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United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
Fourteenth Session; New York, 20 April - 1 May 2015
Item 5: Half-day discussion on the expert group meeting on the theme “Dialogue on an optional protocol to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)”; 28 April 2015

Statement by made by India Reed Bowers for International Organization for Self-Determination and Equality (IOSDE)

"IOSDE is concerned that over the many years of submissions and interventions at the UNPFII from Indigenous Peoples concerning mass atrocities against their Peoples, families and communities and thus humanity through State- and business-initiated torture, murder, militarization, criminalization and systematic devastation the Permanent Forum and UN system still refer to such horrors as human rights violations only. The concern is that Indigenous victims’ submissions are not being outwardly identified as reporting atrocities also in the context of international crimes and violations of international criminal law from a legal and/or victim-based advocacy  perspective and analysis...

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IOSDE welcomes the initiative of the Permanent Forum to have sent the WCIP follow-up questionnaire to UN agencies as a way to create dialogue with said agencies on follow-up to, in general, implementation of Indigenous Rights. IOSDE also gratefully welcomes the transparency and willingness of the Office of the Prevention of Genocide to have completed such a questionnaire. However, upon reviewing the Office of Genocide’s responses, it is clear that the Office of the Prevention of Genocide must not only urgently and drastically build its capacity to immediately and thoroughly analyze the situations of Indigenous Peoples around the world collectively and per-peoples in the context of genocide. It is also clear to all of us who have been in this movement for decades living and breathing the struggle that such an analysis needs to happen both in accordance with current international criminal law, including restorative justice, and the testimonials of the victims themselves, including within the context of testimonials concerning cultural genocide and statements delivered at the UN at mechanisms such as the Permanent Forum, which, essentially, could have been, say, a tribunal, including in the form of restorative justice, concerning the crimes of humanity and genocide occurring against Indigenous Peoples...

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IOSDE welcomes and further recommends the submission given to the forum by the UN agency the IDLO, concerning development within UN of rule of law, speaking of informal and legal justice systems of Indigenous Peoples working on the ground and incorporating Indigenous justice systems. IOSDE recommends the Forum firmly engage the Trusteeship Council (via ECOSOC), in the context of Indigenous Peoples rights to decolonization and self-determination, and Office of the Prevention of Genocide in incorporating Indigenous voice and analysis of the world-wide Indigenous situation, with a particular eye to the protection of traditional Indigenous religions, healing, lands and leadership as well as human life security itself and living culture in these regards.

IOSDE recommends the Forum members and additional persons with an eye for criminal law as well as spiritual and traditional elders and leaders focus together on the massive database of victims testimonials in what is called the UNPFII Papersmart and UN archives, and processes these testimonials with the seriousness that they deserve with an eye to both criminal and human rights law, empowering the content and contributors of the statements themselves rather treating them as means to dialogues and thus money flow and empowerment for a few universities, states or designated experts.

In the spirit of the UNDRIP and participating in the ending of cultural genocide, IOSDE recommends the Forum also ask Indigenous community-based spiritual leaders and elders how to develop the UN system, and not  just those who attend these sessions or have UN access, and allow those leaders to be deemed experts and governance if they are such in their communities and amongst their Peoples.

IOSDE also recommends, in the spirit of the UNDRIP, that UN positions concerning Indigenous Peoples are effective and inclusive in prioritizing the voice and complaints of the Peoples themselves as well as their due space in space and time at the UN, and undergo processes of selection that are fair, transparent and open, maintaining also representation from spiritual leaders and elders who hold the sacred goals this movement was  built upon and professes. In this way, perhaps even the UN can itself not participate in the cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including cultures of traditional Indigenous values and religions."

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United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
Fourteenth Session; New York, 20 April - 1 May 2015
Item 3(c) (continued): Youth, Self-Harm and Suicide; 21 April 2015

Joint Statement by International Organization for Self-Determination and Equality (IOSDE), Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples

"We are concerned about the effects on Indigenous youth and children of the ongoing suicide, self-harm and violence resulting from the desecration and destruction of Indigenous sacred sites and thus traditional political, legal, and medicinal practices that Indigenous youth and children flourish from and have right to live with in peace and dignity as living culture. Along these same lines we are concerned about the effects on Indigenous youth and children of unresolved claims to the right of self-determination and decolonization, including territorial and political independence and sovereignty, and the lack of recognition of peoples as legal, self-governing peoples and nations equal to States.

For Indigenous youth to have access to their cultures as per international law, the territorial integrity of indigenous lands and in particular sacred sites must be recognized alongside Indigenous self-governance and legal traditions therein. Indigenous youth amazingly and brilliantly but unfairly shoulder burdens of structural inequalities and injustices against traditional Indigenous leaderships and legal processes. To force Indigenous children and youth to live amidst the oppressing of their own cultural systems and traditions as well as the destruction of their familial and communal sacred places and practices is to spiritually and culturally displace them. We want peaceful lives for Indigenous youth and children, where they do not feel they must go to battle for even our most basic fundamental rights, but where they can enjoy, share and experience those rights in action, such as rights including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Article 30 as also referenced in the UNDRIP Preamble.

Self-harm is not the only form of violence Indigenous youth face; the disappearance of youth in the face of State and business land-grabbing, dividing of peoples by imposed borders and laws, discrimination and systematic terrorizing and criminalization of Indigenous communities are also harms and violence to Indigenous youth. We do not want yet another generation of Indigenous youth and children to grow up in a world where their own tribe’s and people’s Indigenous cultural, spiritual, political and legal traditions are strategically placed in conflict and or manufactured submissiveness and/or dependence with the traditions and systems of colonizing or managing State(s)...

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We recommend that Indigenous youth be supported by the UN and its bodies and mechanisms to create their own study on and exploration into the ways in which all of the many diverse Indigenous Peoples of the world have worked for and achieve self-determination, political, legal and territorial decolonization, and the continuation of traditional Indigenous healing, leadership and own Indigenous justice processes via  protection of own sacred places."