State Dept Railroads Indigenous Rights-1998

About sixty different international legal instruments for the protection of human rights have been enacted since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, in 1945. In that great promulgation process, the United States has ostensibly led a worldwide movement to rectify longstanding grievances of people against states, through codification of the legal standards to which those states might be bound. Meanwhile, the United States has intervened with military force, ostensibly to guarantee respect for human rights, in such notable recent cases as Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Panama, and Grenada. However, the US policy has been consistently contradictory and hypocritical. In rhetoric, the US advocates global accession to an internationalized human rights regime that is reflected in the image of the United States as the world's bastion and stalwart champion of human rights. But in practice, the US adamantly refuses to be held accountable to the terms of any of the instruments promulgated to protect human rights, including those few instruments that have been ratified by the US Senate and thus incorporated in the national laws of the United States.

Consequently, it should have surprised few of those who have seen through the charade that the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, in a rather sudden burst of internationalist energy, has in the last several years become very involved in shaping the final articulation of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. State's plan is clearly intended to neutralize that document and to sterilize the movement for recognition and protection of indigenous peoples' rights. The strategy is designed to subvert the language of indigenous rights through exploiting and internationalizing the State Department's distorted interpretation of US Indian Policy. This article attempts to illuminate the US position that opposes the indigenous rights movement while State Department functionaries masquerade in the costume of sincere concern for indigenous people(s) advanced through good-mannered "quiet diplomacy." The article contends that in the long term it is predictable that such policy will prove not only counter-productive but also destructive of any concept of global stability.

During the early years of development of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, US State Department representatives took a low profile in the often empassioned debate over the details and language of the document. That early debate transpired during the Cold War, and in that context, the US treated indigenous politics as a feature of bi-polar rivalry with the USSR, with little regard for the very non-aligned and independent nature of the incipient indigenous rights movement. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the debate had a different meaning, and the US had a different role to play within both the UN and the international system.

Although the State Department did not make any formal statements to the Working Group before 1992, 1 its complacent non-participation had shifted quite noticeably by the previous year (1991), when Diné (Navajo) representatives from Big Mountain, Arizona, attempted to put their issue of forced relocation before the global forum on indigenous rights. Then, State revealed its ambition to seize control of the process, when it threatened to pull the plug on both the Working Group and the SubCommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities by withdrawing financial support allocated to those two entities. 2 Given that the US continues to owe the UN over a billion dollars in unpaid dues, this threat would have been ludicrous had it not resulted in its intended effects. The first of these effects was that the Diné were obstructed and censored in their efforts to have their case considered by the UN Working Group. The second and larger effect was that the Working Group was forced to contend with the notice that State intends to extort compliance with US demand - or else.

It just might be the case that State has already pulled the plug. The Clinton Administration, conducting a fundamentally Republican foreign policy, has demanded that the United Nations generally cut back its "overgrown bureaucracy" and "wasteful spending," as the main condition under which the US will deign to meet its massive overdue financial obligations - without which the UN will simply die. It was due to ex-UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali's resistance to these US-decreed cutbacks that he was "discontinued" from his job, in late 1996, also at US insistence. Presently, the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples is likely to be a target for State Department attack, because it presumably has served its function and has become an extravagance that the UN can simply not afford in a time of severe fiscal restraint. Meanwhile, there are ominous signs that the UN Committee of Twenty-four, which administers the de-colonization process authorized by General Assembly Resolution 1514, of 1960, is also on the chopping block, undoubtedly also at US insistence. The potential destruction of these two institutions implies great danger for the place that indigenous peoples have carved out for themselves at the United Nations, since efforts to do so were initiated over twenty years ago.

