Keywords

1.1 The Long March to the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

September 13, 2017 will mark a decade since the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, pronounced on that date in 2007. The march that led to the Declaration began much earlier and was a long and difficult one. Writing in the journal Cultural Survival, Coulter (1994) identified the momentum towards the Declaration from the adoption of a draft set of principles at the 1977 NGO Conference at the UN, with the conference theme of “Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas”. This set the platform for three decades of struggle in the United Nations system to have the principles acknowledged as applying to all Indigenous Peoples on the planet. The detailed history of this campaign is known to its participants and is written in smaller documents. However, a complete account has yet to be written of that process and the impetus of Indigenous peoples to achieve the goal that was nothing less than the first UN recognition of “group or community rights” (Coulter 1994: 1).

In a formal way the first steps of a growing international alliance of Indigenous Peoples was even earlier, with the formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples at its conference in British Columbia in October 1975, which was attended by Indigenous delegates from nineteen different nations. Among the key areas worked on at the conference was a Charter for Indigenous Rights . The Charter captured the growing recognition that Indigenous Peoples around the planet had suffered similar impacts both historically through colonisation and through the consequences of modern development. To meet this challenge, they required universal recognition of their rights in order to survive and achieve equality of treatment and opportunity. In this context George Manual, member of the Shuswap tribe of British Columbia, who was elected first president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) , declared the “preservation and protection of Indigenous interests essential to the preservation of world peace and world development” (Sanders 1977: 32). The process of formation of the WCIP was excellently documented by Sanders (1977).

The 1977 conference was followed by a series of regional and world conferences on Indigenous Peoples’ cultures, achievements and concerns. These included sharing of needs and approaches to social issues such as education , health, law and justice, and languages, within the boundary issues of self-determination, human and distinctive rights, and land rights . The movement distinguished itself within the international context by identifying itself as the Fourth World movement , distinct from decolonising Third World movements, and characterised as Indigenous nations of distinct cultures deprived of their territories within nation states. These activities resulted in the formation in 1982 of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations , which was the first mechanism established in the UN with a specific focus on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The ongoing campaign involved political struggles in the UN to have the Declaration in its draft and final forms supported by the member states of the UN. The processes of contestation, lobbying, political debate and governmental resistance were pursued passionately on both sides (Cooper 2003). There were issues regarding communications, representation, definitions and procedures within the relevant sectors of the United Nations, particularly the Economic and Social Council, now known as the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The undertaking at the UN was reflected by vigorous public struggles at national levels as politicians and much of the corporate mass media promoted wild speculations of Indigenous communities seceding from nations and presenting other threats to national unity, such as blocking essential economic development.

What stood out was the opposition by governments of wealthy nations that were already relatively advanced in providing social supports for Indigenous Peoples, namely the USA, Canada , New Zealand and Australia . These nations—all with sizable minorities of Indigenous Peoples—resisted the UNDRIP and refused to become signatories to it largely on the grounds that Indigenous Peoples might attempt to form independent nations. At the core of the resistance were lobby interests of pastoral, mining and resource development companies whose licenses to exploit resources from remote territories were threatened by empowerment of Indigenous Peoples to make informed decisions and maintain control over their homelands. Resistance to the Declaration on the grounds of possible secession also was supported initially by the nations of the African Union , concerned that the Declaration might lead to territorial secession and claims to statehood. This objection was countered largely by the introduction of Article 46 (1) of the Declaration that insisted that actions from the Declaration would not “dismember or impair totally or in part the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states” (quoted in Engle, 20). Subsequently, the African Union supported the declaration but the First World nations maintained their objections to the self-determination principle.

An additional objection, strongly advocated by the New Zealand representative, was that the Declaration as a statement of collective rights proposed that one group would hold rights that overrode the rights of other groups within the same nation. The representative argued that collective rights should be subordinated to individual rights (Engle 2011).

