Applicability of the UD to Indigenous Peoples

It is interesting to note that in the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, the preamble clearly states: "Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights, and fundamental freedomà" (UD 2) The immediate problem, within the United States, is that for some reason much of this idea of dignity and fundamental freedom does not seem to apply to Native Americans. It is important to identify what many people called "Indians" as Native Americans, since they were here long before the pilgrims and the conquistadors arrived on this continent. However, as some of the readings point out, the problem is land. "Land has always been the issue central to North American politics and economicsà.Within North America, American Indian reservations

àconstitute a small but crucial æpiece of the rock'" (LaDuke, 1996, p. 147). The interest of the American power elite, therefore, is not in the people now herded onto reservations, but on the valuable minerals, petroleum, and water, that lies beneath their lands.

It seems that the conditions in which the Bureau of Indian Affairs has left the indigenous peoples of North America is a clear violation of the principles enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, simply because these "rights" seem to be ignored in favor of mineral and water and gas and oil rights. W