Even if the Working Group and the Committee of Twenty-four do continue to exist, the integrity of the Draft Declaration is still in serious jeopardy. Since the document achieved its current articulation, in 1994, the State Department has played an increasingly dominant role in controlling the terms of the debate, the language of the text, and the UN approval process, as well. State has controlled the terms of debate by excluding indigenous representatives from the process of determining the language of the document. Where the language itself is in contest, State representatives have registered continuous opposition to the application, in Article 3, of the term "self-determination" to the condition of indigenous peoples, and to the use of the term "peoples" (rather than "people" or "populations" or "groups") as the juridical unit of analysis in the document. Meanwhile, in its attempt to control the UN approval process, State has begun publicly to promote United States Indian Policy as the model for the global indigenous policy regime that will be represented by the Draft Declaration.3

In response to being railroaded, some American Indian representatives to the Working Group attempted to confront the State Department over its manipulations of the forum, during the 1993 and 1994 sessions. Had the State Department insisted on its language stipulations in those meetings, it would have been faced with the prospect of an embarrassing public show-down on the floor of the Working Group. Instead State's ploy was to permit the document to advance to the approval process with the controversial language intact, while attempting to persuade the forum to buy into the US approach to indigenous policy.

After the Draft Declaration was handed up from the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, the UN Human Rights Commission, clearly with State's approval, created an entirely new UN working group to reconsider the document. In November 1995, at the first "Open-Ended Inter-Sessional Working Group" meeting (hereinafter referred to as the Inter-Sessional), State mounted a newly focused attack that apparently has the objective of contorting the Draft Declaration into an agenda for an internationalized version of US Indian Policy - a fundamentally colonialist policy that has been in force since the founding of the United States and which is now packaged for public consumption in a duplicitous abuse of the concept of "self-determination." 4

State's initial gambit at the Inter-Sessional was - to use the popular UN term - "transparent," as it had not even bothered to "consult" American Indian representatives in any effective way before foisting their experience of US policy upon the world as something "unique and important" 5 and deserving of emulation. Apparently having realized its embarrassing lack of indigenous support, in the summer of 1996, State initiated a round of meetings with Indian representatives across the United States to seek out individuals or organizations to endorse or at least acquiesce in its approach. Meanwhile, apparently having come to the realization that its understanding of the administration of US Indian Policy was informed only by appalling ignorance, State initiated communications with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), in the US Interior Department, hoping that it (the BIA) would "provide valuable guidance and information" 6 about the policy that State seeks to represent to the world as "unique and important."

The State Department is clearly out of its element in this supposedly "domestic" policy area, although it shouldn't be, because Indian peoples have always been acknowledged by the United States, at some level of policy, as foreign nations, as evidenced by the hundreds of international treaties and executive orders concluded with the War Department, Congress and various US presidents. To be consistent with the terms and the spirit of those treaties and other agreements, the conduct of Indian Policy actually should be within the responsibilities of the State Department, not the Interior Department. Now, however, without Interior's guidance, State has no anchor in its approach toward the Draft Declaration. But State's tutelage under Interior is mistaken, in any case, if State is seeking guidance on how indigenous policy is formulated, since it is in Congress (the Senate, in particular) where policy is actually formulated. The BIA has only administered policy since 1849, and therefore

That State seeks information concerning the administrative work of the BIA is evidence that there has been no useful communication between the two agencies until this point in time. Why the big rush to education now, after all the time that has passed, unless there is some unusual condition that necessitates coordination? The unusual condition is the transition from the Cold War era to the so-called "new world order," which has yet to be clearly defined but obviously implies something about the role of the United States as the would-be global hegemonic actor with the power to determine the dominant ideology of the age. The US faces serious opposition from many different quarters, in its attempt to consolidate this hegemony, which is by no means guaranteed by unilateral proclamations about being the "sole standing superpower" following the demise of the USSR. The indigenous rights movement represents one of the most serious challenges to US hegemony, and the present Draft Declaration on Indigenous Rights poses a significant threat that the US agenda of rights will not be legitimized through general acceptance by the policy's subjects. So, as mentioned above, State is now frantically searching for some "government Indians" who will support the agenda that State has already determined that it will present to the world, regardless of what it actually discovers about the true nature of "US indigenous policy." Whatever US agency (State or Interior) emerges as the true representative of US Indian Policy, that policy must at least appear to be legitimate among Indians.