Support for the Declaration was promoted and pursued by a wide range of Indigenous Peoples organisations and communities plus many non-Indigenous supporters. During the years of lobbying, debate, reasoning and advocacy Indigenous leaders frequently made their way to the United Nations headquarters in New York and presented their cases as to why it was necessary to recognise that the First Peoples, as occupants of lands long prior to the formation of nation states, long before the colonisation that brought widespread destruction, held distinctive rights which extended beyond the umbrella of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Moreover, the campaign for the UDRIP coincided with movements within nations for recognition of land rights , cultural and civil rights of Indigenous Peoples. These parallel struggles intersected and informed each other.

The Declaration was a watershed that dismissed the fictions and invented histories of many settler-nations that denied the existence, native title , cultural continuity, brave resistances and survival of Indigenous people (Reynolds 1981). Overturning those fictions meant that the settler-nations had to acknowledge their invasions, destruction, genocide , theft, centuries of legal and cultural subjugation and exclusion of the occupants who had, in most cases, been courteous when European newcomers arrived in their lands (Matthieson 2004) and, once they experienced that they were being invaded, had fought valiantly to defend their ways of life and cultures and resist the powerful weapons, industrial technologies and seemingly limitless appetite for violence and dominance of the invaders (Reynolds 2001). By today’s standards there would have been many cases before the World Court for genocide and ethnocide of Indigenous Peoples if such principles could have been employed in those times of colonial invasion.

1.2 The UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Nuclear Bomb Tests and Impacts on Indigenous Peoples

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was put to a vote in the General Assembly in 1948 it was ratified by the nation members of the United Nations, with 48 votes in support and eight abstentions, including the Soviet Union and its satellite nations, as well as Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. However, despite the declaration in the UNDHR of the “equal and inalienable rights of members of the human family,” Indigenous Peoples, along with other oppressed social and cultural groups such as those in the nations that abstained from the vote, African-Americans and colonised minorities around the world, continued to be excluded from the entitlements of their inherent human rights. In the case of my nation, Australia , Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not given national citizenship until some twenty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that was achieved in a national referendum to change the Constitution through a campaign by Indigenous Australians and supporters who were often vilified for their beliefs that human rights—including citizenship and social and political rights—applied to Indigenous Australians (Reynolds 2005).

In another example of how lightly the Declaration of Human Rights was taken by the Australian government , from 1952–1963 Aboriginal people who had lived in the southern desert regions around Woomera and Maralinga for tens of thousands of years were exposed to the nuclear bomb tests conducted by the British government with full support and complicity of Australian governments (Walker 2014). The human rights of the Anangu people were a scarce consideration for both Australian and British governments. Some of the inhabitants were forcibly removed from the test area, thus destroying their traditional way of life. However, some 1,200 Anangu people were given no warning or protection and were exposed to nuclear explosions, causing blindness, cancer and other chronic health conditions, in addition to the perpetual contamination of their lands.

Similar experiences were imposed on Indigenous populations of the South Pacific after they were exposed to the effects of French nuclear bomb tests. Their calls to stop the tests, backed by irrefutable evidence of health and environmental destruction in the Mururoa Atoll region, were so opposed by the French government and their military agencies that the authorities resorted to sabotage and murder against activists campaigning to ban the bomb tests, culminating in the terrorist-style bombing on July 10, 1985 of the Greenpeace protest ship The Rainbow Warrior , in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, causing the death of photographer Fernando Pereira.

Likewise, the US nuclear bomb tests, over one thousand tests from 1945 to 1992, were conducted in Indigenous Peoples lands in Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. The inhabitants of the most infamous US bomb test-site in the Bikini Islands in the Pacific Ocean were forcibly relocated to other Marshall Islands but still suffered the effects of the explosions and fallout. The inhabitants of Okinawa suffered similarly from the H-Bomb tests of the Americans. There was no consideration of the inherent human rights of Indigenous Peoples by the Cold-War obsessed governments of the West. Nor by the Soviets with their 456 nuclear tests in remote parts of Kazakhstan where lived Indigenous people, both nomadic and villagers, who were not even warned or moved out of danger. Along with the natural environments of these regions the Indigenous peoples suffered greatly. Such was the lack of recognition of their human rights by the nations that led the campaign to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The on-going institutional racism and structural violence against Indigenous communities and individuals manifest in multiple ways across the Australian nation in such areas as removing children from Indigenous families, stolen wages, social segregation, and exclusion from medical, educational and employment opportunities. These policies , always challenged by Aboriginal families and communities, resulted in marginalisation , ignorance, poverty, apathy drug-dependence, family dysfunctions and criminality in many Indigenous communities. Unfortunately, the Australian experience was similar to those of Canada , New Zealand, the USA and multiple other sites where Indigenous groups lived as subordinated non-citizens.

