“An Open Letter to the Ambassadors of the United Nations”

 

Dec. 4, 2006

 

Your Excellency:

 

Thank you for not approving the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that was sent to you from the UN Human Rights Council.  That Declaration would have hurt Indigenous Peoples across the world.  However, the issue will continue to arise, and there is another option.

 

Representatives from the Tetuwan Oyate and the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council have participated in the work of drafting and debating the Declaration for more than twenty-two years. We are an Indigenous nation in the middle of the North American continent. Our representatives participated in the original drafting of the Declaration since 1984 and it contains Indigenous thought.

 

When the original Declaration was approved by the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and then the UN Subcommission on Human Rights in 1994 with the consensus of Indigenous Peoples, we were hopeful that someday we would truly have our own human rights. However, we were very dismayed and appalled when the Working Group Chairman's text was approved by the new Human Rights Council on June 29, 2006. We are wondering how a body of the United Nations would bypass the recommendations from their own committees when a decade of work had already gone into the approval by those committees in 1994 of the Original Subcommission text.

 

Furthermore, we were assured by the representatives of the Commission on Human Rights in the negotiations to end the hunger-strike/prayer fast in Dec. 2004, that if no consensus was reached on Chairman Luis Enrique Chavez's text during the deliberations, then the Commission on Human Rights would only accept and pass the Original Subcommission Text.

 

 We participated in the hunger strike/prayer fast because Chairman Chavez (Peru) had stated that he only would submit his own text to the Commission, a text which did not have consensus of either States or Indigenous Peoples. The governments needed to realize that there was a choice: the original Subcommission text, or the Chair’s text. The abolishment of the Commission on Human Rights and the swift passage of the Declaration by the new Human Rights Council leave many questions on the assurances given by representatives of the United Nations.

 

We know that other Indigenous groups are requesting the passage of the Chair's text but feel they are doing so either because they have not truly analyzed the content, or, as has been stated in many cases, 'at least we will have a human rights document.' Our position is that no Declaration is better than a bad one.  It will be much harder to request changes as there is no process in the UN system to make such changes. The very words of the Preambular that was approved on June 29, 2006, by the UN Human Rights Council, on Page 20 states, "...as a standard of achievement to be pursued." The work of the past twenty-two years was pursuing that standard.

 

The approval of the original Declaration by the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, experts in the field, and the Subcommission on Human Rights should be enough evidence to the General Assembly that the original Subcommission Text should be the only one that is approved. We respectfully request that you consider passage of the original Subcommission Text of the Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This is an option that must not be overlooked.

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Charmaine White Face, Spokesperson
Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council
Tetuwan Oyate
PO Box 140
Manderson, SD 57756
Email: bhdefenders@msn.com