Delegation calls for UN protection

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North American Natives need the international protection afforded by the United Nations if they are to survive, a Canadian Native leader told the UN during the World Conference on Human Rights.

The history of human rights abuse by governments in North America requires that the UN move immediately to ensure the rights of Indigenous peoples, said Ted Moses, head of the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec.

"We appeal for the application of international human rights standards because we wish to survive as peoples."

Moses addressed the plenary assembly on behalf of all North American Natives on June 18.

The history in North America consists of enforced imposition of foreign law, customs and religions and the denial of Native rights to self-government, he said.

"Since first contact, the Indigenous peoples of North America have been the victims of abuse from state authority, both arbitrary and sanctioned. Most think this is

old history. They do not know that we continue to be victimized, dispossessed of our lands and resources and reduced to poverty and despair."

Indigenous people ask to be accorded the same rights which the United Nations accord to the other peoples of the world, he said. "We ask for no more and no less than this."

Natives commitment to the Earth and their own communities create the foundations of individual rights, he said. To deny Indigenous peoples their collective rights "severs each person from the comfort and protection of his or her collective identity...as an individual human being."

He also called upon the attendant 183 international representatives to endorse the six recommendations set out by the Indigenous working group of the Non-Government Organization Forum, which ran concurrently with the conference.

The working group asked the United Nations to recognize Indigenous rights to land, self-determination and a place within the UN.