FLYING EAGLE WOMAN FUND IN THE NEWS...

U.N. Indigenous Focus
Presents Opportunity

Posted: June 02, 2005
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
© Indian Country Today June 02, 2005. All Rights Reserved

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, now an annual event held every May in New York City, is an excellent focal point for a spring educational season or ''teach-out'' on international indigenous peoples. Native and Ethnic Studies programs and students' groups should seriously consider the challenge of just such a spring campaign.

The number of serious and informative cases of Native people confronting various degrees of greedy corruption is quite astounding. As well, excellent examples of communities doing trend-setting ecological and educational programs also emerge consistently. The methods and strategies by which Native peoples are attempting to rebuild and protect their nations are highly creative and instructive.

Hundreds - sometimes more than 1,000 - of indigenous delegates and allies come to New York City every year, at sacrificial expense to their communities, to attend the sessions at the United Nations. Once there, they participate in the various commemorative dinners and other sponsored side events. As the seasons progress, more networking, long-term planning and mutual strategic work becomes possible.

A Declaration of Indigenous Rights, debated now for a generation, continues to be a tool of convergence for discussion, even though most all nation states have shied from endorsement, complaining mostly about territorial demarcations made evident by Native populations, particularly when these overlap national boundaries.

The difficulty in achieving proper international protections has always been, of course, expected. The language is debated and parsed and the promised covenants, always in the future, remain a ball in play in the forward-moving pelota or lacrosse game that is the U.N.'s indigenous recognition movement. Nevertheless, the fact of holding permanent U.N. sessions on indigenous peoples' issues is a tremendous and highly useful victory by the most accosted and betrayed communities in the American hemisphere.

The May sessions in New York are dictated properly via U.N. bodies after three decades of sustained and intense work by indigenous delegates and their allies with U.N. organizations, dignitaries and the many highly-involved legalistic bodies and committees. The thinking that has guided the sessions on the indigenous side has been commendable to superb, with an experienced circle of Native and non-Native non-governmental organizations leading growing layers of U.N. associates and luminaries, in common, through myriad commissions and conference cycles of the august international body. This results in an Indigenous Forum every year at the U.N. This is much to the good.

Native nations big and small, whether economically enabled or destitute, now come to the U.N. every May. This is a major accomplishment and a tremendous sacrifice for dozens and dozens of Native peoples' circles of both professional and traditional leadership. As people meet and traditions over time are shared by the various cultures, the pressure of difficult isolation, which has limited and plagued Native nations globally, is broken. A new potential for communications and thus to be heard, to be understood in the context of Native kinship nationhood, opens up.

''Poco a poco,'' Anita Menchu, the younger sister of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Maya leader Rigoberta Menchu Tum, told the assembled at the Ingrid Washinawatok El Issa (Flying Eagle Woman) commemoration event. Held at U.N. Plaza, this event is in the central current of the social cohesion of the many veteran activists who have strengthened the U.N.'s work. Anita Menchu offered that ''little by little, we achieve our objectives to have the voices of indigenous peoples be heard.''

At the Flying Eagle Woman commemoration, just one of several special events, numerous Native delegates from throughout the Americas attended. A Lakota Sun Dance staff was held at honor by Chief Joe American Horse, while a Veterans' Song was offered along with several prayers and tributes. Many speakers evoked the memory of the transcending and undefeatable spirit of struggle that was and is Ingrid Washinawatok, and all marveled at her example as a person whose career mirrored and always fed the international movement for Indian dignity and cultural/spiritual survival. Katsi Cook, Mohawk midwife and a mentor of the young Menominee activist, spoke of ''the brilliance that is Ingrid.''

The Ingrid memorial event is always a spiritual highlight to what is a growing opportunity, once a year, for Indian peoples and the full range of indigenous peoples to shape and organize a living temporary embassy to the U.N. in New York City. It is just the opportunity for a growing international congress and convening of delegations far and wide, and for boosting the sheer presence of so many indigenous peoples in New York City. It is an event that should not be so easily ignored by the media.

The North American tribes, particularly the powerful Eastern woodlands confederacies but without excluding any Native nation, would do well to help host and engage this U.N. process more vigorously as the hosting peoples of these lands. This international movement has great leadership development possibilities, including the engagement of a young tribal ambassadors program at the U.N.

The universities and high schools that engage themes of international human rights and development, modernization, American social studies and indigenous studies should consider listening to the various lectures and discussions featured during this season that are useful in helping indigenous peoples' stories to emerge.

Important strategic exchanges can happen at these intense international events. While the U.N. covenants come slowly and lack teeth, the way leading to them is filled with potentials and possibilities for networking tribes and communities to more prominence and more clout in the media and among institutions of concern.

This hard-gained opportunity for Native peoples to share the spotlight at the U.N. could be missed if the northern tribes don't engage it directly and recognize and assist the international delegates, and the forum itself, during its moment of international attention. Better organization of sessions that can lead to more effective action in economics and social life improvements, while financing and contributions to Native communities, will be crucial in seasons ahead.

© Indian Country Today June 02, 2005. All Rights Reserved

used with permission