Eight months after presenting its position regarding the Draft Declaration at the 1995 Inter-sessional, State began summoning "American Indian Tribal Leaders" from across the United States for "consultations" regarding that position. 7 The meetings were convened in Washington DC, Fort Laramie (Wyoming), and Hawaii, during the summer of 1996. These "consultations" were not only an after-thought, but also a moot point, since State had already determined and presented its position, which did not change one iota after the "consultations" took place. State's position remained (and remains) that Indians have the same protections guaranteed to all individual citizens of the United States; Indians are guaranteed not to be discriminated against because of their race; and Indians have "self-determination" guaranteed by national laws of the United States, even though that form of self-determination means being a "domestic dependent nation" ruled as a colonial "possession." 8

One week following the "consultation" that convened in Washington DC, State again reiterated its position at the 14th session of the UN Working Group in Geneva. There, Michael J. Dennis of the State Department's Observer Delegation to the Working Group emphasized that in the United States "indigenous individuals are guaranteed protection of their vested property rights and of their basic individual rights, including their right to freely associate, engage in religious practices and maintain distinct social and cultural identities, and with respect to federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native tribal governments, the right of self-government." Positive as this avowal may have seemed to those who were unaware of being manipulated, the US position was defined more bluntly by Seth Waxman, liaison between the US Department of Justice and the National Security Council, who had stipulated at the Washington DC "consultation" that the UN Draft Declaration must remain consistent with domestic US law. 9

Meanwhile, the entire question of indigenous rights ended up being trivialized and derailed, as State almost simultaneously convened two other conferences to discuss broad questions of "human rights" without any mention whatsoever of indigenous rights. First was a conference entitled "From Early Warning to Rebuilding: Human Rights Policy in the Post-Cold War Era," which convened on 3 April 1995, in Washington DC. State invited many of the same "tribal leaders" that it also invited to attend the "consultations," though not a word was said in respect to their particular interests. Then, on 25 September 1996, State convened a "Town Meeting" in Denver, Colorado, at which Gare Smith, the same Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who had authored the letter of invitation to the "consultations" that was sent out to "tribal leaders" gave a key-note address in which he never mentioned indigenous rights even once.

It has become evident, then, that one facet of State's attack on indigenous rights is to recruit "tribal leaders" to support the newfound attachment of the US to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The US Senate finally ratified the ICCPR in 1992, after procrastinating for 26 years from the year the treaty was concluded in 1966, and now the State Department is attempting to prove that the US will live up to its obligations under the treaty. State's reasoning seems to be that if "tribal leaders" can be persuaded to lead cheers for the ostensible US commitment to the ICCPR, that will constitute evidence that the United States really does respect the "human rights" of Indians (as individuals). State has solicited input on US practices in "civil and political rights" from such prestigious Indian organizations as the Native American Rights Fund (NARF). However, State has shown little evidence that it listens at all to what Indians say in their own behalf regarding the constraints of the ICCPR - specifically that the treaty that makes absolutely no mention of indigenous peoples' right to survive as viable collectives.

Apart from its lack of recognition of indigenous peoples' rights, the ICCPR has several other important flaws, the most egregious of which is the lack of enforcement procedures. Any American Indian individual who might attempt to accuse the US of violating the treaty would be limited to a complaint hearing before the UN Human Rights Committee, under the procedure enumerated in the Optional Protocol to the treaty. 10 There should little surprise that State fails to acknowledge the unenforceability of the ICCPR. It is even less of a surprise that State fails to mention that the US Senate has attached "reservations," "understandings" and "declarations" (RUDs) to the treaty act, making the application of the ICCPR in the United States totally impossible (see the following section - US Non-participation in Human Rights Treaties). Any participation of Indians (as individuals) in the procedural machinery of the ICCPR would be utterly hollow, a virtual charade.

