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UN seminar to discuss treaty rights in Hobbema

Robin Collum

9 November 2006 - Gateway (Canada) - The Experts will converge on Hobbema next week to discuss processes for making treaties with indigenous peoples, in the first United Nations seminar of its kind held outside of a UN venue.

The seminar, being organized by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, will be hosted at the Alberta reserve by the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations. There will also be a preparatory meeting this weekend in Enoch before the actual forum takes place from 14–17 November. Organizers and observers hope that the forum will bring much-needed attention to the conditions facing many aboriginal people in Canada and around the world.

“The main thing that we want to accomplish with this conference is to bring more international awareness to the plight of indigenous people everywhere,” said Bobbi Okeymaw, executive director of the Confederacy. “Even in Canada, there are Aboriginal people living in third-world conditions, and many of our indigenous brothers and sisters internationally live in terrible conditions.”

Ellen Bielawski, U of A Dean of Native Studies, agreed that conditions on Canadian reserves aren’t what they should be.

“Most Aboriginal people in Canada do not have access to clean water or adequate sewage treatment,” she said. “Observers are going to see that the gap between the global statements government makes and the way the average Aboriginal person lives is huge.”

Attendees of the UN seminar will examine modern treaty-making practices between states and indigenous peoples. It’s part of a series of conferences that are being held to discuss a 1999 report from the UNHRC Special Rapporteur Miguel Alfonso Martinez on the implementation of treaties, international agreements and human rights legislation.

Okeymaw believes that the conference will be important in emphasizing that treaties made over a century ago between indigenous tribes and the government are legitimate legal documents, rather than relics from a previous era.

“Many people look on our treaties as historical documents, but they are actually international agreements between nations,” she said. “They are as valid today as they were when they were signed, and they confer certain obligations.”

Okeymaw also pointed out that some of the delegates next week will be able to relate to the treaty situation in Canada. There will be representatives coming from all over the world, including fellow former British colonies like New Zealand and Australia. The legal situation of indigenous peoples in those countries has a lot in common with that of Canadian aboriginals.

“The Aborigines and Maori are in somewhat of the same position as us,” Okeymaw said. “Their treaties are almost identical.”

After a quarter-century of work on the document, the UN Human Rights Council adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in June of this year. It will be voted on in the General Assembly this fall, but Canada has announced that it will not be supporting it, to the surprise of some of those involved, including former MP Chief Willie Littlechild, one of its drafters.

“We had to go through the UN to pledge our support of the Declaration, because we couldn’t go through our own country,” Okeymaw said. “When Chief Littlechild asked why, the only response he got was that it ‘went against their policies.’”

Representatives from the federal government have been involved in planning and will be attending the forum, but had not responded to requests for interviews by the Gateway.

Source: The Gateway (Canada)

related links :

• Expert Seminar on Treaties, Agreements and other Constructive Arrangements between States and Indigenous Peoples Hobbema , Alberta (14-17 November 2006)
• United Nations News

Further information: human rights issues page - includes news index and external links

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