Professor Angela Riley from UCLA Law School published an op/ed article in today’s New York Times about the impact of the Twilight movie phenomenon on the Quileute Nation and its one square mile reservation in remote La Push, Washington.

Riley writes: “To millions of “Twilight” fans, the Quileute are Indians whose (fictional) ancient treaty transforms young males of the tribe into vampire-fighting wolves. To the nearly 700 remaining Quileute Indians, “Twilight” is the reason they are suddenly drawing extraordinary attention from the outside world.”

A coalition of First Nations tribes have taken their human rights complaints against Canada to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights where the country will be required to defend itself.

The Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group has successfully petitioned the Inter-American Commission, an arm of the Organization of American States, to hear its case that Canada continues to violate the human rights of the aboriginal peoples whose territories – some 750,000 acres on Vancouver Island – were illegally confiscated and privatized by Canada in the 19th century.

The treaty group is seeking compensation for the dispossession of their aboriginal lands.

The Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group is a political organization representing more than 6,600 First Nations people in British Columbia, including citizens of the Chemainus First Nation, Cowichan Tribes, Halalt First Nation, Lake Cowichan First Nation, Lyackson First Nation and Penelakut Tribe.

The Group filed its human rights complaint with the Commission in 2007, arguing that Hul’qumi’num human rights to property and culture are being violated and ignored by Canada’s failure to resolve the First Nations’ land claims.

The complaint specifically cites violations of Articles II, III, XIII and XXIII of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.

I will be speaking in Australia

March 2, at 6 p.m. at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane

and on March 5, at 1 p.m. at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Here is more information about my talks -

England explored and colonized the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada under the authority of an international law called the Doctrine of Discovery. Europeans justified their sovereign and property claims over Indigenous Peoples and their lands all around the world with the Discovery Doctrine.

This legal principle was rationalized by religious and ethnocentric ideas of European and Christian superiority over the other cultures, religions, and races of the world. The Doctrine provided that newly-arrived Europeans automatically acquired property rights in the lands of Indigenous Peoples and gained political and commercial rights over the Indigenous inhabitants. The United States Supreme Court expressly adopted Discovery in 1823 in the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh and American, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand governments and courts have cited and relied on that case and Discovery to try to control Indigenous Peoples.

Australia and the United States did not apply the elements of Discovery in the exact same manner or at the exact same time periods; but the similarities of their use of Discovery are striking and not the least bit surprising since the Doctrine was English colonial law. Viewing Australian and American history and law in light of the Doctrine of Discovery helps to expand the knowledge and understanding of both countries and their attempts to colonize Indigenous Peoples.

Miller has taught and practiced American Indian law since 1993. He is the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals for the Grand Ronde Tribe. Bob has published numerous writings on Indian law issues and has spoken at federal, state, and private conferences in more than thirty states and in England, Canada, and Australia. His first book, Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny, was published in 2006. He has finished the first draft of a book on American Indian economic development and just finished another book on Discovery with Indigenous scholars from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. He is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

The press reports that the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake has given a group of 25 white people that are living on the Mohawk Indian reservation near Montreal 10 days to move away. Most of the non-natives are in relationships with Mohawks.

The band has forbidden mixed marriages since 1981 with the goal of preserving native bloodlines.

“We’re very concerned about protecting our identity because at a certain point, the Canadian government will look at us and say: ‘You’re not even Indians,’” a tribal spokesman said.

The reservation is home to some 7,500 Mohawks.

An opinion piece in a Mississippi newspaper assessed the legacy of the former chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Phillip Martin.

The facts the author relates about the tribe are very interesting and illustrative of most tribes in the United States.

According to University of Oklahoma historian Arrell M. Gibson, in “A History of Mississippi,” at the time that Europeans arrived in Mississippi in about 1540 there were about 20,000 citizens of the Choctaw tribe but by 1900 they had dwindled to about 2,000. Today, there are 9,660 Mississippi Choctaws.

Historian Gibson also outlines the “dimunition of the Choctaw estate in Mississippi” as beginning in 1801, when a series of treaties resulted in the taking by the U.S. government of over 25 million acres of land from the Choctaws. Today, the Choctaws own about 35,000 acres of tribal lands.

The Choctaws were left to subsist on reservation lands with poverty, joblessness, and illiteracy as their constant companions. Schools were poor, health care was scant.

The opinion author states that under Martin’s leadership, the tribe launched numerous business endeavors and by 2001, the tribe’s nine manufacturing enterprises and a construction company and a casino were generating over $172.6 million in wages and over $4.8 million in state income taxes and providing some 7,000 jobs – more than half of which were held by non-Indians.

