Human Rights and Social Justice Conference
Use UN to shame Canada, natives told
Body offers platform to push for human rights
Reprinted from the Winnipeg Free Press
Sat Feb 24 2007
By Nick Martin
INDIGENOUS people should use the United Nations to shame Canada into practising human rights at home, the University of Winnipeg's Global College conference on Social Justice and Human Rights heard Friday.
"The UN system offers a platform to shame Canada... given Canada's leadership in promoting human rights in other places," said Celeste McKay, a lawyer with the Native Women's Association of Canada and a University of Manitoba social work graduate.
The Winnipeg Free Press is a major sponsor of the conference, which continues through Sunday.
Friday's keynote speaker was Paul Meyer, Canada's ambassador to the recently created UN Council on Human Rights, but moments after he spoke four Canadian native activists denounced Canada's own record in practising human rights at home.
Journalist Kenneth Deer said that Canada and Russia voted against the UN's proposed declaration on indigenous rights: "Canada is not always our friend. At this time, we're in an adversarial position with Canada internationally."
McKay said the UN has groups specifically monitoring treaties around the world. "It offers a place where indigenous peoples can go, when all domestic avenues have failed," said McKay.
The rights of indigenous people, children, women and other minorities are "all bundled up in the same blanket," Corntassel said.
"I've seen this, where we're too compartmentalized for our own good," he said.
U of W Prof. Jacqueline Romanow-Bear, who also teaches aboriginal governance, compared the Awas Tingni indigenous people in Nicaragua with the Lubicon Lake Cree in northern Alberta -- both made international appeals after their own courts rejected their territorial claims against oil and timber development on their lands.
But nothing happened, Romanow-Bear said: "There is really nothing the system can do but issue reports and recommendations. If the state is unresponsive, the state is unresponsive."
Meyer said that Africa and Asia have 26 of the 47 seats on the new council, and that it is an uphill battle for Canada to achieve greater acceptance of human rights.
Having principles of human rights is fine, said Meyer. "The real challenge is to get countries to implement them. We have a long way to go."
The Middle East is the most divisive issue the UN faces, he said. Within weeks of the council's formation, Arab countries denounced Israel and within the text of filing a complaint also found Israel guilty of human rights violations against Lebanon. "So much for due process," he said.
But, Deer said at a conference workshop, "internationally, Canada has this altar boy image, and they cultivate that.
"It's one big monolith when you have the government, the media, the institutions in this country. It's so ingrained that people can't even see when they're being discriminatory against native people," he said.
Deer said that the Six Nations went before the League of Nations in Geneva in 1924 to protest Canada's treatment of native people. In retaliation, the federal government shut down the Six Nations' longhouse and held new band elections, he said.
"The message Canada had for us was don't do anything internationally, we will punish you," he said.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca