Indigenous Nationhood movement goes online
Indigenous Nationhood movement goes online
Posted: Nov 05, 2013
The Indigenous Nationhood Movement wants to promote "indigenous self-determination and autonomous nationhood."
A new website is calling for Aboriginal nations to move away from the Indian Act and towards autonomy and traditional governments.
Siku Allooloo is part Haitian, part Inuk, and now living in New York. She was part of a group of Native and non-Native people that drafted principles for the Indigenous Nationhood movement that were released this morning.
"To be able to see how far and wide the movement stretches, I find it affirming," Allooloo says. "When you can see the amount of collective support... and that's what I hope people get out of this site."
Allooloo says the website will act as a central platform to house their statement of principles explaining who they are and what they stand for, and be a place for the public to get information about future actions and campaigns.
She says one of the main challenges Indigenous people face is a skewed representation in the public, in government policies and in text books. She hopes this website will help balance that by giving indigenous people more control over how they're represented and by building solidarity with many people across different regions.
Glen Coulthard is a Weledeh Dene, and an assistant professor in the First Nations Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He says this movement is something Northerners can learn from and be a part of.
It's a place where people can re-learn "traditional land-based forms of knowledge," he says. "And start thinking about alternatives to the dominant economic model in the NWT."
Coulthard is one of many people who plan to publish articles on the site, on topics like capitalism and Indigenous traditions.
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Greenland unanimously adopts indigenous peoples conference document
Vote intended to send a "clear and strong message" to the world
CULTURESara Olsvig submitted the proposal that Greenland's parliament adopt the Alta document (Photo: Lieff Josefsen)
November 7, 2013 - 8:00am - By The Arctic Journal
Greenland's parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to actively promote and support the final document released from an indigenous people's conference held last June in the Sami town of Alta, Norway. The conference was the indigenous people's own preparatory gathering in advance of the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples scheduled for New York in September, 2014.
The proposal to support the findings in the document was submitted to parliament by MP Sara Olsvig. She said that the unanimous support for the proposal sent a clear and strong message to the world that Greenland is still engaged in promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.
"I am very pleased that all parties in Greenland's parliament supported my proposal for a special effort from Greenland to promote the final Alta document," she said. "I hope that it will inspire other parliaments and countries to officially announce their support for the document."
Looking ahead to 2014
The document was integral part of the upcoming World Conference.
The Alta document contains four main topics that indigenous people would like to become the main topics at the World Conference.
UN World Conferences are mainly gatherings of the UN member states, but people from around the world have been working actively to ensure a strong representation at the meeting by indigenous groups each of the six inhabited continents.
"A lot of the work leading up to the World Conference is to ensure that indigenous people participate fully in the conference and that the issues that they choose and feel are important are the main topics discussed," said Olsvig.
Some of the main points covered in the Alta final document deal with implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and that there are regionally and internationally established monitoring mechanisms in place to ensure the rights of indigenous people.
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