Indigenous Activists
Networks
Defenders of the Land, Truth
Campaign, Idle No More
Statement by Charmaine White Face
“Bill
C-15 is based on a Lie”
April 16, 2021
DOWNLOAD PDF
First
of all, if Bill C-15 is based on the United Nations Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), it is based on a lie. The
Declaration that was approved by the United Nations (UN) General
Assembly in 2007 is NOT the Declaration approved by Indigenous
Peoples. Having a Bill based on a lie makes the Bill a partner in
the lie and therefore, not good law. To say that Bill C-15 will
affirm the rights of Indigenous Peoples is not true. The UNDRIP was
changed to satisfy colonizing governments’ continued pursuit for
control over Indigenous Peoples and resources.
If
Bill C-15’s sponsors really wanted to “affirm” the rights of
Indigenous Peoples, they would base their Bill on the Original Text
that was approved by all Indigenous Peoples in Geneva, Switzerland,
in 1994. That Original Declaration was also approved by two UN
Committees: the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), and
the Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the
Protection of Minorities. After that, the most powerful colonizing
governments pushed the Declaration off into another working group and
changed not just the words but the meaning and purpose of the UNDRIP.
Canada
can do that. The Canadian government could base their Bill C-15 on
the truth, the Original Declaration passed in 1994, and support the
intent and purpose in that Original document. To support Bill C-15
based on the UNDRIP that was approved in 2007 is to base Bill C-15 on
a lie. Such an action will only bring dishonor and regret to the
Canadian government.
Charmaine
White Face is an Oglala Tituwan Oceti Sakowin writer, scientist and
great-grandmother. She wrote an indepth analysis of the UNDRIP based
on her experiences at the UN debates called: Indigenous Nations
Rights in the Balance
published by Living Justice Press, St.
Paul, MN. She
can be reached at cwhiteface@gmail.com.
###
December 11, 2020
(December
11, 2020) The Federal UN Declaration of
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Bill C-15 “is a sleight of hand that promises to increase and expand Indigenous
rights but actually accomplishes the opposite,” says Truth Before
Reconciliation Campaign spokesperson Russell Diabo.
“The government has done this,” he says,
“by flipping the requirement for making
Canadian law’s subject to the provisions of UNDRIP, to making UNDRIP subject to
existing Canadian laws under Section 35 of the Constitution. Section 35 of the
constitution has already been adjudicated in Canadian courts to give Canada
control of Indigenous lands under the Doctrine of Discovery, and places severe
limits on the right of self-determination.”
By
subjugating UNDRIP to Section 35, Diabo says, “the government is taking away all of the rights the declaration was
designed to recognize. Under Section 35, the Indian Act and other
federal laws directed at First Nations and Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous
Peoples are not recognized as part of self-determining nations, as UNDRIP is
supposed to do, but only as what Prime Minister Trudeau has described as a
“fourth level of government” behind the federal, provincial and municipal
governments. Similar conclusions have been reached by the Association of Iroquois
and Allied Indians (AIAI).”
***********
1 Defenders of the Land is a network of Indigenous
communities and activists in land struggle across Canada, including Elders and
youth, women
and men, dedicated to building a fundamental movement for Indigenous rights,
was founded at a historic meeting in Winnipeg from November 12-14, 2008. Idle No More was founded by four women
(three of whom are Indigenous and one of whom is White) in November 2012 in
response to several bills passed in Canada that undermine Indigenous rights and
environmental protection. The movement grew quickly, and by January 2013 there
were tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people taking part in
locally-based actions and mass mobilizations around the world. The Truth Campaign is a core team of people
who worked on Russ Diabo’s 2018 campaign for the position of AFN National Chief
and who are now working to get Crown governments and Canadian society to address
“Truth Before Reconciliation”
because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Calls to Action are not
sufficient to address the colonization that First Nations have historically
experienced and which continues today particularly under the colonial policies
and legislation passed under the Constitution
Act 1867.