1.3 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP): Setting International Standards

The campaign for the UNDRIP was opposed by governments of nations such as USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada on the grounds that Indigenous Peoples had their rights sufficiently framed within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other encompassing conventions. However, driven by the inherent moral power of the cause and the legal reasons for the production of the UNDRIP, a slow and sometimes faltering process was established that ran for over a decade until the UNDRIP was eventually endorsed by the General Assembly in 2007. With the Declaration a set of specific and inherent collective and individual rights were recognised as belonging to over 370 million Indigenous people around the world (Burger 1990).

When the vote was taken in the UN General Assembly 144 nations voted in favour of the Declaration, 11 abstained and four nations opposed the Declaration. Those nations were the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. These recalcitrant nations subsequently changed their positions and put their support behind the Declaration: Australia in 2009, New Zealand in 2010, USA in 2010. At the formal adoption of the Declaration on September 22, 2014 Canada remained alone among nations in withholding its support and maintaining its position that the notion of “free, prior and informed consent,” of Indigenous communities within the Declaration in respect to external economic development on their lands was a problematic challenge to sovereignty of the State. However, the recently elected Liberal Party of Canada announced in late 2015 that it will implement the UNDRIP (Smith 2015).

With such a deep and profound background, there were many hopes that the Declaration would provide a watershed towards the advancement of the rights of Indigenous groups. Approaching two decades after the pronouncement we can begin to identify and evaluate impacts of the Declaration around the planet. While many Indigenous communities and supporters have claimed with justification that national governments have continued to spurn the Declaration and its specific content, the UNDRIP provided a vehicle for Indigenous Peoples to have their rights recognised by various UN bodies and also to put pressure on governments to take action towards abiding by the principles of the Declaration. The UDRIP also provided a legitimated set of principles which Indigenous Peoples have been able to summons in campaigns to protect their lands, cultures and communities, such as in opposition to rapacious and destructive impacts of mining, pharmaceutical, pastoral, water and forestry developments for commercial interests in homelands of Indigenous Peoples.

1.4 Embedding the Principles of Indigenous Rights in International Standards

Another area that can be examined for influence of the UNDRIP is its inclusion in a number of significant reports and guidelines of the United Nations that are intended to set international standards, goals and strategies. For example, the highly publicised Millennium Development Goals of 2000 set the agenda for global development for the new century with a range of social and economic goals. Reviewing the outcomes of these goals in respect to Indigenous Peoples a journalist reported in The Guardian newspaper after a decade of implementation that, “Indigenous People have been the group least well-served by the Millennium Development Goals,” (The Guardian 2014).

In 2015 the Millennium Development Goals were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals , seventeen of them ranging across a whole spectrum of global human activity and needs, newly focussed toward the emergent environmental crises associated with anthropogenic climate change. In reviewing this set of goals, with their specific targets and strategies, The Guardian commentator observed that, “Indigenous People are conspicuous only in the fleeting nature of references to them,” in spite of the fact that Indigenous Peoples make up 5 % of the world’s population and anything from 10–30 % of the world’s poorest people. In its 2015 table of the world’s fifty most vulnerable groups of people, compiled by Minority Rights International, Indigenous groups in South Sudan are identified as the world’s most vulnerable people and Indigenous groups generally comprise a disproportionate number of groups under threat (Minority Rights International 2015).

Given this clear indication of vulnerability, one would have expected a greater recognition of the existence, struggles and requirements of Indigenous Peoples around the globe in the Sustainable Development Goals . In fact, the circumstances of Indigenous Peoples warrant a specific goal being nominated towards social, cultural and economic sustainability for Indigenous Peoples. The difficulty was that such a goal would have resulted in some of the world’s richest and most powerful nations not endorsing the Sustainable Development Goals, due to the perceived threat that the achievement of these rights by Indigenous Peoples would threaten the economic plans of those nations. Thus, concluded The Guardian report, “the slow erosion of Indigenous People is one of the world’s greatest on-going tragedies” (The Guardian 2014).

Indigenous Peoples have not been so excluded in all United Nations agendas and statements of principle. One of the most important of these has been the UNESCO Guidelines on Intercultural Education (2006) and the general agenda for interculturality , which endorses the need to promote equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual respect. Interculturality “results from intercultural exchange and dialogue on the local regional, national and international level” (UNESCO , 2006: 17). With this recognition the Guidelines offer a useful definition of the characteristics of Indigenous Peoples that acknowledges:

Specific social, cultural and economic and living conditions; distinct social, economic, cultural and political institutions and customs and traditions regulating their status; identification as “Indigenous” by others; self-identification as “Indigenous”; attachment to land and to a specific territory and a special relationship with nature or the earth and; their cosmovision (UNESCO 2006: 17).

In promoting the importance of intercultural communications, the UNESCO World Report 2009 : Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue (UNESCO 2009) recognised the significance of Indigenous cultures in intercultural dialogues towards global peace and sustainability. Certainly, the dialogic space opened up by the emerging focus on intercultural relations has promise for greater understanding and engagement on an equal footing between members of non-Indigenous cultures and the Indigenous cultures locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. However, in the current crises of war refugees in the Middle-East and other causes of mass migration into Europe the focus will remain over the next decade on building interculturality between the historic cultures of Europeans and those of the incomers, particularly those with Muslim religious views, due to security issues and the urgent problems presented by so many newcomer cultural groups. Nevertheless, there is an equal urgency to pursue enhanced intercultural relations between the thousands of Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and other cultures.

One way this can be done is by embracing dialogic opportunities for specialist knowledge areas such as Indigenous Studies to engage with other academic and policy areas. Challenging the apparent continuance of historic invisibility being assigned to Indigenous Peoples, scholars and knowledge-bearers, their knowledge and interests, the time is appropriate for experts in the field and researchers across allied social science disciplines and interests to work with Indigenous Peoples and specialist scholars engaged in the broad fields of Indigenous Studies, including historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and lawyers. This is particularly valuable as the small but growing number of Indigenous researchers and academics successfully build knowledge perspectives, including research theory and methodology , from Indigenous viewpoints.

This type of “interculturality”, whereby Indigenous and non-Indigenous intellectual interests and approaches exchange knowledge and perspectives and collaborate on joint undertakings, can present new approaches for solving problems facing not only Indigenous societies but humanity as a whole. For instance, it is undoubted that Indigenous understandings of the relationship of human societies to nature sustained the spread and growth of human civilizations for tens of thousands of years. Similarly, Indigenous Peoples maintained traditional ways of resolving conflicts to ensure both justice and social harmony and such approaches offer sapient knowledge towards building a world culture of peace (Synott 1996). Many of the chapters in this book take up issues raised in this discussion and examine specific cases of peaceful efforts to achieve specific and general rights for Indigenous Peoples in a wide range of contexts. The Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples informs these discussions and often features as a significant force for change in the cases under examination.

1.5 International Peace Research Association and the Commission for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

In this spirit of mutuality, the 16th Conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) , held in Brisbane , Australia , from July 8–12, 1996 was able to involve leading Indigenous academics in the preparation and ensuing conduct of the conference. Part of the conference preparation was undertaken by members of the Oodgeroo Unit for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies of the Queensland University of Technology. For the first time at an IPRA concert there was an Indigenous welcome to the local Jagera country by members of the Brisbane Elders and a didgeridoo performance by Aboriginal actor and performer, Sam Conway. The Indigenous presence continued throughout the conference.

