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<h2><b>October 08,
2007</b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2007/10/indigenous-peop.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2007/10/indigenous-peop.html<br>
<br>
</a></font><h3><b>Indigenous Peoples Day</b></h3><font size=3>by Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz<br>
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<dd>“I'm convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of
humanity.” Evo Morales, Aymara, President of Bolivia,
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/1442242&mode=thread&tid=25">
Democracy
Now!</a></i>
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/1442242&mode=thread&tid=25">
September 26, 2007</a>.<br><br>
</dl>Every year as October 12 approaches, there is a certain sense of
dread that can be felt in indigenous communities in the Americas. That it
is a federal holiday in the United States is regarded as hideous, a
celebration of genocide and colonization. However, beginning thirty years
ago, indigenous peoples formed an international movement, demanding, for
one thing, that October 12 be commemorated as an international day of
mourning for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Informally, the day
has been appropriated as Indigenous Peoples Day.<br>
<br>
This year feels different in indigenous communities as they celebrate the
great victory of the adoption of the
<a href="http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/declaration.htm">
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a> by the
General Assembly on September 13, 2007, the culmination of a three-decade
struggle by indigenous activists at the United Nations. The UN
Declaration was adopted by a majority of 144 states in favor, with only
four votes against: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Interestingly, these are precisely the four nation-states where
intentional genocidal policies were pursued, policies that sought to
exterminate all the indigenous peoples living in the lands seized by
settlers from the British Isles. The populations of those states should
be ashamed, not only of their horrific pasts, but of the present refusal
of their representative governments to make amends with the descendants
of those indigenous peoples who survived these genocidal policies.
<br><br>
Perhaps those governments and their citizens think they do not have to
recognize the rights of indigenous peoples within their claimed
boundaries because the populations are small. Yet, the survival and
flourishing of indigenous communities and nations is important to the
future of humanity and to the survival of habitation on earth. <br><br>
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on September 16, Bolivian
president Evo Morales stressed the need to understand the indigenous way
of life, saying that living well in a community meant living in harmony
with Mother Earth. “This new millennium must be the millennium for life,
placing our bets on human dignity.”
(<a href="http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/62/2007/ga070926pm2.rm?start=01:13:15&end=01:36:44">
UN webcast</a>.)<br><br>
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<dd><a href="http://www.reddirtsite.com/">Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz</a> is a
historian, university professor, co-founder of Indigenous World
Association, which lobbies the United Nations on behalf of indigenous
peoples’ rights, and is author of a number of books and articles on
indigenous peoples of the Americas, most recently,
<a href="http://www.reddirtsite.com/bk-roots-1.htm">Roots of Resistance:
A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico</a></i>. She is at work on a
history of the United States from the indigenous perspective, which is
forthcoming from <a href="http://www.beacon.org">Beacon
Press</a>.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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