May 12-23, the Second Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues will convene at the UN Headquarters in New York City, on Manhattan Island, which is within the ancestral territory of the Delaware nation.
Indigenous representatives from around the world will be in attendance to speak to numerous issues affecting their lives, issues such as land, air, water and ecology, health, culture, economics, biocolonialism, sacred places, spirituality, and, of course, the inherent right of self-determination. The main theme of this year’s Permanent Forum is “Indigenous Children and Youth.”
The establishment of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is an important milestone in the global indigenous peoples movement. But before we become too celebratory, let us remain mindful that our efforts toward the liberation of indigenous nations and peoples are taking place within the context of empire and colonization, and that colonialism is far from over.
This year the United States is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the treaty between France and the United States, which sealed the Louisiana Purchase on April 30, 1803. In the treaty, France declared that she did “hereby cede to the United States, in the name of the French Republic, forever and in full sovereignty, the said territory with all its rights and appurtenances?” From the viewpoint of the Christian nations that defined international law, the “colony and province” of Louisiana thereby became a 565 million acre colony of the American empire, within which many indigenous nations were situated that had been living in sacred relationship with their respective homelands for an untold number of ages.
Some may think that it’s hyperbole to refer to the United States as an empire. It isn’t. Jefferson, who saw the purchase of the Louisiana colony as a key part of his “Empire of Liberty,” said that no constitution had ever before been “as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.”
Benjamin Franklin said that a leader “that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant or removes the Natives to give his own people room,” deserves to be thought of as the father of his nation. And who better than George Washington to embody the paternity of the American empire?
In Washington’s view, the white men who formed the United States had succeeded in laying “the foundation of a great empire.” And, said Washington, “It is only in our united character, as an empire, that our independence is acknowledged, that our power can be regarded, or our credit supported among foreign nations.”
The American imperium wasted no time moving west. In April 1788, General Rufus Putnam and many other former officers of the Continental Army founded the first colony of the American empire at the juncture of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, which they named Marietta, after the French Queen Marie Antoinette. Of this enterprise, Washington said: “No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum.”
In 1938, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of Marietta, Ohio, the Federal Writers Project put out a map with a caption that reads: “Northwest Territory. The first Colony of the United States. Here, with America’s start westward to the other sea, was born a colonial policy unique in all the world.”
That same year, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a crowd of 100,000 people in Muskingum Park, in Marietta, Ohio. “Long before 1788,” said Roosevelt, “there were white men here ‘spying out this land of Canaan’,” thus referring to the Old Testament of the Bible, and alluding to “manifest destiny.” Other examples of America’s “destiny” of imperial expansion include the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Seward’s purchase of Alaska from Russia, the insular colonies, the Philippines, and the illegal seizure of Hawaii. The colonial administration of captive indigenous nations has been an essential part of U.S. law and policy.
My focus on the American empire is intended to draw attention to the dominating colonial relationship between the United States and indigenous nations, euphemistically referred to as the “trust relationship.”
Given that the present day strength of the American empire as a superpower is a direct result of its having deprived our respective nations and peoples of a free and independent existence, while robbing us of the vast majority of our lands and resources, it is hypocritical indeed for the United States to espouse the value and “liberation” and self-determination for, say, the Iraqi people, but not for our nations.
When indigenous nations first sought redress in the United Nations, the U.S. government maintained an attitude of bemused indifference toward their efforts. In recent years, officials of the U.S. and other countries have adopted an obstinate attitude toward such core issues as land rights, self-determination, and many other rights expressed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In 1996, in Geneva, Switzerland, I asked a question of the U.S. representatives to the UN: “Assuming that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is eventually adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, of what practical significance will it be to indigenous nations and peoples throughout the world.” One U.S. official replied: “Well, to the extent that words have meaning, and to the extent that meanings configure reality, the Draft Declaration has importance.”
Decoded, here’s what the U.S. official was saying. It’s on the basis of words, ideas, and language itself that every human reality gets constructed and maintained. The reality of a colonial relationship between any indigenous nation and a nation-state government is no different. Nation-state government officials fear that if they allow the fundamental definitions and interpretations of indigenous peoples to change, reality itself will change. Such officials realize that the battlefield in the international arena is semantics, or the meanings of words. The United States, and many other nation-states, seek to use words to maintain supremacy over the lands and lives of indigenous peoples, by obstructing any liberating shift in the status quo.
In summary, the very nature, meaning, and purpose of human existence will be discussed and contested at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Those of us who travel to the Permanent Forum do so because of a solemn responsibility to uphold and protect the Sacred Birthright of our indigenous children and young people, and to advocate on behalf of our future generations. At the UN Permanent Forum we must say to the world community: “Let us put an end to colonialism; respect the Earth as our mother – the Sacred Life-Giver; and have a sacred regard for women, water, and for all living things.”
Steven Newcomb, Shawnee and Lenape, is director of the Indigenous Law Institute, and Indigenous Research Coordinator at D-Q University at Sycuan on the reservation of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today.