On the following day, a plenary session titled “Indigenous Peoples in the Global Peace Movement”, chaired by Goorang-Goorang man Michael Williams, director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Centre at University of Queensland, appraised the pursuit of the rights of Indigenous Peoples firmly within the peace research and education frameworks. The speakers in that session were Michael Dodson, the Australian Social Justice Commissioner, who went on to be a prominent member of the group that formed the UNDRIP; Maori Elder Pauline Tangiora who had travelled from Aotearoa/New Zealand ; Roberta Sykes, then the Executive of the Black Women’s Action in Education Foundation in Sydney, Australia; and Alph Sekakuku, a Hopi Elder of the Snake Clan, Arizona, USA. These Indigenous scholars and activists discussed the possibilities for greater exchange and mutual support between internationally-oriented peace researchers and Indigenous Peoples movements around the world in the campaign for Indigenous Peoples rights.

Instigated by this small group of convenors and Indigenous participants and with the support of the IPRA delegates at that conference, the Commission for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was established with the intention that the study and promotion of Indigenous Peoples rights and issues would be ongoing within the IPRA purpose, “to advance interdisciplinary research into the conditions of peace and the causes of war and other forms of violence” (IPRA Statutes, Article 3: Purpose).

Since that important occasion the Commission for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has participated in every IPRA conference, bringing scholars from different locations and circumstances to share their knowledge and to continue to work on the areas of mutuality between the pursuit of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and different practices in peacebuilding . This is not to say that the Commission has always flourished. Researchers from Indigenous communities, often remotely located, commonly struggle with funds to attend conferences and gain other forms of financial support. We gratefully acknowledge such support as conference organisers have provided to the Commission in the form of travel scholarships but there are some eighteen commissions within IPRA and all have claims on limited funding for the conferences. Sometimes the Commission has presented a small number of conference papers and there were demands that we justify our existence in IPRA in the face being “de-commissioned.” So the Commission for the rights of Indigenous Peoples has remained small and has struggled to remain viable at times—much like Indigenous communities —but has survived so far and maintains an important presence within IPRA.

1.6 Documenting Peacebuilding Experiences of Indigenous Peoples in the Early 21st Century

After twenty years of the presence of the Commission for the Rights of Indigenous People within IPRA we have been able to engage the interest and commitment of an excellent group of scholars from around the planet to contribute to this book that we have titled Peacebuilding and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples : Experiences and Strategies for the 21st Century. The title confirms what we have advocated in IPRA and those earlier examples from nuclear bomb tests long ago—that the synergies of peace scholars and those advocating the rights of Indigenous Peoples overlap in significant ways. Issues of overt violence, structural violence, identity maintenance, poverty, gender relations, education, political recognition , economic development, and environmental protection on the paths to sustainability are core concerns both for Indigenous Peoples and peace researchers.

This book examines areas of contemporary experience in which the struggles and achievements of Indigenous Peoples have practised, pursued and promoted peacebuilding strategies in the pursuit of their distinctive, inherent and universal rights. The chapters presented here are not intended to present a complete portrait of conditions and struggles of Indigenous Peoples worldwide, where there are some 370 million people over 500 groups distributed across 90 countries. Nevertheless, reading across the chapters one can follow some of the key approaches pursued by Indigenous Peoples in pursuit of their rights. One of these is the platform presented by the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Another theme that flows through these chapters is that of largely non-violent approaches used by Indigenous Peoples in the pursuit of their rights. Democratic pursuit of rights through national political and legal processes is the method employed in the majority of case studies presented in this book. Where there are continuing armed struggles, as in the case of North-East India, the study here also highlights the non-violent campaign for rights in that conflict, and the trend away from armed struggle towards peaceful dialogue and the use of administrative and legal processes to consolidate sustainable conditions.

