500 Years Later, It's Time to Recognize Native American Rights

For hundreds of years, American Indians have suffered from abuse, discrimination and abject poverty at the hands of government officials. But sweet, symbolic justice is waiting around the bend.

Last week, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, announced that President Obama's administration has finally decided to review America's historic opposition to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

When the much-debated declaration was first enacted in 2006, only four countries refused to sign on: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the good ol' U.S. of A. Since then, both Australia and New Zealand have crossed over from the dark side. If Obama chooses to reverse ex-President Bush's adversarial stance, just one country — Canada — will remain in opposition.

Why all the contention over a piece of paper? One phrase: "collective rights." The declaration goes beyond ensuring basic individual rights (the right to worship as we please, for example, or to freely speak our minds) and guarantees that groups of indigenous people are protected as well.

"A reason such countries may be opposed to collective rights is that it implies land and resource rights, whereas supporting only individual rights would not," suggests Anup Shah of Global Issues. "Collective rights could therefore threaten access to valuable resources if they cannot be exploited." In short, collective rights could hurt big American corporations.

Of course, no U.S. government official would overtly object to protecting the land and resource rights of American Indians; that certainly wouldn't be a "politically correct" move. Instead, to justify opposition to the declaration four years ago, the Bush administration signed a joint statement with its three fellow anti-rights countries, stating, "No government can accept the notion of creating different classes of citizens."

A great concept, yes. A classless America — or, at least, an American government that doesn't facilitate the creation of various classes of citizens — is certainly an ideal that many of us strive for in our anti-poverty efforts. But when one group of citizens faces a 32 percent poverty rate, enormous health disparities (a shorter-than-average life span, the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the world and an abnormally high risk of heart disease, to name a few) and reservations that offer a glimpse into third-world poverty conditions, what else can you label American Indians but a "different class"?

The inequality already exists. Signing a declaration won't exacerbate it; the sheer idea that it would is a masquerade and a huge insult. It's time for President Obama to sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and make amends for centuries of mistreatment.

Photo credit: Wolfgang Staudt