Mark Trahant
Statement from the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on Child Separation at the Border
The United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples joins the concern expressed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and others regarding the situation of families, children, and individuals being detained in the United States of America at its southern border with Mexico. We call on the United States immediately to reunite children, parents, and caregivers that have been separated to date, and to ensure their basic human rights to family, safety, and security.
In addition, the Expert Mechanism calls attention to the particular impact of the United States’ practices regarding international border detentions and prosecutions on indigenous peoples. Many of the individuals now being stopped at the border are of indigenous origin, including Kekchi, Tzutujil, Kacqchikel, and Mam-speakers and other Maya from Guatemala, as well as indigenous peoples from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and other countries. In many instances, they are fleeing situations of economic, social, and political unrest in their homelands where they have been denied rights to self-determination and territory, and have faced discrimination and violence.
The Expert Mechanism expresses particular concern regarding the vulnerability of indigenous children. Many countries, including the United States, have a long history of forced removal of indigenous children from their families, a practice that is now universally condemned by the human rights communities and by federal law in the U.S. because of the trauma it causes to children, their families, and their communities.
More broadly, indigenous peoples, whether migrants or not, have rights under international
instruments including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, supported by 148 nations across the world, including the United States. These include the right to maintain indigenous cultural identity, to be free from forced family separation, to speak their languages (and have translation services), to be free from discrimination and violence, and indeed to migrate. In some instances current international borders cross indigenous peoples’ homelands, including in the case of the Yaqui and Tohono O’odham people who have territory and family members on both side of the Mexico border. We call on the United States to recognize the particular situation of indigenous peoples in its border practices and policies and to uphold the rights and responsibilities set forth in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Also, here is Mark Trahant’s piece, our previous post with NAICJA’s statement, and NCJFCJ’s statement (which went out on our Twitter feed but not here).
Mark Trahant on Detroit’s Indian Health Clinic…
And our own Jerilyn Church, ILPC’s former program director!
Here:
DETROIT – It’s hard to communicate the failure of public policy in this great American city (especially in a few hundred words). A drive around town highlights the consequences from decades of neglect: Abandoned and burned out homes, office buildings as ruins (and dangerous playgrounds), near-permanent unemployment, and thousands of empty lots capped with mounds. These mounds are burial sites of sorts because when a building was destroyed the rubble was left in a pile until time and grass shaped each into a small hill.
Yet the geography of despair includes many seeds of hope.
One east side neighborhood is transformed by inspiring folk art that brings humor and zest to several city blocks through The Heidelberg Project. Or there is the Community Health Awareness Group’s efforts to exchange needles so that drug users on the streets won’t as easily share disease. The program resulted in a drop of HIV infections from drug users from 33 percent to 17 percent. (And that, too, is the paradox because while an exchange is effective, it’s also difficult to fund). Then there’s the Earthworks Urban Farm. Detroit is a city without large chain grocery stores – only discount stores and “party stores,” or neighborhood enterprises that sell more liquor than protein. Access to fresh fruit and vegetables is a regular barrier for a family trying to eat healthier. But at Earthworks more people – at least in this one neighborhood – are growing their own access to healthy foods.
The trip was a Kaiser Family Foundation site visit for media fellows. We looked at Detroit and its health system in depth. Before the trip, I expected the unfamiliar, an urban landscape that was different and bleak. But I quickly found there is a connection with the policy failures found here with those from Indian Country. At the end of that rope: Deep, structural poverty and a health system where disparity is dismissed casually, as if it’s a fact that must be. To me that reflects a serious shortage of money from the state and federal governments – and just as important – a policy deficit where ideas, innovation and execution don’t get the support that’s needed.
Consider the tale of two clinics.
American Indian Health and Family Services helps the 57,000 Native Americans living in the greater Detroit area. Services are delivered at an old church and rectory donated by the Detroit Archdiocese in 1993. Jerilyn Church is the executive director of AIHFS. She’s Minnecoujou Lakota, born and raised on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in South Dakota. When she moved to Detroit she says she “wasn’t prepared” for the same type of unemployment as back home on the reservation.
“Yet despite our surroundings, we get a lot done with little resources,” Church says. “We could write a book about it.”
My Question for Both VP Candidates….
Recall Mark Trahant’s question to President George W. Bush years ago?
I’d love to see Sarah Palin’s answer….
Turtle Talk 