Sustainable Development and the UN's Rights of Indigenous Nations

Roughly two weeks ago President Obama finally did what the US has failed to do for years - backed the UN's Rights of Indigenous Nations, stating as he did so that:

"what matters far more than words, what matters far more than any resolution or declaration, are actions to match those words."

Unfortunately, the track record within the United States - as in most nations - with how it serves its indigenous citizens is abysmal. Native Americans are more than twice as likely as the general public to live in poverty, are significantly less likely to drink yet at the same time have a substance abuse rate at twice the national average. Indigenous populations also suffer from and die of illnesses ranging from diabetes to pneumonia at rates higher than the general US population.

Even more depressingly, in history textbooks and popular culture native peoples have generally been reduced to caricatures: a wide cheeked Eskimo, a lithe Pocahontas. The diversity of native cultures ranging from Alaska, to Hawaii, to South Dakota to New York State have been ignored in the homogenization of what it means to be American. Their role, and their continued role in shaping our nation is habitually and systematically ignored.

What does this have to do with sustainable development? Plenty. History has taught us time and time again that people who are systematically disenfranchised from the larger society within which they are located have a way, one way or the other, of making their voices heard. It is not possible to create a sustainable society without to borrow a phrase from the Society of Friends, speaking truth to power. Acknowledging the past, and in acknowledging the rights of indigenous Peoples is a step towards doing that, is the only way that we can hope to step into a sustainable future.

Photo Credit: Wolfgang Staudt