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Indigenous Peoples:
A Backgrounder

The United Nations estimates that there are currently over 300 million Indigenous Peoples living in 70 different countries. But this number, like most figures on Indigenous Peoples, is imprecise. Indigenous activists cite the lack of data on Indigenous Peoples as an urgent concern because it creates a barrier to understanding and meeting the needs of Indigenous communities.

Available statistics paint a picture of deadly poverty and inequality. Indigenous Peoples in the Americas have a life expectancy 10 to 20 years less than the general population. 1 In Central America, data show that Indigenous Peoples have less access to education and health services, are more likely to die from preventable diseases, suffer higher infant and maternal mortality rates and experience higher levels of poverty than non-Indigenous populations. 2

Corporate Globalization and "Development"

Indigenous Peoples are both uniquely targeted by and uniquely vulnerable to corporate globalization. They are targeted because their lands, on which they have preserved biological diversity and rich natural resources, present great opportunities for profit. And they are vulnerable because their sovereignty is not recognized by international trade agreements or by most states. As a result, corporations are not required to compensate or even consult with Indigenous communities before cutting down their forests, drilling for oil on their lands, mining their mountains or displacing people from their homes.

Intellectual property rights agreements, such as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) section of the World Trade Organization Agreements, are a particularly threatening aspect of corporate globalization for Indigenous Peoples. Because they live in concord with their lands, Indigenous communities have tremendous knowledge of the plants and animals with which they share their territories. This knowledge has historically been developed, shared and used collectively. International intellectual property agreements like TRIPS do not recognize collective intellectual property. As a result, Indigenous Peoples' knowledge is being appropriated by individuals and corporations looking to claim patent rights. Traditional medicinal plants, hardy plant species and disease-resistant cattle cultivated by Indigenous Peoples have been patented over the last ten years by non-Indigenous individuals and corporations. In addition to robbing Indigenous knowledge and wealth, agreements like the TRIPS threaten to undermine the entire basis of Indigenous knowledge by creating incentives for individuals to guard new knowledge for themselves rather than share it with the community.

As demonstrated by the dichotomy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous conceptions of intellectual property, Indigenous Peoples often work within a completely different conceptual framework of what knowledge, wealth, development and progress are. Development projects designed by Indigenous Peoples tend to value environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and spirituality over increasing the gross domestic product, and thus present a radical alternative to mainstream development projects. Under current international trade agreements and development projects, Indigenous Peoples tend to be the "targets" of development. But as Indigenous Peoples are arguing, development can only be positive if Indigenous Peoples are the actors, creating a development process in line with their unique values, beliefs and worldviews.

Indigenous Peoples' Human Rights and the International Arena

The lack of national or international legal recognition and protection of Indigenous Peoples' human rights makes Indigenous Peoples more vulnerable to abuses of all kinds. In recent decades, Indigenous Peoples have begun to make significant progress in using the international arena to articulate and demand their rights. Indigenous activists have established worldwide networks to carry their issues to the highest levels of international decision-making bodies, forcing national governments and international bodies to recognize their human rights.

Indigenous women have been at the forefront of the international Indigenous movement, and have stressed that gender equality and increased political participation of Indigenous women are essential aspects of Indigenous Peoples' human rights. As a sign of the progress they have made, the United Nations now has a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which focused its 2004 session on the specific issues of Indigenous women.

Many Indigenous activists are now focused on winning the adoption of the United Nations' Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration, currently in draft stage, establishes a framework for Indigenous human rights law that many Indigenous activists feel is essential to empowering Indigenous Peoples and improving health, education and other quality of life indicators.

Click here to read more about Indigenous Peoples and international law.

Autonomy and Collective Rights

The issue of self-determination and collective rights is central to Indigenous Peoples' human rights. International law recognizes the collective rights, such as sovereignty and self-determination, of nation states. But the Indigenous movement is arguing that these rights pertain not just to existing states but to all Peoples who share unique languages, cultures and societies and understand themselves as distinct groups. It argues that today's nation states, whose rights are confirmed in UN instruments, fail to recognize or represent the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and, at times, multi-national characteristics of their populations.

As some Indigenous organizations have maintained, the "dismantling of European colonial empires and the arbitrary creation of 80 nation-states liberated territories but not peoples." 5 The fact that Indigenous Peoples' rights to sovereignty and self-determination were not recognized during the creation of independent post-colonial states in the 19th and 20th centuries does not negate the validity of those rights or justify denying them today.

Indigenous Women

To win respect for their human rights, Indigenous women must defend both the rights of their peoples as a whole and their rights as women within their communities. In the Indigenous Women's Beijing Declaration , made at the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women, they declare:

"We, the women of the original peoples of the world have struggled actively to defend our rights to self-determination and to our territories that have been invaded and colonized by powerful nations and interests. We have been and are continuing to suffer from multiple oppressions: as Indigenous Peoples, as citizens of colonized and neo-colonial countries, as women and as members of the poorer classes of society. In spite of this, we have been and continue to protect, transmit and develop our indigenous cosmovision, our science and technologies, our arts and culture and our indigenous socio-political and economic systems that are in harmony with the natural laws of Mother Earth. We still retain the ethical and esthetic values, the knowledge and philosophy and the spirituality, that conserves and nurtures Mother Earth. We are persisting in our struggles for self-determination and for our right to our territories. This has been shown in our tenacity and capacity to withstand and survive the colonization happening in our lands in the last 500 years."

Pervasive disparities between women and men within Indigenous communities have been reinforced by colonization and neoliberalism. Meanwhile, traditional Indigenous beliefs in a dualistic, equal relationship between men and women as complementary contributors in public and private life have been undermined. Among their principal concerns relating to disparities between men and women within Indigenous communities, Indigenous women activists cite:

1. Higher rates of illiteracy and lower levels of formal education among Indigenous women.
2. Low rates of political participation, locally, nationally and internationally.
3. A more intense degree of marginalization from the dominant culture, in part because Indigenous women are more likely to speak only their Indigenous language.
4. Poor or no health services, high rates of maternal mortality and a lack of available services that integrate both Indigenous and Western medicine.
5. The high burden borne by Indigenous women as a result of neo-liberal economic policies, which force many Indigenous men to migrate to the city for work, leaving women as the sole heads of their families.
6. Military violence against Indigenous communities and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Indigenous Peoples and the Environment

Besides human rights advocacy, Indigenous Peoples have also been increasingly involved in international discussions on sustainable development and environmental preservation. Indigenous activists argue that these issues are intricately connected to the recognition of Indigenous human rights. Having lived in and preserved the world's most biologically diverse areas for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples are experts in sustainable development and environmental preservation.

Indigenous activists are pushing international governing bodies to recognize this special relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the environment and acknowledge the valuable knowledge and insights that Indigenous Peoples can contribute to questions of sustainable development. They are also pointing out that recognition of Indigenous Peoples' land rights and rights to self-determination would go a long way toward preserving some of the most ecologically fragile areas of the world by putting them in the custody of the people who best understand them and have preserved them for centuries.