May 16, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

According to Reuters during 19 May and 6 June United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur Doudou Diène of Senegal will travel to the United States of America to investigate apparently growing evidence of racism. What seems to be stimulating this unusual action by the Commission on Human Rights is the democratic primaries for US President prominently involving Senator Barak Obama (D-Il) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). In the United States of America, as in Canada, Mexico and the other American states bigotry and violence against indigenous peoples is at an all-time high. Despite this fact, the UN Commission is focusing on visits with lawmakers, local and federal officials and judical authorities in eight major cities: New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Oreleans, Miami, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.Urban populations do not generally contain substantial numbers of indigenous peoples. Indeed, the intollerance, violence and bigotry committed against native peoples takes place in the rural areas–out of view of official investigations. Thousands of native peoples have been killed with impunity by state-support militias even as discrimination, bigotry and violence in other forms have been imposed on the living. In Mexico and the United States, native peoples are violently treated at the border, discriminated against over political rights, economic rights and social rights. In Chile, native peoples are denied access to their own lands by the government to support and protect mining companies extracting copper from underneath villages.

Will these and other incidents of racism, intolerance, bigotry and physical violence be the subject of Mr. Diène’s investigations? It is unlikely. While Mr. Diène may have good intentions, he is missing the mark and he is inadvertently aiding those who would protect states’ governments and corporations as well as individuals from special exposure. It would appear that native peoples must take their own initiatives to protect themselves since it is clear the Commission on Human Rights cannot or will not.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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May 16, 2008 by Jay Taber.

I was remarking the other day to a friend how odd it was that there are no tribal colleges in California, despite the fact it has the largest Native American population in the United States. Part of this, no doubt, has to do with the devastating effect of greed exemplified by the Gold Rush and other forms of forced displacement (like Yosemite National Park) that made many California Indians homeless refugees.

But the tragic undermining of California’s indigenous cultures that might have given rise to such things as colleges precedes the American settlers and governments in the form of the Spanish missions, in which a recent article revealed Catholic church records that documented atrocities rivaling Nazi forced-labor death camps. The inter-generational community trauma of this system of conquest by the Dominican and Franciscan orders must have had lasting impacts on California’s indigenous society.

Returning to the present, it would seem that the beneficiaries of the indigenous wealth usurped by the Catholic Church, the State of California, and the United States of America might want to see some degree of restitution begun in a spirit of reconciliation. Perhaps a joint effort to establish a tribally owned, designed, and managed institution of higher education would be a good initial step in that process.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

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