La diversité culturelle des peuples autochtones : condition préalable à sa protection

Abstract

For centuries, Indigenous Peoples have been submitted to the oppression and the assimilation of colonial powers, but during recent years, they have managed to make themselves heard at both national and international levels to reassert their right to difference and to the protection of their identities. It is interesting to notice that to be heard, native peoples have had to cast a common identity. That is particularly the case in The United Nations where the representatives of native peoples have been invested for more than 20 years in negotiations with governments. Negotiations which concluded in 2007 with the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly. To revive and protect their cultures, native peoples put forward that States must recognise their rights to self-determination and to the control of their territories and resources. Native peoples having rejected the activities carried out on their territories without their consent, inevitable confrontations have increased. When they would like a development that protects their cultures, respects the environment and promotes the well-being of their community, large scale exploitation projects of the resources are far from these concerns. In those circumstances, we do not have two confronting opposite visions of economic development but two utterly different conceptions of the world that surrounds us and of the place we have in it.