Treaty activist tackles human rights at U.N.

By Jomay Steen, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, March 13, 2005

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RAPID CITY — A Rapid City woman has embarked on a journey to the United Nations as an advocate of human rights for indigenous people worldwide.

Charmaine White Face, 58, left Saturday for Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a delegation for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council lobbying for the ratification of the Draft Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

At the U.N. meeting, White Face will meet with representatives on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights including Louise Arbour, high commissioner for human rights.

"It's a special meeting," White Face said.

If the draft declaration is ratified, White Face said indigenous people would be protected from forced assimilation by dominant societies.

"It's long overdue, especially when considering we have been debating human rights for 20 years," White Face said.

If approved by the Commission on Human Rights on April 11, the draft would advance to the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council and eventually for approval by the General Assembly.

With the General Assembly's approval, indigenous children would have the right to all levels and forms of education of the state, White Face said. Indigenous people would also be able to teach in their own languages, using cultural methods of teaching and learning. Children living outside their communities would have the right to learn their culture and languages, White Face said.

"It will start the reversal of forced assimilation," she said.

White Face said indigenous people in South America, Central America, Africa and Asia currently are losing their homelands, religious practices, languages and cultures to other political regimes that force them out of their homelands by fear or violence.

The declaration would grant the most basic of human rights, she said.

"The sad part is that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed in 1948," she said.

Ten years ago, the human-rights policy was approved by the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the Sub-Commission on Promotions and Protection of Human Rights. The Commission on Human Rights did not ratify the draft, which was then sent to the Working Group on Draft Declaration, White Face said.

"It got stuck because a small group of powerful nations, including the United States and Canada, didn't want it passed," White Face said.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com.