Under the terms of the ICCPR, it is possible for any other person in the United States to enjoy the fundamental individual lies that are protected by both the Covenant and the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. However, "group rights" are not protected, which is of central importance both for the State Department and all indigenous peoples, for opposing reasons. State claims that the United States does not recognize "group rights," that is, the right of certain groups to special status in relation to other groups. But meanwhile, the Interior Department claims a commitment to uphold "treaty rights," which are indeed group rights and are unique rights that Indian nations have always had in a very special way that no other kind of "group" in the United States can share. The contradiction screams for resolution. Do indigenous peoples have rights as collectives, or not? If they do not, then treaty rights in the United States are meaningless, despite what the United States Government, through any of its agencies, promises to uphold. This is the fundamental contradiction in all US Indian Policy, and therefore in all other US indigenous policy, and State must be prepared to represent it truthfully in stating its case on the Draft Declaration.

State wants Indians to permit the US Government (that is, the State Department itself) to interpret Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a bastardization of US Indian policy distorted to promote individual civil and political rights. It makes little difference if Indians give their permission to be mis-represented this way, because State can be predicted to say exactly what it already has determined, no matter what contributions Indians might make to State's understanding. State's presentation of the US position seeks approval and legitimacy through the very transparent charade of "consulting" Indians in the post-formulation process, though for all intents and purposes, they have been ignored. For the interested observer, Indian and non-Indian alike, this cynical contradiction alone bespeaks a fundamental failure of the United States to conform to the principles of international law that it pretends to respect while imposing them on other peoples. Therefore, this contradiction necessitates further scrutiny and unblinking honesty, in order to know what to expect from US commitments (or the lack thereof) to any international human rights institutions.

There is apparently very little at risk for the United States in the Draft Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Regardless of the final language of the document, "declarations" in international law have absolutely no binding power. Declarations are mere statements of principles and ideals and aspirations. They obligate no government to any level of observance or practice. This will be as true for the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples' Rights, when it finally is out of draft form, as it was for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which State emphatically acclaims as the pre-eminent achievement in the development of the international human rights regime. State posits the Universal Declaration to include all pose aspirations of indigenous people only as individuals. 11 However the Universal Declaration, in and of itself, is virtually meaningless, since it is not a treaty. The Declaration acquired binding force only through the subsequent conclusion of the two primary covenants on human rights: the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), neither of which provides adequate protection for the rights of indigenous peoples.

During the evolution of the dozens of human rights instruments, from the early 1950s until the late 1980s, the entire human rights debate was framed as an ideological battlefront between the Cold War adversaries. The United States, promoting the ICCPR, defended the "individual liberties" that are supposed to protect people, as individuals, from the abuses of the state, and which reflect the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, around which they are framed. But the ICCPR, like the Universal Declaration, did not address the concerns of indigenous peoples; instead, it sacrificed the rights of collectives on the altar of individual rights - especially property rights.

For its part, the Soviet Union spoke to the fact that individual liberties were never usually respected in capitalist and colonial societies, especially due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism that tend to make basic conditions of life so unequal as to effectively exclude major class, social and cultural sectors from enjoyment of fundamental liberties. Therefore, the socialist model that the USSR advocated guaranteed "economic, social and cultural rights," which were eventually codified first in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the US State Department always fails to recognize in its advocacy of the Declaration) and then in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which went into force in 1966. Although the Soviet Union is now dead and socialist ideology has at least temporarily declined as a counterpoint to "free market" or "neo-liberal" thinking and practice, the ICESCR remains in force. Like the ICCPR, the ICESCR failed adequately to address indigenous peoples' concerns, in part because the focus of the document was ultimately on the individual. 12 In socialist ideology,

