Rights for Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

From Introduction:

"Twenty years ago I traveled together with 8 other Sami delegates to Canada to a little town named Port Alberni. We had been invited by chief George Manual who at that time was the president of the National Indian Brotherhood. The result of our meeting was the fonding of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. This organization has been one of the most important actors on the international scene for the spreading of the message about indigenous peoples. One of the interventions I remember from that meeting is an old man from Ecuador who said that he would not have complained if he had been treated like the white man treats his dogs. 'But our life is ten times worse that the life of the white man's dogs,' he said. Twenty years ago the the term 'indigenous peoples' didn't mean much to most people, although International Labour Organization (ILO), as one of the surviving bodies of the League of Nations, had developed a convention on indigenous peoples as early as 1957. In these twenty years since Port Alberni the term has become a natural part of nearly everyones vocabulary. And as you probably are well aware of, we have now from 10 December 1994 entered the 'International Decade of the World's Indigenous People.' Without the wisdom and efforts of such people as George Manual, I doubt we would have come this far. Even common people in Northern-Norway are discovering that there is an indigenous people living amidst them and many of them, probably the majority, have reconsidered the way they used to thing about and handle the 'lapps' or 'finns.' Even our own name sami is wholly accepted in Norway and Scaninavia and is even becoming more and more known in the English speaking world."