UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

“Today, the United States government at last officially endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and joined the international community in recognizing that American Indians and other indigenous peoples have a permanent right to exist as peoples, nations, cultures, and societies.” [….]

For the rest of this article by Robert T. Coulter, see this post, UN Declaration Sets New Agenda for US-Indian Relations, at Turtle Talk.

Coulter is the “founder and executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C., has practiced Indian and human rights law for more than 30 years.”

For more commentary, see this page at the Indian Law Resource Center.

For the text of the Declaration, see here.

For the Wikipedia entry on the Declaration, see here.

A few titles under the rubric of relevant scholarly literature:

• Anaya, S. James. Indigenous Peoples in International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2004.
• Ivison, Duncan, Paul Patton and Will Sanders, eds. Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Keal, Paul. European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• McHugh, Paul G. Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law: A History of Sovereignty, Status, and Self-Determination. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Thornberry, Patrick. Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights. Huntington, NY: Juris, 2002.
  
  See too the chapters that make up Part Three, “Self-Determination,” especially the chapter on “Intrastate Autonomy,” in Allen Buchanan’s very important book, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  
  Image: A Bedouin man and camel in Negev

[cross-posted at ReligiousLeftLaw.com]