Traditional Indigenous left out of World Conference in New York

Traditional Indigenous left out of World Conference in New York

Photo Supai Waters, Havasupai, protesting uranium
mining on Supai sacred land at the Grand Canyon.

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

As the United Nations World Conference on Indigenous Peoples begins in New York today, grassroots Indigenous Peoples say they have not be included.

While Native Peoples living on the land have not been included, the “Holy See” of the Catholic Church was given the floor at the opening session on Monday, despite documented sexual abuse and torture of Indigenous children worldwide by Catholic priests and staff in boarding schools.

While the atrocities continue in Mexico, Indigenous Peoples are also objecting to the inclusion of Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto at the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous object to the presence of the president, known as “The Jackal of Atenco,” pointing out the ongoing rape of the land for corporate interests and the murder and genocide of Indigenous Peoples that continues throughout Mexico, particularly of Mayans in Chiapas in the south and the theft of Yaqui water rights in the north.

Erik Trevino, Kickapoo in Eagle Pass, Texas, on the southern border, said, "We, the Kickapoo were never included. We do not intend to be included anyway. No one can define our powers! And we are not the only ones."

Dine' (Navajos) in Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation, among the uninvited, question what will be the result of the World Conference, and what real benefit will come of the talk at the United Nations. 

While the well-funded non-profits are present, with grant writers, salaries and travel budgets, the authentic grassroots Indigenous Peoples who fight coal mining, coal-fired power plants, uranium mining, fracking and the desecration of sacred lands in their homelands, are not present because they have no money for travel and hotels.

Meanwhile, in Denver, Glenn Morris of Colorado AIM said the real struggle is not in the current “theater” in New York.

“Rather, it is to provide a record of resistance to this process that many of us have vocally critiqued as another attempt to finalize the colonization, domestication and total domination of our peoples and our homelands. It is also for those of us who have been in this struggle for some time to provide spiritual grounding, history and analysis for younger people to continue our resistance to invasion and colonization. While it might be dis-spiriting to see a number of other indigenous individuals collaborating in the HLPM process, we should take strength and courage in the knowledge that many of us remain in active resistance, and will continue to organize, mobilize and continue the struggle beyond the Kabuki theatre that will play out over the next two days in New York.”