The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) included several recommendations focused on discrimination against Native Americans in its concluding observations on the latest periodic report submitted by the United States. It expressed particular concerns about persistent sexual violence against Native American women, the failure of the U.S. to consult with indigenous peoples before taking actions on lands of cultural and religious significance to them, and the lack of follow up on its earlier recommendations on the situation of Western Shoshone indigenous peoples and their lands. Its recommendations included:
international law
Inter-American Commission Hears Concerns over Indigenous Property Rights in Guatemala
WASHINGTON, D.C. At Mondays hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, representatives from the Indian Law Resource Center, Defensoria Qeqchi, and Maya communities told commissioners that establishing environmental protection areas in Guatemala without indigenous involvement violates human rights and environmental norms.
Plans to create the Sierra Santa Cruz protected area raised concerns that indigenous lands would be managed and controlled by a private institution on behalf of the Guatemalan government. The proposed project is one of many that seek to gain control of the land and resources which indigenous peoples have traditionally used and occupied in Guatemala.
At the hearing, Leonardo Crippa and William David, attorneys for the Indian Law Resource Center, were joined by four representatives of the Defensoría Qeqchi Arnoldo Yat Coc, Maria Santos Ax Tiul, Carlos Antonio Pop Ac, Alfredo Cacao Ical and an indigenous leader, Elias Israel Pop Cucul, who represents 43 indigenous communities affected by the proposed protected area.
Miller and Ruru: A Comparative View of the Doctrine of Discovery
Bob Miller and Jacinta Ruru have posted “An Indigenous Lens into Comparative Law: The Doctrine of Discovery in the United States and New Zealand” on SSRN.
From the abstract:
UN CERD Shadow Report on US Race Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples
Larry Cata Backer on Indigenous Peoples, Democracy, and Bolivian Constitutional Reform
From Larry’s great blog, Law at the End of the Day, an excerpt from “Constitutionalism and Indigenous Peoples in the Bolivian Constitution“:
One of the more important wrinkles in this emerging pattern of relationships between the individual and the state involves the constitution of collectives as persons, with rights similar to those available to natural persons. Collective person hood reworks the dynamics of democracy and the constitution of government in a number of respects. In Latin America especially that reinvestment has been focused on the reconstitution of indigenous peoples with political power–not as individuals all belonging to a particular community–but as members of a political collective with an authority greater than any individual, to participate in the political life of states. In the proposed Bolivian constitution, one sees a great example of the progression of state organization along those lines. Bolivians Approve Draft Charter BBC News, Dec. 9, 2007. It is a harbinger of the future and a taste of the tension that constitutionalism will face–even as a formal matter–between the grounding of power in the individual and its exercise only indirectly through collectives sprung up for the purpose of mediating power between the individual and the state. The result will create a greater role for individuals as the fetishes of democratic organization even as individual power increasingly shifts elsewhere.
The introduction of collective rights into constitutional law is a bit of shake-up from the notion of individualism in the American and many other Western constitutions. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
