The US Government’s Treatment Of Native American To Be Investigated By United Nations

 

Charmaine-White-Face

This year, for the first time in the history of the United Nations,
the UN has decided to open an investigation on the US Government’s
former and current treatment of Native Americans. The country’s
estimated 2.7 million Native Americans live in federally established
tribal areas called Reservations which are plagued with unemployment,
alcoholism, high suicide rates and other social problems. ~ Emine Dilek – Video

Aside from social issues, US Native Americans are involved in
continuous disputes over sovereignty and land rights with the US and
State governments due to enduring violations to their territories and
rights.

The human rights inquiry is led by Human Rights and Policy Professor and a Native American, James Anaya. I had a chance to interview Ms. Charmaine White Face
who is one of the advisors and the spokesperson for the Sioux Nation
Treaty Council. She is also the founder and Coordinator of Defenders of
the Black Hills.

Emine Dilek: The UN has been conducting a special
investigation into the way the US treats its native populations,
including in Alaska and Hawaii.  Obama administration formally backed
the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in
2010, although the USA is the last country to sign it in 2007.

Why do
you think it took UN this long to start this investigation? What do
Native Americans expect from this investigation?

Charmaine White Face: I think that it took the UN this long, because
the USA does not want an investigation, and they always say that there
is nothing wrong here, and they won’t admit to reality of treatment of
Native Americans.

That’s one thing; the second thing is that the
Declaration that the UN passed is not the one Indigenous people have
approved, and so there is a big scandal about that too, but nobody will
talk about it.

There were few, you could call, collaborators approved
the UN Declaration, but that was not the original one Indigenous people
around the world have approved.

I was in the UN debates about the Declaration between 2002 until
2006, that’s why I know what happened and I wrote an analysis on it and
my publisher–which is a non-profit–is trying to get the funds together
to publish it.

The UN started this process under the Working Group in
Indigenous Population (WGIP) program in 1984, because the Indigenous
people around the world were complaining that their rights were being
violated.

The UN sent experts all over the world to talk to Indigenous
people about their rights. Finally, after meeting with many Natives
around the world and in Geneva, in 1994, the Sub-commission of
Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the WGIP came up with a
Declaration that was approved by all the Indigenous people of the world.

It was a collaborative effort and it was passed in 1994, but the UN did
not utilize that one after all the time and effort.

What we wanted as the American Natives is that the Declaration
implemented by Natives not by the US Government. Declaration states that
each country must implement it individually, but we want our people to
implement it, unfortunately that will not happen.

Throughout the UN
debates, every time we mentioned self-determination –because that is
what we want, full and complete self-determination, we are a nation- US
representatives would refute and say “we already gave self-determination
to our Native Americans through their tribal governments.”

What they
don’t tell to the rest of the world that USA created those governments.
They are not our traditional form of government.

The USA has total
control of these tribal governments, and that’s how they dictate to
tribes how we are supposed to live. If we try to expose corruption or
any other dysfunction in our governments, they will block it
immediately.

My nation – Sioux Nation- for example has a signed Treaty with USA government in 1868 called Sioux Treaty of 1868.
But the Treaty has been repeatedly violated by the USA and the State
Governments.

Originally, all the Reservations were created as POW camps
(Prisoner of War.) The department that was handling the Native issues
was the War Department.*

ED: Unfortunately not one member of the US House or
Senate would meet with the UN representative professor, James Anaya,
when he asked to speak to them as a part of his study.

Why do you think
no one from the US Congress agreed to meet with Mr. Anaya? How many
Native Americans are currently serving in the US Congress?

CWF:  If the Congress would agree to meet with
Professor Anaya, that means they would have to answer his questions. The 
USA would never answer any questions from the UN.

I have been at the
meetings with the Committee on the Elimination of the Racial
Discrimination, they have a periodic review of the USA, and we have
submitted questions to the committee, and the committee did ask those
questions but USA delegation never answered them.

Plus Professor Anaya
is Native American; he is an Apache from Arizona. This exposes US
Congress’s racist attitude towards Native Americans.

Those of us who know who we are, we are an occupied nation. United
States occupied Iraq and they put their puppet Government there, and
they have done the exact thing to us.