In deep history Indigenous communities resolved conflicts usually through established conflict-resolution and peacebuilding activities (Fry 2006). When invaded by Europeans they defended their lands as bravely as any groups have ever done. They suffered destruction and atrocities, scientific definitions of their “non-human” status, derogation of their cultures, theft of all they had. They experienced the destructive impacts of ideologies through their encounters with those who invaded them from unknown lands. Across the thousands of distinct Indigenous groups there are tremendous variations in contexts, circumstances and capacities. Yet, there has been no broad trend in modern history of Indigenous groups engaging in terrorism or acts of mass murder on behalf of some ideology or cause. Admittedly, in these early decades of the 21st century there have been terrorist incidents in struggles between some recognised Indigenous groups and the governments of nation states. However, the broad pattern is of adapting to majority cultures while asserting Indigenous rights and working through legal and institutional means to achieve them. This includes demonstrations and other nonviolent campaign tactics. This trend follows the general expansion of democratic political systems across the nations.

While several chapters analyse achievements and setbacks to Indigenous Peoples’ rights through legal-political processes, other chapters provide insights into certain Indigenous traditions and concepts for non-violent conflict resolution and the maintenance of peaceful societies. The perspectives offer comparative and historical dimensions, and examples of efforts to sustain cultures and traditional knowledge. These important studies provide insights into concepts that embody the holistic nature of social relations in Indigenous societies. They also present a range of peaceful mechanisms and nonviolent conflict resolution practices to maintain social harmony .

A third theme that runs through these chapters is that Indigenous Peoples, whilst largely engaged in securing their rights within the nation-states in which they are situated, are important social and cultural actors in the global context. For instance, to achieve economic and social development goals such as employment, education , technology and health, Indigenous communities become involved in projects with the support of international agencies assisting the process of free, prior and informed consent (Weitzner 2011). As discussed in this book these relationships are often supportive but also can be problematic.

In another aspect of the global dimension, many of the local struggles of Indigenous Peoples are against global corporations in pursuit of resources on Indigenous Peoples’ lands, or the lands themselves. The conflicts involve governments and their agencies, sometimes collaborating against the interests of the Indigenous communities. At stake are vast amounts of profit to be made by the developers versus the rights of the Indigenous communities. However, wherever possible, Indigenous groups engage the protections of the law, support from international NGOs, global information networks, and the Principles of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to assert their collective and individual rights.

The impacts of the UNDRIP and the global strengthening of the Indigenous Peoples alliance have also transformed some of the major transnational corporations and development agencies, so that they have established their own guidelines and protocols regarding development processes in Indigenous Peoples’ lands. The powerful UN development agencies, the World Bank and the IMF , have established such policies . Giant transnational corporations such as Rio Tinto and Shell Oil have developed protocols for engaging with communities and building partnerships, often after protracted conflicts, public exposure and shaming for their exploitative treatment of Indigenous Peoples in development sites (Sonthalan 2012). The range of issues raised in the case of Bolivia in this book has parallels in most nations where Indigenous Peoples are engaged in conflicts over resource development.

The chapters in this book contain discussions and analyses of a wide range of cases where Indigenous Peoples are involved in different forms of peacebuilding towards the achievement of rights that have been identified and validated within the UNDRIP . Several of these chapters were first presented as papers in the Commission for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the 25th General Conference of the International Peace Research Association in Istanbul, Turkey, 12–15th August 2014. As convenor of the Commission, I was invited by Professor Hans Gunter Brauch, Consultant Editor of Springer Press, to submit a proposal for a book on Indigenous Peoples and Peacebuilding , based on the conference presentations. With our team expanded by the inclusion of my invaluable co-editors Heather Devere of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Kelli Te Maihāroa of the College of Education, University of Otago in New Zealand , we invited further chapter proposals from around the world and the process was finally refined down to the set of chapters that now appear in this book. We thank all those who have contributed to the publication and express our hopes that the book will be a valuable contribution to Indigenous Peoples in achieving their rights and to comparative and globalising studies in peacebuilding and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.