lands to be called the Americas, a continent known to us for millennia as the Great Turtle Island - Abya Yala. Since the founding of the United States on our lands in 1776, these policies and practices have had a devastating impact on the territories and Human Rights of our Original Nations and our relatives from both north and the south of the US borders.


For us, DACA is not an immigration crisis. It is a human rights crisis. And human rights cannot be deferred. Every day approximately 122 people lose DACA protection. This cruel policy immorally punishes and traumatizes innocent young people and their families.

As Indigenous Peoples, we know our history and we know our relatives.  Many so-called “undocumented” people are in fact Indigenous Peoples, children of Original Nations with a millennial history of travel across the continent to trade and engage in cultural and ceremonial obligations at sacred sites of their traditional territories long before the US (and its international borders) even existed.

The US-Mexico border is not an indigenous border. Similarly, to citizens of the Onondaga Nation – part of the Six Nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whom the European Americans call the Iroquois – the US-Canadian border runs through our traditional lands that we view as one inseparable nation.


O'otham Nations
Sin Fronteras
[Arizona-Sonora]
 Dividing families is something we cannot imagine doing to others, because we have been through this pain many times at the hands of the same government. That is why we as Indigenous Peoples support immediate passage of a “clean” Dream Act, and it should definitely not be linked to funding a wall along the US-Mexico border that Indigenous Nations never consented to in the first place. A border wall will exacerbate human rights violations and bring horrendous environmental destruction to the land.

There is a twisted irony at play here. As original Nations our ties to the land emerge from time immemorial. Today however we are forced to call for justice from the international arena in order to restore our rightful stewardship over our territories.

In 2014 the Onondaga Nation filed a land rights action against the US government with the Organization of American States (OAS) for the illegal taking of our lands. We had taken our case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear our case in part because "it would be too disruptive to the full use and enjoyment of the non-Native people who now live on our lands."


While the US constitution says that treaties – such as the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua with the Haudenosaunee, signed by George Washington for the United States – are the supreme law of the land, the United States has failed to enforce the promised recognition and protection of our lands from illegal invasion by settlers. As we have sought justice in the US courts for this illegal theft of our land, the courts refused to hear the case, citing the Doctrine of Discovery and claiming “it would be too disruptive” to the “justified expectations” of non-native people now living on our lands.

To be clear, the Onondaga Nation explicitly stated we do not want to “deport” people from our lands, the way we have been displaced historically. Yet while the US claimed it feared disrupting our non-native neighbors, they would hypocritically deport young Dreamers who have grown up in the US, with no regard for disrupting their lives and families.

We have had to face the fact that our legal case has no further recourse in the U.S. court system.  The "American Dream" of justice for all is simply not true, and for the Indigenous Peoples, it never has been.


If we are to truly discuss US immigration, we should start in 1493 with the “Doctrine of Discovery”, a series of Papal Bulls declaring lands not occupied by Christians could be claimed in the name of the explorers’ European sovereigns. Far from ancient history, the doctrine to this day underlies the law and policy related to Indigenous land rights and human rights in US courts and across the continent. The lingering racism underpinned by the doctrine is the real “constitutional crisis” unfolding before us daily, a symptom of the underlying crisis of self-definition of the US body politic that lies at the root of the tree of the American “experiment” in democracy.

If the US congress is incapable or incompetent to protect the Human Rights of the DREAMERS and their families, where shall we turn for justice? The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted in 2007, proclaims in Article 36:

Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.”

In the spirit of responsibility for caretaking the land for future generations, we call upon leadership from all sectors of society to live up to the ideals of democracy and decency, of human rights and justice and act immediately to protect the DREAMERS and their families, and to recognize, respect and guarantee the basic dignity and inherent human rights of all peoples, including Indigenous Peoples’ equal right of self-determination.

The time has come for our brothers and sisters of the United States to finally and for the first time discover the basic law of respect for our shared and common humanity which binds us all together as equal relatives of the Human Family.  The time has come to supersede the racism of the Doctrine of Discovery.

