WASHINGTON, May 4, 2012 (IPS) - A United Nations special envoyon Friday called on the U.S. government to step up efforts to address historical injustices that continue to affect thecountry's indigenous population.
James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, warned that historical wrongs, particularly the loss of land, continue to have an overriding impact on the wellbeing of Native American communities.
Anaya has just finished a 12-day research mission probing the current status and experience of the U.S.'s roughly 5.2 million-strong NativeAmerican population.
The trip marked the first time that the U.N. has waded into the contentious issueof U.S. treatment of its indigenous communities, one of the poorest and mostmarginalised populations in the United States.
The unemployment rate for American Indians has typically been double that of the white population. On reservations – self-governed tracts of land given to Native American communities by the U.S. government – Anaya reported a 70 percent unemployment rate.
Native Americans have also long suffered from disproportionately low statistics in health and education, as well.
But Anaya pointed toan underlying sense of disaffection, as well.
"The sense of loss, alienation and indignity is pervasivethroughout (Native American communities)," Anaya stated at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
"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 tobe done."
Previously, the United States has made clear that it sees such issues as constituting internal affairs. Although Anaya was allowed to complete his research mission, he reported a lingering sense of disconnect with parts of the government.
"I regret that my efforts to meet with members of the U.S. Congress were unsuccessful," he stated, "especially given the prominent role of Congress in defining the status and rights of indigenous peoples within the United States."
Such engagement was only made possible in the first place due to a sudden U-turn in U.S. policy announced by President Barack Obama in 2010. At that time, the U.S. formally backed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
The U.S. was the last country to sign on to the Declaration, which was passed in 2007. The administration of George W. Bush had twice opposed U.S. involvement, including over worries that it wouldgive rise to new legalclaims for redress.
Anaya's trip was aimed at checking into how U.S. commitments towards the UNDRIP have been carried out thus far. He will now be compiling hisresearch into a full report, which is expected to be presented to the U.N.Human Rights Councilin September.
If his initial observations are anything to go by, however, the report'sultimate recommendations to the U.S. government will be based largely on trying to break the negative cycle started by historical wrongs – wrongs that Anaya suggests are directly responsible for the generally dismal condition of Native American communities today.
"Over the past 12 days, I have heard stories that make evident the profoundhurt that indigenous peoples continue to feel because of the history of oppression they have faced," he said in Washington.
Perhaps most critically, that history – "all grounded in racial discrimination"– includes the significant dispossession of lands, including landsthat were officially and legally given over to Native American tribes.
As such, several of Anaya's most significant recommendations will revolve around self-governance and land issues. This includes "some form of land restoration", the transference of"lost lands" back into Native American hands.
"Securing the rights of indigenous peoples to their landsis of central importance to indigenous peoples' socio-economic development, self-determination and cultural integrity," Anaya noted.
"During my visit, I heard almost universal calls from indigenous nations 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-determinationbe removed."
That contention is backed up by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), a pan-tribal association founded in 1944. In a policy paper released in lateApril, the NCAI stated that land and sovereignty issues are "underlying the state of Native peoples in America today".
The paper warned that the U.S. government continues to introduce laws "that prohibit tribal communities and tribal members from free use of their land and natural resources". As recently as Apr. 19, 2012, the paper noted, U.S. officials have cited 1930s legislation "as its authority to regulate Indian land as 'publicland' without consideration for the unique status of sovereign land."
For some observers, such a focus on current events – and their future ramifications – makes more sense than dredging up thedistant past.
Sher Malik, president of the Indigenous Peoples Survival Foundation, spoke with IPS while preparing to leave for the upcoming seventh session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on IndigenousIssues, starting May 7in New York.
"We must approach these issues with balance, not focusingon revenge," Malik says. "Unfortunately, we do not seem to learn from our history. So while I'm against what happened 200 years ago, today I'm not going to dig up negativity for a new generation."
Yet for Anaya, the issue of negativity goes to the heart of the ongoing marginalisation of the U.S.'s indigenous communities today. Native Americans feel"a systemic lack of respect" and discrimination from the U.S. public and media, he said.
"The broad view in American society seems to be that Native Americans are either gone or, as a group, have become insignificant – and those are simply flat wrong perceptions."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107676
UN inquiry into US treatment of Indians is overdue
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/03/santos/

Native Americans were the victims or greedy, disease ridden, Europeans from the time that Europeans first set foot in the Americas. They still are.

I don't like to think of my country as doing evil, but it does. The United Nations has sent someone to investigate abuses in the United States. Not in Haiti, Syria or Sudan. James Anaya is examining how theUnited States lives upto the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The American media are quiet about the investigation. I foundout when a friend showed me a British article. I thought,"This is long overdue." It's time the United States gets called out for its treatment of Native peoples. Just like Guatemala and Brazil.
Twelve years ago I was in Guatemala studying the ancient medical techniques of Chuj Maya. There I encountered the worst racism I've ever seen. Worse than anything I'd known growing up inTexas. In Guatemala,"indio," or Indian, is what you yell at bad drivers. Or at the sex workers passed out drunk on the street. Or at people who make mistakes on a test. Why? Because ever since the Europeans invaded 500 years ago, NativeGuatemalans have been viewed as barriers to progress. Uneducated. Drunk. Stupid. Lazy. They're sitting on land that could be used to make money.
I also spent time in Brazil, and it was much the same there.
It would be nice to think that Americans had none of those tendencies, but we do.
Like Guatemalans, Americans portray Native people through caricature. The noble savage. The alcoholic wife-beater. The spiritual guru. The casino millionaire. Indians are shunned for looking dangerous, worshiped as keepers of the Earth, held up as poster people for oppression. Diane Sawyer recently did apiece on the Pine Ridge Reservation . She portrayed it as a haven for poverty and alcoholism. Teens on the reservation found it offensive. They madetheir own video, aptly titled "More Than That." You can find it on YouTube.
Americans may be tempted to think of Indian oppression as a part of history, like the old textbook paintings of the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee. Not quite. Oklahoma's Sharia Law Act , now in litigation, bans tribal law. In Minnesota, tribal ID cards are regularly rejected as proof of identification. The Cleveland Indians have a mascot that looks like a drooling idiot.
I write this on stolen Dakota land. It wouldbe foolish to supposethat the United States does not deserve the same scrutiny as Guatemala and Brazil. One hundred fifty years ago, the Dakota Conflict culminated in 38 hangings, the largest mass execution in American history . Minnesota's Native people live with that legacy to this day.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/03/santos/

The U.N. is a joke that has caused more problems than good and we as the greatest nation on the planet should reward them by no longer funding them.

Indigenous:

originating in and characteristic of a particular region or country; native (often followed by to ): the plants indigenous to Canada; the indigenous peoples of southern Africa.

Being no one is indigenous to North America, the premise of the argument is moot.

They should have left while there was still time.