I think they were hoping that we
would totally assimilate into their culture, and many of us have done
it, so it has worked for some, but for those of us refuse to assimilate,
we refuse to vote and get involve with USA Government.

It is our way of protesting their governmental and political process.
Although there have been few representatives and senators and a half
Native VP, not many Natives have participated in the US political
process.

Also the desire to get involve in US political process depends
on what Nation you belong to, how far the colonization has occurred
within your people. Some of us, like me, are called traditionalists. We
do not want to get involve and we want our own government.

ED: The United Nations has requested that the US
government return some of the stolen land back to Native Americans, as a
necessary move towards reconciliation and combating systemic and
ongoing marginalization of Natives starting from the seizure of their
lands and resources, the removal of children from their families and
communities, the loss of languages, violation of treaties, and
brutality, all grounded in racial discrimination.

There are also talks
about land restoration. Professor Anaya says Mt. Rushmore Site should be
returned to Indigenous Native American Tribes. Could you tell us the
significance of Mt. Rushmore for Native people and why should it be
returned to Natives?

CWF: Mt. Rushmore itself has no significance, but it
happens to be within the Black Hills. The Black Hills are very sacred
to us, and not just to us many other, at least 30 nations.

Professor
Anaya does not say specifically return Mt. Rushmore; he says an example
could be return of the Black Hills. Our ancestors have lived in these
areas tens of thousands of years, before it was taken away from us.

If you look at the map of the 1851 and 1868 Treaties, the Black Hills
are right in the center. Our ancestors were trying to protect the Black
Hills from any kind of exploitation.

They are also one of the oldest
mountains in the world. Discovery of gold in the region after the Treaty
of 1868 was signed has played a major role in US Government’s violation
of it.

Originally the Great Sioux Nations covered 14 American States and
parts of 3 Canadian Provinces and many many Treaties were made between
France, Great Britain and United States, but encroaching has continued
until finally the last one 1868 Treaty was signed.

This Treaty states
that it can only be changed if ¾ of our adult males agree to it, and
they never did want to change it, never agreed to any change.

Also this
Treaty is protected by the USA Constitution Article 6 that says Treaties
are the supreme law of the land, additionally by an American Federal
Law called the March 3rd Act of 1871 that says Treaties before that day may not be changed or abdicated. So they are also violating their own laws.

When US president Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) allowed the gold
miners to come in he told the army to look the other way. The US Army
never upheld the Treaty and simply allowed miners to desecrate our land
despite a signed Treaty. That was the beginning of our downfall as the
nation.

Once Black Hills were taken over, they also started to kill the
buffalo which ruined our economy. Our people were starving and that was
also used as an excuse to push us into the camps.

ED: You have upwards of 70% unemployment
on the reservations. Native Americans have also long suffered from
disproportionately low statistics in health and education, as well. I
also wanted to talk about the high suicide rate among the Native youth.

This is so heartbreaking; what do you think are the major causes of this
and how can it be stopped?

CWF: All the statistics you have primarily are for
the Northern Plaines, for the Sioux reservation, especially in the South
Dakota, not for all other Reservations in the country. Colonization and
the racism are the two main causes of this abject poverty and suicide
rates.

Also the  ghettoizing of the Reservations; it is an unwritten policy
of the USA Government to continue to allow the corruption and poverty
and its subsequent result of violence until the people start to believe
that this is the only way to live.

The suicide rate is about the
hopelessness and powerlessness. So the poverty and high suicide rates
are the symptoms of the ghettoizing, colonization and racism.

The reason other nations might look as they are doing better is
because they have been colonized and assimilated long time before us.

We
are the last nation that had white contact. They are doing better
according to the American system, and have experienced colonization
longer than we have. They have assimilated better, and that is the price
to pay.

ED: You have sent me an article titled “America’s Secret Chernobyl
Uranium Mining and Nuclear Pollution in the Upper Midwest. US
Environmental agencies and departments has done nothing so far to either
investigate or correct this dangerous situation. Could you tell us more
about it?

CWF: The two biggest nations that are left are our
nation located up in the Northern Plains and in the South, Navaho
Nation. These areas are naturally very rich in Uranium.