On the other hand, in perhaps the most serious ambiguity in all human rights legislation, the ICESCR, like the ICCPR, does (in Article I of both instruments) emphatically posit the right of all "peoples" to "self-determination," and this right is collective, not individual. Attempting to resolve the ambiguity, states have tried to monopolize the references both to "peoples" and to "self-determination" as the exclusive properties of presently existing states, and they attempt to exclude indigenous peoples as the "nations" which someday in the future might be represented by states that do not presently exist. Indigenous people and peoples have resisted that monopolization, but in lieu of having enough power to control the issue, have been ambivalent about support for either treaty or the Universal Declaration. Although each of these instruments captures a part of the claims indigenous people(s) make in speaking in their own behalf, none of them treat the question of collective rights comprehensively, and therefore none of them is adequate to provide the protections indigenous people(s) seek.

The State Department, meanwhile, continues to rest its case on the Universal Declaration as the only relevant instrument promoting respect for human rights, while it ignores the pertinence of the instrument to socialist precepts, and while it distorts the tangential relationship of the instrument to the Draft Declaration of Indigenous Rights. Instead, State concentrates on its projection of the United States' ostensible role as the world "leader" of the human rights regime, mostly by criticizing other countries particularly the so-called "rogue states" for their human rights practices. State never mentions the source of the image of "leadership" it projects. The fact is that State itself does not determine the US position in relation to international human rights instruments. Control over that area of policy belongs to the US Senate, which refused to ratify any major human rights treaties until the late 1980s. That refusal was based on the Senate's analysis that a conspiratorial United Nations, suspected of being influenced by the Soviet Union, might actually attempt to control the behavior of the United States - which has historically been known to abuse human rights, at least as viewed from the perspective of most American Indians. Due to the broad perception that the United States could not persuade a global community of its "leadership" role in the practice of human rights without some degree of its own participation in the key instruments, the Senate was motivated to join the United States to the treaties, but without conceding any

authority to either the UN or any other actor external to the US. Accordingly, in its ratification acts, the Senate appended disclaiming "reservations," "understandings" and "declaration" (RUDs) that relieve the United States of any obligation under the treaties to any authority or institution other than the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights. 13 Once the Senate had resolved this policy orientation dilemma, it proceeded to ratify the Genocide Convention in 1986, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (the EAFORD Convention) in 1993. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the other hand, required no such ratification, since, again, it is not a treaty. The US policy on human rights, then, is a study of deceitful self-contradiction. There is every reason to conclude that US obligations before the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples Rights would be similarly hollow.

If, as State contends, human rights are essentially the rights of individuals only, and never the rights of collectives, then the two most important human rights covenants are ambiguous a best and total contradictions at worst. The fact of the matter is that there is ultimately no complete articulation on human rights anywhere in international law at the present time. There has never been any universally interpreted version of human rights, for determining the balance of rights between individuals and collectives. Neither is it established anywhere in international law that "peoples" are singularly represented by states, nor that states may monopolize the definitions of "peoples" or "self-determination." Until there is a resolution of these contradictions, somewhere in the indefinite future, there will have to be some enlightened thinking about the facts that, like it or not, there are many peoples who are not states, and who will resist being controlled as colonized possessions of presently existing states. The State Department is not about to resolve the matter by insisting, as it does, that the use of the term "peoples" for and by indigenous peoples has no legal implications pertaining to "self-determination" comparable to that of states.

To represent American Indians truthfully, State would have to concede that they been thrust into a perpetually schizophrenic existence between their apparent legal recognition as "nations" and their concomitant identity as individual citizens of the United States. The Draft Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples already establishes a reflection of that kind of contradiction within its present framework. Essentially, the Draft establishes the fundamental equality of each indigenous person with everyone else in any society, while it concomitantly establishes the right of indigenous peoples as collectives to a separate reality from that society. The Draft establishes the right of the indigenous individual to come and go from the mainstream society as he or she wishes, without diminishing the existence of the indigenous society that such individuals have to call their own world. The Draft Declaration is not framed as a contradiction between two mutually exclusive realities, which is the point that State would argue. Rather, it represents the conjunction of two complementary sides to which indigenous people and peoples have been forced to adapt. By attempting to enforce an exclusionary resolution, State may actually be causing the very effect that it thinks it is trying to avoid, and that effect is secessionism.