Indigenous Nations' Rights in the Balance
An Analysis of the Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples
By Charmaine White Face, Zumila Wobaga
Softcover, 160 pages, indexed
$20.00
Publication 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9721886-8-5
e-Book ISBN 978-1-937141-11-0
ORDER PRINT BOOK
ORDER E-BOOK
Comparing three different versions of the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP), Indigenous Nations' Rights in the Balance
analyses the implications of the changes made to DRIP for Indigenous Peoples
and Nations.
This is a foundational text for Indigenous law and rights and the
global struggle of Indigenous Peoples in the face of modern states.
Between 1994 and 2007, three different versions of the Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were passed by various bodies of the United
Nations, culminating in the final version passed by the UN General Assembly.
Significant differences exist between these versions—differences that deeply
affect the position of all Indigenous Peoples in the world community.
In Indigenous Nations’ Rights in the Balance, Charmaine White Face
gives her well-researched comparative analysis of these versions. She puts
side-by-side, for our consideration, passages that change the intent of the
Declaration by privileging the power and jurisdiction of nation states over the
rights of Indigenous Peoples. As Spokesperson representing the Sioux Nation
Treaty Council in UN proceedings, she also gives her insights about each set of
changes and their ultimate effect.
Reviews and Comments
Charmaine White Face, a Lakota
Wiyan from Pine Ridge, S.D., who is devoted to the political rights of
indigenous peoples, gives us here a lucid and implacable analysis of the
crucial relationship between Indians and their colonizers. Her work in Geneva,
Switzerland, as well as her defense of the Black Hills of the North Plains
region, challenges the United Nations Human Rights declaration of 2007 as
deeply flawed. In examining the role of the UN, she charges that it has again
through its recent declarations provided legitimacy and prestige not only to
historical eighteenth-century genocide, but to the continuing plunder of rights
and resources of native peoples. Her profoundly disturbing message forces us to
ask the question: what happens when international law says powerful nations can
use the idea of law as a weapon to gain consensus for theft? The so-called rule
of law, as “discoverers” have shown us from the beginning, entrenches legal
doctrines that justify genocide. The UN complicity, White Face tells us, has
enormous consequences. No readers of this little text can dismiss the logic of
her analysis if we are to learn the lessons of history.
Charmaine White Face is the Rachael Maddow of the Lakota political
world concerning environmental and civil rights....
Her research is flawless. Her opinions are provocative and
courageous and path breaking…. This is a good read.
—Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Hunkpati Dakota
Author of A Separate Country: Post-coloniality and American Indian
Nations
Charmaine White Face's
mesmeric account of the Declaration painstakingly reveals the enormous
difficulties that Native nations face in their quest to have their rights and
resources respected by their host states and by the international community at
large. The tortured process she described reveals that states interpret the
phrase "rule of law" to mean "their rules and their laws,"
leaving indigenous peoples even now at the mercy of states and state-dominated
institutions, like the U.N.
—David E. Wilkins, Lumbee
Co-author of Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal
Law
Does the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples actually protect indigenous rights? Charmaine White Face provides a
series of powerful arguments and direct documentation that indigenous rights
were passed over in favor of nation-state powers and jurisdiction over
indigenous nations within nation states. Many indigenous organizations that
participated in the long negotiations of the Declaration did not give their
consent to the final UN versions of the Declaration. The final form of the
declaration ignored indigenous self-government, rights to territory, plural
citizenship, rights to appeal to international bodies for dispute resolution,
and effective rights of informed consent. Instead of protection and
articulation of indigenous rights, indigenous peoples are saddled with over 30
unenforceable mandates for nation states to include indigenous peoples as
citizens within cultural, legal, and political orders of nation states.
Indigenous peoples
are willing to work with nation states, but not at the price of losing their
indigenous rights to land, self-government, and cultural autonomy. This book
provides a detailed analysis and evaluation that shows how nation states and
the UN ignored the rights of indigenous peoples when finalizing the
Declaration. Everyone interested in the well being of indigenous peoples should
read this book.
