This past Thursday and Friday, the McGill Institute for the Study of International Development held an international conference titled “The Challenge of Respecting Indigenous People’s Rights: Comparing Experiences from Africa, Latin America and North America.” Prominent activists, scholars, and social workers from around the world gathered to discuss the problems currently faced by indigenous people, to raise awareness of the issues at hand, and to work on discovering the best solutions.

In his opening address, political science professor Philip Oxhorn, one of the event’s key organizers, laid out the goals of the conference.

“One is to establish a more dynamic dialogue between those directly involved in the matters relating to the indigenous people’s rights and university researchers, who might make more positive contributions to solving the challenges that we all face,” he said. “[The other is] to establish a platform that allows us to compare and understand the relative successes and continuing shortcomings so that we can develop better policies and better practices for the future.”

Ronald Niezen, Canada Research Chair in the comparative study of indigenous rights and identity, noted that “throughout this conference, every speech revolved around the issue of centuries of research and advocacy for indigenous rights.”

Robert Watts, the vice president and senior partner of First Peoples Group, illustrated the lack of care given to indigenous people in Canada with the story of his nephew, an indigenous teenager who recently dropped out of school. With regret, he told the audience that if more attention were paid to indigenous youth, “maybe [his] learning disability would have been discovered at the time and some help would have been given.”

In her keynote speech, Dr. Natividad Gutierrez Chong, from the Social Research Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, described the difficulties of finding a middle ground between the economic interests of governments and corporations with extractive interests and the rights of indigenous peoples.

“What states like is the status quo. They don’t want things to change, and the [Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People] is a threat to that. [Indigenous people] would have rights to control their land, rights to control their natural resources, rights to free, prior, and informed consent,” she said. “All of them are resisted by the government, and those are very important rights that can make change, and make the indigenous people’s lives better.”

In a panel titled “Achievements and Pending Challenges after the Passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,” panelists discussed improvements in rights of indigenous people in the past few decades, focusing on the UN’s 2007 declaration supporting indigenous rights.  The speakers also noted that the government of Canada has implemented departments dealing specifically with indigenous affairs, which increases funding and programs to help indigenous people escape the vicious cycle of poverty. They noted that this trend of funding programs has yet to take place in developing nations of Africa—such as the Democratic Republic of Congo or Botswana—or South America—like Argentina or Bolivia—where minimal progress is made despite the problems at hand.

Ultimately, the speakers expressed hope for positive change and advances towards the care of indigenous rights. According to Gutierrez Chong, change is possible with commitment from all sectors of society.

“As these standards, like free, prior, and informed consent, become used in practice [and] as people recognize how to assert them and companies recognize there are protocols they have to adhere to, there’s going to be a different level of treatment of indigenous people,” she said.  

When an audience member asked what role he could play as an “outsider to the struggle of indigenous rights,” Cree lawyer and Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada  member, Willie Littlechild, responded.

“The best way for you to help us is to cooperate with us by being aware of the problems at hand and voicing your concerns to the government,” he said.