UN Shadow Report on Natives in US
The International Indian Treaty Council will soon present the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination with a
document that reveals America’s legacy of systemic racism, forced
assimilation and apartheid of Indigenous Peoples.
The 87-page Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report,
which has been prepared with testimony from a number of individuals,
covers issues such as: environmental racism, border injustices, the
destruction of sacred places, violence against women, and most
tellingly, the “overwhelming disparities in income, life expectancy,
poverty and unemployment” in what can only be described as a system of
Apartheid and forced assimilation “where Indigenous people are
warehoused in poverty and neglect, their only option being to abandon
their lands, families, languages and cultures to search for a better
life.”
/snip
As stated in the Conclusion,
The United States perpetuates a constitutional and legal
system that legitimizes discriminatory practices towards Indigenous
Peoples by failing to protect their rights to property, religious
freedom and practice, despoiling spiritually significant areas, denying
Indigenous Peoples’ control and management of resources and
self-determination even on their own lands.
download the report in full:
Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report (pdf)
If you’re pressed for time, Brenda also put together a great overview of the report in
her article, US Apartheid of Indigenous Peoples documented in UN report
also see
Chertoff announced plans to force occupation of South Texas families
who refuse to allow the government access to their lands. See the story
in the Houston Chronical http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5357676.html
also learn about the
Shadow Wolves
In its January 2003 feature article
about the Shadow Wolves, Smithsonian Magazine described the unit as "possibly
the world's best trackers" using "time-honored techniques" to
pursue drug smugglers. The magazine reports that in a one-year stretch
between 2001 and 2002, the Shadow Wolves seized 46,000 kilos of illegal
drugs, nearly half of all the drugs intercepted by the Customs Service
in Arizona.