—Duane Champagne, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa
Author of Captured Justice: Native Nations Under Public Law 280
What a great piece
of work—it is necessary for the people who were present to write the true
history of the declaration and the gutting of the key language that we fought
so hard to get into the original document. You have done the most amazing job.
I am in awe of you and your work. It is the love of a woman for her people that
you have undertaken this work for the future generations. We are in a long
struggle to free ourselves. Indigenous Peoples must continue to push forward,
as the ones not yet born are waiting for us to make a good place for them.
—Sharon Venne, Nehiyaw (Cree) Lawyer
Indigenous Nation’s Rights In The Balance (Charmaine White Face,
Zumila Wobaga - 2013, Living Justice Press.) clearly shows that we are trapped
by a system that does not recognize the rights or values of indigenous people –
that the ‘entitlement’ to human rights is limited by the system and what States
will agree to implement. It also reveals the true nature of the United Nations
as an institution which is not above the system but is part of it.
Beginning in 1984, The Sioux Nation Treaty Council and other
indigenous bodies from around the world were involved in developing the ‘Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples’. In 1994 a United Nations (UN) Declaration, Original
sub-commission text, was drafted and approved by two UN committees. But in 2004
Chairperson-rapporteur Louis Enrique Chavez presented his own version of the
text to the UN Intersessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples. This text was ultimately sent to the UN Human Rights
Commission for passage. It did not have approval of the Indigenous People or the States who took part in
the Original Declaration of 1984. This led
to a five-day hunger strike/prayer fast, by six of the Indigenous
representatives, the author included, to reinstate theoriginal text. An
agreement was not reached. In 2007, The UN General Assembly completed its
passage of The Declaration, which was finally approved, not in Geneva but in
New York City. Comparative analysis of the three versions show how the Original
Declaration is altered in favor of States leaving indigenous people without
basic human rights or indigenous integrity.
The author tells us how ‘the wording
in the UN’s amended and approved Declaration will benefit
the colonizers more than
the Nations it was designed for’. It is plain to see when reading the
comparative analysis that changing a sentence, deleting or changing a single
word from the Original Declaration has been carried out with the intent to
disempower an Article or severely weaken it. This also has the effect of
changing the bias of an Article from being a Right to be upheld for Indigenous Nations, to a lesser commitment. Throughout, the changes are aimed at
removing the language of rights, substituting instead the language of
responsibilities or intentions, which governments can choose to implement or
not. In short, the aims of Original Declaration have been brutally compromised.
Preambular paragraphs and Articles are shown separately in their
three different versions, with passages underlined to show the changes. After
each set of three a detailed comparative analysis is made by the author. This
makes for disturbing reading as you see the Original Declaration change from
positive to negative.
It is made clear that the ‘United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples’, as the published version is entitled, will not
attribute Sovereignty to Indigenous Nations. The UN speaks of indigenous
‘populations’, ‘people’, ‘peoples’ etc and clearly avoids the use of the term
Indigenous Nations. Many indigenous peoples view themselves as separate Nations
(the Great Sioux Nation for example) but this status has never been recognized
by States, who insist they are simply minorities within greater Nation States.
The book also carries a brief history of the Great Sioux Nation and
its association with the US over the past 150 years. Treaties and agreements
that have been made with the US over this long period have always been ‘cheated
on’. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a legally binding agreement granting land
rights to the Nation has been repeatedly violated. Since that time vast areas
of land granted in the treaty have been taken and abused, and tribal land
continues to be drastically reduced.
Charmaine White Face, Zumila Wobaga is Spokesperson for the Sioux
Nation Treaty Council. She is also volunteer Coordinator with Defenders of the
Blackhills - www.defendblackhills.org
—David Terrey Glasgow Scotland
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