In September of 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted by a clear majority of member states.
Canada, interestingly, voted against the adoption, together with the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand. Work on this declaration had been ongoing since 1982, with committees and study-groups researching the history of various colonial powers which usurped the rights of native cultures, as well as documenting the traditional territories and hunting areas of each group.
Many Indigenous groups were dispossessed by armed aggression, and others by trickery. Documents memorializing transfers of land from Indigenous to colonial representatives proved, in many cases, to be worthless from a legal point of view, and not recognised by European colonial powers.
The most rapacious of European invaders were Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands — in fact all of the maritime nations in the Northeast Atlantic. These nations sent armed expeditions to many regions of Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and any other areas that were found to possess valuable natural resources. It cannot be denied that each of these colonialist powers inflicted untold harm on the Indigenous peoples of “their” colonies.
History, now that it is no longer being written exclusively by the colonists, records shameful methods used to subjugate and exploit Indigenous peoples all over the world.
History, now that it is no longer being written exclusively by the colonists, records shameful methods used to subjugate and exploit Indigenous peoples all over the world.
The use of firearms against pre-industrial weapons such as spears and arrows, the signing of treaties which were never intended to be honoured by the colonists, ensured that the exploitation of natural resources would be carried out with a minimum of expense to the Europeans. Other effects of colonization, like the spread of diseases for which the local people had no immunity, further weakened any defence indigenous groups might have attempted.
Canada, willingly or unwillingly, must now, 12 years after the adoption of this declaration, begin to negotiate more seriously with First Nations, and respect the prior claim of Indigenous peoples to land and natural resources.
For provinces that depend on the extraction of mineral products and fossil fuels, which includes most of Canada, will find this a hard adjustment to make, and it will demand respectful guidance from Ottawa.
But it must be done. If we continue to drag our heels, and seek ways to frustrate the UN’s intention, we will demonstrate that we have no more honesty than the colonialists who plundered Canada’s resources in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Ed Healy,
Marystown
RELATED