No one is illegal. Human rights cannot be deferred. 

Betty Lyons, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation, is president of the American Indian Law Alliance


###





This preliminary study establishes that the Doctrine of Discovery has been institutionalized in law and policy, on national and international levels, and lies at the root of the violations of indigenous peoples’ human rights, both individual and collective. This has resulted in State claims to and the mass appropriation of the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples. Both the Doctrine of Discovery and a holistic structure that we term the Framework of Dominance have resulted in centuries of virtually unlimited resource extraction from the traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This, in turn, has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples, and the host of problems that they face today on a daily basis.

###


Nahuacalli Educators Alliance:
DACA and the Doctrine of Discovery


POHUALLATOAYAN
ABYA YALA
September 16, 2017 

 






Derecho Indigena y DACA: Los derechos humanos no pueden ser deferidos.




Para nosotros que conocemos las Américas como La Gran Isla Tortuga de Abya Yala, DACA no es una crisis de inmigración, es una cuestión de derechos humanos 

A medida que nos acercamos a la fecha del 5 de marzo para la expiración del estatus migratorio legal de los llamados DREAMERS - aquellos que vinieron a los Estados Unidos cuando eran niños y ahora caen bajo el estado de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia o DACA - nosotros como ciudadanos de las Naciones Originales de Pueblos Indígenas de este continente hemos estado observando muy de cerca.

Hemos lidiado con estos problemas desde que los primeros europeos cruzaron el Atlántico y pretendieron "descubrir" nuestro continente que bautizaron con el nombre de América, ya conocido por nosotros durante milenios como la Gran Isla Tortuga o Abya Yala. Desde que los Estados Unidos fue fundado en nuestras tierras en 1776, estas políticas y prácticas han tenido un impacto devastador en los territorios y con los derechos humanos de nuestras Naciones Originarias y nuestros parientes tanto al norte como al sur de las fronteras de los Estados Unidos.



Para nosotros, DACA no es una crisis de inmigración. Es una crisis de derechos humanos. Y los derechos humanos no pueden ser diferidos. Cada día aproximadamente 122 personas pierden la protección DACA. Esta política cruel castiga y traumatiza inmoralmente a jóvenes inocentes y sus familias.

Como Pueblos Indígenas, conocemos nuestra historia y conocemos a nuestros parientes. Muchos de los llamados "indocumentados" son, de hecho, miembros de Pueblos Indígenas, niños de las Naciones Originarias con una historia milenaria de peregrinaciones a través del continente para comerciar y cumplir con obligaciones culturales y ceremoniales en los sitios sagrados de sus territorios tradicionales - mucho más antes de que existiera los Estados Unidos.


La frontera entre Estados Unidos y México no es una frontera indígena. Del mismo modo, para los ciudadanos de la Nación Onondaga, integrante de la Confederación Haudenosaunee de las Seis Naciones, que los Europeo Americanos llaman los Iroqués, la frontera entre Estados Unidos y Canadá atraviesa nuestras tierras tradicionales que consideramos como una nación inseparable.

Dividir familias es algo que no podemos imaginar hacer a otros, porque históricamente hemos pasado por este dolor muchas veces a manos del mismo gobierno. Es por eso por lo que nosotros como Pueblos Indígenas apoyamos la aprobación inmediata de un Dream Act "limpio", y que definitivamente no debería estar vinculado a la financiación de un muro a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México al que las Naciones Indígenas nunca accedieron en primer lugar. Un muro agravará las violaciones de los derechos humanos y traerá una horrenda destrucción medio ambiental a los diversos ecosistemas del territorio fronteriza.

Nosotros, como Naciones Originarias, no queremos 'deportar' a la gente de nuestras tierras, de la forma en que hemos sido desplazados históricamente.

Cuando los primeros colonos europeos llegaron y tenían hambre, los alimentamos. Cuando tenían frío los vestíamos y cuando necesitaban un lugar donde alojarse les ofrecíamos hospitalidad en nuestro territorio. Y cuando avanzaron hacia la independencia en una confederación como país, los instruimos en nuestra Gran Ley de Paz.




