The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Paradigm of Domination

Abstract

This article argues that the term ‘Indigenous peoples’ is correctly interpreted as ‘dominated peoples’. It is contended that the need for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13 September 2007 – was a direct consequence of (1) a tradition of states defining Indigenous peoples as ‘less-than-human’ and (2) states constructing and institutionalising in law and policy a framework of domination against Indigenous peoples. However, far from being a remedy to these issues, not one of the 46 Articles of the UN Declaration addresses the issue of domination and Indigenous peoples. A critical examination of the UN Declaration must account for the fact that state actors involved in foreign and international affairs are intent on maintaining the status quo and are quite cognisant of the social construction of reality. In the United States in particular, the framework of domination that constitutes US Indian federal Indian law and policy is traced to arguments found in Vatican documents and Royal colonial charters of England that a discovering ‘Christian prince or people’, ‘Christian state’ or ‘Christian power’ had the right to assume an ‘ultimate dominion’ (right of domination) as against original non-Christian (‘heathen’ and ‘infidel’) nations and peoples. It was the issues of lands, resources and self-determination that arose from this Christian European system of categorisation which drove American Indian elders, spiritual and ceremonial leaders, scholars and activists into the international arena in 1977, and eventually resulted in the UN Declaration being adopted 30 years later in 2007. It remains an open question as to whether the UN Declaration provides a means of overturning the dual tradition of domination and dehumanisation that the United States and other states have built and maintained for more than two centuries. In the case of the United States, such a reform on the basis of the UN Declaration seems highly unlikely, given the unwillingness of the US government, including the US Supreme Court, to disavow or discontinue using its system of dominating categories against Indian nations and peoples.