On Friday November 20th, Land is Life’s Board Chair, Brian Keane, gave testimony to the U.S. Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s hearing on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Americas. Among other witnesses, Brian examined the human rights situation faced by Indigenous peoples in the region and offered important recommendations for congressional and executive branch policy and action.
In his intervention, Brian, a former Expert Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and the country’s first Advisor on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues for U.S. Foreign Assistance, told the Commission that the state of affairs for Indigenous peoples in the Americas and around the world is one of crisis. “Indigenous peoples are under assault. They are being forcibly evicted from their territories and deprived of their resources. Their livelihoods are being decimated. They are labelled, by governments, as terrorists for speaking up about the abuses their communities suffer; they are threatened, targeted for violence, assassinated.”
At least 30 million and up to 50 million Indigenous people live in Latin America and the Caribbean, suffering from widespread discrimination that is reflected in higher rates of poverty and reduced access to healthcare, education and other public services throughout the region. Although there is growing recognition of the contributions of Indigenous peoples to sustainable development, conservation and the management of climate change, extractive and other industries are provoking a growing number of environmental and social conflicts.
On this pressing issue, Brian stated that despite this pattern of assault, “Indigenous Peoples continue to contribute tremendously to global development, to global food security, and conflict resolution” and that they are “on the frontlines in efforts to protect forests and other critical ecosystems, to safeguard biological diversity, to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of global climate change.”
Further, he asked the incoming 117th Congress to work closely with the Biden/Harris Administration to take “bold and visionary actions” that are necessary to address this crisis, and to “put into practice the ideals expressed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”.
Brian made a set of practical recommendations to the incoming Administration and Congress aimed at enacting systemic change. He emphasized the essential role of Indigenous peoples in addressing the global environmental, economic and social crises the world is facing, stating – “Indigenous peoples are not simply passive recipients of development, they are active participants, with their own visions of what development looks like. Their traditional knowledge, their ways of living, and their land and resource management strategies are vital to building resilient societies, ensuring global food security and enhancing sustainable economies, and they should be engaged as partners – through their own social, political and legal institutions – in the development process.”