In the 1940s and
1950s the US Government was trying to find Uranium after the discovery
of Nuclear energy and the Atomic bomb. In 1972, the Nixon Administration
has declared these areas “National Sacrifice Areas” for nuclear
development.  Now, we did not know about this and we are the ones being
sacrificed.

This naturally occurring uranium is all around us, but because we are
not a farming nation as digging into the Earth is considered very
disrespectful, we have survived with raising and trading of the Buffalo
until they were forced into extinction by the over hunting and
introduction of the non-native diseases by the colonists.

After the discovery of the Uranium, white settlers came in and they
went out to their backyard and started digging. That is why currently
there are more than 3000 open Uranium pits
in this entire region.

Their process was to fill up these pits with
gasoline to start a fire until the uranium boiled over, and then they
would collect it in barrels or buckets.

It was done with their bare
hands, with shovels, and after that some big mining companies with their
large equipment came, and that’s why you would find some of these
massive abandoned uranium mines, especially in the Southwestern region,
some as big as a mile square.

These mines are abandoned, left open after 1972 when the cheaper
alternatives were found. Now they still disgorge dangerous levels of
Uranium, because they are not properly covered or cleaned.

There are
also over 10,000 exploratory wells, all over here, they are not capped,
they are not marked, and some of them are big enough that anyone can
fall into one.

Unfortunately now, Uranium mining has started up again, but this time
they are not using open pits, instead they are recovering Uranium
through boreholes drilled into a deposit which is called In-situ
leaching (ISL), also called in-situ recovery (ISR).

We have been working
on this Uranium issue for eight years now, and trying to get the
message out has been the hardest. Of course, these Northern Great Plains
states and the federal government don’t want anyone to know what is
happening here for many reasons. But this “America’s Secret Chernobyl”
as we call it, is affecting the whole world.

The region has the highest cancer rates in the USA, but the CDC or
any other related Health or Environmental Agency are refusing to
investigate or study the cancer rates; they told us there has to be more
than 1,000,000 people in a region in order for them to even do a study.
South Dakota’s population is less than 1,000,000 and only 50,000 of
them are Native Americans.

The Indian Health Services has done a study on the cancer rates, but
they won’t tell what is the cause of it. The story about the Uranium
mining and the cancer connection has been covered by German
Journalists. 

The UN has done nothing on the Uranium issue, despite
our repeated requests for a study, investigation and/or a report from
the World Health organization (WHO.)

Please also note that, any investigation about Uranium or any other
nuclear matter that can be conducted by the WHO (World Health Agency)
has to be approved by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). So if
they did the studies, the word would not get out anyway.

State
Governments are not doing anything about it either because they are
concerned about the tourism revenue, because if tourists who visit Mt.
Rushmore knew they were inhaling radioactive dust or drinking water that
could be contaminated with uranium or other mining chemicals they would
not come.

The worst part of it, this is an agricultural State, for example
Harding County itself has 104 abandoned open-pit uranium mines, and they
raise cattle there.

The ranchers there feed their cattle copper sulfate
so that their fur will be the brown color it is supposed to be, because
those cows are eating the grass that has radiation in it, their fur
lost its natural color.

ED: You talked about self-determination before. Does each nation have its passport?

CWF: The only nations that had their own passports
and used it for years were the Iroquois confederacy. Unfortunately,
their passports have been taken away last year by the US Government due
to Homeland security issues, the US stated.

ED: Thank you very much for your time Ms. White Face. I hope this interview will shed more light onto the plight of your people.

Professor James Anaya’s final report will be presented to UN in
September.

Information presented about the maps, Treaties and Uranium is
in PDF and Word documentation form, and can be requested through the
author’s email [email protected]

Here is a video that showcases the plight of Native Americans in the United states:

 

 

* From 1789 until the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established in
1824, such affairs were under the control of the secretary of war,
except for a government-operated factory system of trade with the
Indians begun in 1795.

A November 1800 fire in the War Department destroyed most of its
previous records; therefore, the records of the Office of the Secretary
of War during its period of direct administration of Native American
affairs exist only from late 1800 until 1824.

 

Emine Dilek – May 20, 2012 – AddictingInfo

 

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