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30.1 (Spring 2006) Bridging the Gap Between Law and Reality

The Story of Ten Brothers and the Sea Lion

The following story is a Hul’qumi’num legend recorded by Ella Elizabeth Clark in 1960.

Speaking Out

The Maori Party formed in 2004 around Tariana Turia, a former Labor Party member and cabinet member, largely in response to the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. At the abbreviated hearings about the bill in November 2004, Turia gave an impassioned speech against the legislation. Excerpts from that speech appear below.

Review: The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America

The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America is a collection of seven separate country case studies and is the result of a 2003 conference at Cochabamba that discussed the diversity of indigenous struggles throughout the region. The subject countries are Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico.

Review: Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance

Sincerity and a willingness to travel literally and metaphysically to the farthest reaches of humanity define Bradford Keeney’s Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit Through Ecstatic Dance. Keeney’s work is a deeply personal story of one non-indigenous man’s spiritual exploration and maturation. It is marked by his willingness to make himself vulnerable to and participate in other cultures and belief systems.

Profits of Bloom: How indigenous people can save the world, and make money doing so

It is now an accepted fact that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are changing the global climate. Indeed, the climate may be changing with greater speed and intensity than scientists previously thought. The negative effects of climate change are most severe among the world’s poor, and indigenous people make up a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poorest people.

New Treaty, Same Old Problems

For most native peoples in Canada and the United States, treaty negotiations are the stuff of history—vital history to be sure, and a cruel history of lands stolen and promises breached. For the Hul’qumi’num Mustimuhw (Hul’qumi’num peoples) of British Columbia, however, the concept of a treaty is utterly contemporary, as they are now negotiating their first one with the Canadian government. Contemporary it may be, but history seems to be repeating itself: To judge by the government’s actions, it might as well be 1865.

Cultures Within Cultures: When laws ignore reality

When compared to the Americas, African practice on indigenous rights protection is unguided by law. This state of affairs is largely the result of Special Rapporteur Martínez-Cobo’s famous 1984 Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, which literally made all Africans indigenous, without any need for extra protection of any particular group. That mindset, which is shared by African leadership, long prevented any meaningful attempt at addressing the issues that specifically affect indigenous people in Africa.

An Imbalance of Powers: Maori Land Claims and an Unchecked Parliament

Aotearoa/New Zealand is not known for egregious breaches of indigenous peoples’ rights. Nonetheless, New Zealand’s legal system is ineffective at implementing international and domestic laws that protect the rights of Maori. This has been seen most starkly in the Foreshore and Seabed Act of 2004, which had the effect of extinguishing Maori aboriginal title to the foreshore and seabed areas and was passed despite almost universal Maori opposition.

The problem lies in the structure of the country’s legal system.

After the Verdict

Nicaragua is a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual nation. Internally it is divided into 16 departments, nine regions, and three special zones. In 1987, with the proclamation of a new political constitution and the approval of the Statute of Regional Autonomy of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, the eastern coast of the country (referred to in the legislation as the Atlantic coast, but on a map it would be labeled the Caribbean coast) was divided into two large autonomous regions, north and south.

A Snapshot of the Nu

There is scant literature in English about the Nu people of China, but the mention of poison arrows and the Nus’ odd way of cutting notches in sticks to mark significant events made me curious about them. According to English-language accounts, the Nu have one of the smallest populations among the minorities of China—only 27,000 people, almost all of whom live in the steep mountains drained by the turbulent Nu River. The Chinese character “Nu” means furious, wild, angry.

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