It has been argued in this essay that, in a pattern that is as cynically manipulative as it is purposefully inconsistent, the US has used human rights as a self-serving element of a foreign policy that has the overall objective of consolidating global ideological hegemony in the post-Cold War era. The US State Department has clearly focused on the question of indigenous peoples' rights as one particular area within the broad human rights agenda that must be controlled and limited before it gets out of hand and generates a global wave of secessionism and state fragmentation. 14 Given that one of the most apparent features of the post-Cold War era is the plethora of warfare between states and indigenous peoples, the State Department's fears have been and remain that indigenous peoples might construe the language of self-determination as the right of "peoples" to secede from the states that dominate and control them. Therefore, State's fear is that at a fundamental level, any concession whatsoever to the idea of "group rights" would shake the global ideological control structure that the US is currently attempting to concretize around the concept of civil and political rights that are accorded to the individual by the United States Constitution.

Secessionism, however, is not clearly diminished by attempts to suppress and control it. The recent successful cases in Croatia, Eritrea, Chechnya and Abkazia should serve to demonstrate the fact that such forms of self-determination remain available to those peoples who are willing to fight for their liberation from state policies of internal colonialism. Such warfare continues in Nagaland, Kashmir, Chittagong, Tamil Eelam, East Timor, West Papua, Bougainville, Mindanao, the Cordillera of Luzon, Ogoniland, Southern Sudan, Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Palestine, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and many other nations. In some of these cases, the warfare has continued for centuries, but in any case, it is endemic across most of the world today.

Just because the overseas colonies of the former European empires and the continuing American empire have been (mostly, but not entirely) liberated does not mean that the ideology of self-determination and anti-colonialism has been satisfied. Anti-colonialism derives from the very core of Western civilization. It is embedded in such major ideological institutions as the Declaration of Independence of the United States and General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 1960. The anti-colonial ideology of the present century has found a new focus, and it is in the institution of the multi-national state whose government attempts to create a unitary state or a false ethno-federalist state. The current wars of national liberation mostly fall into these two categories, and attempts to suppress secessionism in all these cases have been abject failures.

The anti-colonialist movements of the present have demonstrated that colonialism continue to be practiced widely, although today it is not an alien from another part of the world that dominates indigenous peoples, but rather aliens who are much more local in their point of origin. Wishing that people would "just get along" according to democratic principles does not lead colonized peoples to accept their subjugation by others as a perpetual state of affairs. Therefore, the disbanding of the UN Committee of Twenty-four will not result in the disappearance of anti-colonialism. It may exacerbate the source of conflict, instead.

None of this current dilemma has been lost on the State Department, which must represent the most egregious of all offenders that have ever gone out of their way to inspire and instigate secessionism, according to its own prevailing national interests. More than any other state, at any time, the United States has used indigenous peoples as expendable instruments to achieve foreign policy objectives. Just a few of these peoples include the Kuna Indians of Panama, the Baltic peoples and Ukrainians and Georgians of the Soviet Union, the Hmong of Laos, the "Montagnards" of Vietnam, the Tibetans of China, the Ovimbundu of Angola, the Kurds of Iraq (in 1975, 1991, and currently), and the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua. Most of the time, these peoples have played the roles of proxies in covert operations of the CIA, and thus State has never had to account for them in the "official" foreign policy it represents. 15 Due

1. The non-participation of the US in the UN Working Group is acknowledged in a "Position Paper" authored by State Department Legal Counsel John Crook, dated 9 July 19. Crook reports that the first and then only official US statement on the Draft Declaration was made at the 1992 meeting of the Working Group. Crook also reflects upon the opportunity to intervene at the 1993 meeting of the Working Group as "an important opportunity to (a) try to shape the text to reflect US interests before it goes to the Commission, and (b) lay out US positions on key points to the NGO audiences most concerned."