Si realmente intentamos debatir el tema de la política de inmigración estadounidense, deberíamos comenzar en 1493 con la "Doctrina del Descubrimiento", una serie de Bulas Papales que declaran que las tierras no ocupadas por cristianos podrían ser reclamadas en nombre de los soberanos europeos de los exploradores. Lejos de ser una historia anticuada, la Doctrina del Descubrimiento hasta el día de hoy subyace la ley y las políticas relacionadas con los derechos territoriales y derechos humanos de los Pueblos Indígenas en todos los tribunales estadounidenses y en todo el continente. El racismo persistente sustentado por la doctrina es la verdadera "crisis constitucional" que se desvela ante nosotros diariamente, un síntoma de la crisis subyacente de la autodefinición del cuerpo político estadounidense que está enraizada en "experimento" estadounidense de la democracia.



Si bien la Constitución de los Estados Unidos dice que los tratados - como el Tratado de Canandaigua de 1794 con los Haudenosaunee, firmado por George Washington para los Estados Unidos - son la ley suprema del país, el gobierno de los Estados Unidos nunca ha cumplido con el prometido reconocimiento y protección de nuestros territorios ante la invasión ilegal de colonos. Sin embargo, cuando hemos buscado justicia en los tribunales estadounidenses por este robo ilegal de nuestro territorio, los tribunales federales se negaron a escuchar el caso, citando la Doctrina del Descubrimiento como precedente y afirmando que "sería demasiado perturbador" para las "expectativas justificadas" de las personas no nativas ahora viviendo en nuestras tierras.

Para ser claros, en nuestro caso legal, la Nación Onondaga explícitamente declaró que no queremos "deportar" a la gente no-nativa de nuestras tierras, en la forma en que nosotros hemos sido desplazados históricamente. Sin embargo, mientras que el gobierno EE. UU. alegaba que temían perturbar a nuestros vecinos no nativos, hipócritamente deportarían a jóvenes DREAMERS-Soñadores que crecieron en los EE. UU., sin importarles la perturbación de sus vidas y sus familias.



La Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas (DDPI) proclama:
Los pueblos indígenas, en particular los que están divididos por fronteras internacionales, tienen derecho a mantener y desarrollar los contactos, las relaciones y la cooperación, incluidas las actividades de carácter espiritual, cultural, político, económico y social, con sus propios miembros, así como con otros pueblos, a través de las fronteras.”

En el espíritu de responsabilidad de ser Guardianes de la Madre Tierra para las generaciones futuras, hacemos un llamado al liderazgo de todos los sectores de la sociedad para que cumplan con los ideales de la democracia y la decencia, de los derechos humanos y la justicia y actúen de inmediato para proteger a los DREAMERS y sus familias, y reconociendo, respetando y garantizando la dignidad básica y los derechos humanos inherentes de todos los pueblos, incluido el derecho en igualdad de los Pueblos Indígenas a la libre determinación.

Nadie es ilegal. Los derechos humanos no pueden ser deferidos.


Betty Lyons, ciudadana de la Nación Onondaga, es presidenta de American Indian Law Alliance (Alianza Legal de Indios Americanos)





###

LINKS:

Pueblo indígena separado por la frontera va contra el muro de Trump

 


Las arquitecturas de los Estados y sus Acuerdos son insuficientes, incompetentes y no representativos de nuestra voluntad política y nuestra autodeterminación como pueblos de la Madre Tierra para abordar las causas sistémicas del cambio climático con el enfoque integral y equitativo necesario para evitar el colapso de ecosistemas y la TERRACIDIA.

Como Pueblos de la Madre Tierra, colectivamente determinamos a regenerar las relaciones entre nosotros mismos dentro de un clima cultural de Respeto Mutuo, la Inclusión, la Complementariedad y la Libre Determinación más allá de las limitaciones actuales de los sistemas internacionales de la soberanía de los Estados y en la responsabilidad para el bienestar de la las generaciones futuras;