The United Nations as a Platform

Abstract

The description of the rise and development of the indigenous movement, the indigenous entry into the United Nations and my own observations from more than 20 years in Geneva and New York lead me to conclude that an important change has taken place. In the early years, the United Nations was a place for indigenous peoples to present, document, perform, and consult but, 20 years on, indigenous peoples have developed a space in which to negotiate, renegotiate, and create relations of inclusion in a global network with other indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples came from bounded geographical communities and cultures, convened in the bounded geographical, cultural, and political constructions of the United Nations but have ended up establishing an inclusive and unbounded space. In general terms, the geographer Doreen Massey has characterized the difference between place and space as “the spatial is [crucially] the realm of the configuration of potentially dissonant (or concordant) narratives. Places, rather than being locations of coherence, become the foci of the meeting and the nonmeeting of the previously unrelated and thus integral to the generation of novelty. The spatial in its role of bringing distinct temporalities into new configurations sets off new social processes” (2005, 71). In Massey’s terms, the space is characterized by heterogeneity, relations, practices of engagement, and contemporaneity (2005, 99).KeywordsIndigenous PeopleUnite NationSpecial RapporteurMultilateral AgencyIndigenous PersonThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.