In our domestic context, "self-determination" means recognizing Tribal self-governance and autonomy over a broad range of issues. This is a positive development which reinforces the status of indigenous people within an existing state. The uniqueness and importance of our policy of self-governance was highlighted by President Clinton when he spoke to tribal leaders at the White House ..." (emphasis added). See "Commentary: US Model of Indigenous Rights Subverts Inter-sessional Working Group," Fourth World Bulletin Vol. 5,nos. 1-2, Spring/Summer 1996.

4. In its intervention at the October 1995 meeting of the Inter-sessional Working Group, the State Department insisted that indigenous rights are accorded to individuals and are limited to the "civil and political" rights of property ownership, free association, religious practice, and maintenance of "distinct social and cultural identities." The intervention attacked "several provisions" of the Draft Declaration which State (ignoring the dynamic evolving nature of international law) deemed declarations of "aspirations or objectives" rather than "rights," because current international law has not so far identified such rights as are claimed in the Draft Declaration. Despite the language of several major international legal instruments that identify "peoples" as the bearers of the right to "self-determination," State refutes any applicability of either term ("peoples" or "self-determination") to indigenous peoples - that is, unless "self-determination" is to be interpreted within a "domestic context" such as that which prevails in the United States for "the tribal governments of federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan native villages," for whom "self-determination" implies "self-government and autonomy over a broad range of issues." See " Commentary," op.cit.

6. Memorandum, dated 12 December 1995, to the Secretary of the Interior, concerning US "Activities related to the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples," from Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Ada Deer. That memo is supported by a "Communication Result Report," dated 27 November 1995, to Michael J. Dennis, of State's "Observer Delegation" to the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, and forwarded as a Memorandum, dated 28 November 1995, to Jamison Borek of the State Department, by Elizabeth Lohah Homer, Director of Interior's Office of American Indian Trust, commenting on the U.S.Government's position regarding the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

7. The State Department letter of invitation to "tribal leaders" to attend the "consultations" was dated 15 July 1996 and signed by Gare Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The Washington DC meeting was scheduled for 23 July (the following week!), giving the recipients little time to preparation" for the ensuing meeting of the UN Working Group, in Geneva, but the question that emerged was for whom the "preparation" was intended. The next "consultations" were held in Washington, DC, on 20 October 19 having been announced on 30 September by Timothy Wirth, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.

8. In an abjectly patronizing speech, dated 23 July 1996, Assistant Secretary of State for Global Affairs Timothy E. Wirth told his audience that "There is widespread agreement that this concept of self-governance is the most effective way in which your communities can not only preserve your cultures and heritage, but protect your rights and interests as well. In the United States, we are continuing to work toward the improvement and expansion of this concept. We recognize that there is still much that can and should be done for you and your nations. And we will continue to work to protect your rights and fundamental freedoms and to find solutions to the difficulties you may face... We must also be willing to share with the world our experiences so that other countries do not repeat mistakes we have made, and so that they may benefit from observing the positive steps we have taken in the United States. There is keen interest abroad in how the US policy of self-government federally-recognized Indian tribes works. And it is important for us to share this knowledge with others who may not yet share our commitments to promoting and protecting indigenous rights."

10. The alternative for individual complaints is to address the Working Group on Communications of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities through the ECOSOC "1503" procedure, which ultimately amounts to the same effect as the Optional Protocol procedure in the Human Rights Committee. The abused person's complaint is registered privately, and the state in question responds to the complaint privately, and that's the end of it. Neither option presents any remedial procedure.