A study by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development indicated that Choctaw unemployment had dropped from 75 percent in 1979 to 4 percent in 2001.

Chief Martin preached Choctaw “self-determination” all of his life – the notion that his tribe should determine their own fate rather than await government largesse on the reservation. That’s his greatest legacy.

In my opinion that’s great advice for every American Indian nation.

The Associated Press reports on the advice an expert is giving tribes about gang activities and teen suicides on Indian reservations.

First, according to Christopher Cuestas, a national gang expert, the problems need to be addressed jointly because there is a strong connection between the two issue.

Cuestas said that once a gang emerges in a community, the group establishes itself by recruiting and indoctrinating members and the gang will adapt itself to the community’s risk factors, which for Indian reservations include drugs, alcohol, poverty and unemployment, all issues that are linked to teen suicide.

As part of the conference Cuestas spoke at, John Mousseau, an Oglala Sioux tribal council member, said one of the biggest problems tribes face is a lack of resources. He is the former police chief on the Pine Ridge reservation and points out that the department’s 40 officers are charged with keeping about 40,000 residents safe across a reservation that is about the same size as Rhode Island.

Cuestas encouraged tribes to make an honest assessment of gang activity on their reservations, identify the risk factors and use innovative and collaborative approaches to combat them.

It is no surprise to most people that the Indigenous Peoples of the world paid a heavy price at the hands of conquest and colonization by other countries and cultures.

In January 2010, the United Nations released The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. This report shows that the cost of colonization continues to the modern–day. According to the U.N., the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples suffer from disproportionate and often exponentially higher rates of poverty, health problems, crime, and human rights abuses.

This is the first ever United Nations study on this issue. The report’s conclusion stressed that protecting self-determination and land rights are vital for the survival of Indigenous Peoples.

Some of the startling figures contained in the report include:
· In the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62% more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

· In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than non-natives. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11.

Every day, indigenous communities all over the world face issues of violence and brutality, continuing assimilation policies, dispossession of land, marginalization, forced removal or relocation, denial of land rights, impacts of large-scale development, abuses by military forces and a host of other abuses,” the report’s authors say.

The study repeatedly identifies displacement from lands, territories and resources as one of the most significant threats for indigenous peoples, citing many examples, including Hawaii, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Colombia.

I will be speaking at several events in the near future.

I will talk about the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and American history and law

Feb. 9 at Lewis & Clark College in the Memory Lecture Series – at 6 pm on Feb. 9, 102 JR Howard Hall

February 11, 2010 at the University of Kansas Law School

February 18, at the Douglas County Oregon Historical Museum

March 2 at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane Australia

March 5 at the University of Technology in Sydney Australia

Perhaps I will be speaking March 10-23 at events in Chile

April 6, Troutdale Oregon at a book club meeting

April 8, at Reed College in Portland Oregon

April 15, at the WSSA conference in Reno Nevada

May 8, Crescent City, CA at a Teaching America conference

I will speak about Indian economic development issues

March 26, 2010 at a tribal economic development conference at the University of Idaho Law School in Moscow Idaho.

I will speak about cultural preservation issues at an American Philosophical Society conference in Philadelphia May 20-21.

I will speak about tribal constitutional issues at the Native American scholars conference in Tucson Arizona May 22.

The Tribal Council of the Navajo Nation just authorized the top lawyer for the Nation’s legislative branch the power to issue opinions, contract with outside attorneys, and enforce election codes.

The Council voted 67-6 in favor of a bill this week that grants powers to the legislative counsel that had been reserved for the attorney general in legislative branch matters.

Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. has 10 days to veto or approve the measure once it reaches his desk.

The bill’s sponsor contended that the Nation’s current attorney general is biased toward the council and that a legislative counsel would better represent lawmakers.

Other lawmakers questioned how conflicts created when dueling opinions are issued would be resolved.
The council wraps up its winter session Friday.

This new development may be part of the recent reorganization of the Tribal Council advocated by the Nation’s President to lessen the number of Tribal Council members.

A Canadian newspaper, The Dominion, reports on growing evidence that diabetes, especially among Indigenous people, may be linked to environmental pollutants, according to U.S. and Canadian research.

One-out-of-four indigenous adults living on reserves in Canada have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

According to the paper, more than a dozen published studies show a diabetes link to persistent organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, or dioxins and synthetic pesticides such as DDT.

Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory says there are 212 indigenous communities in Canada living near or downstream from pulp mills and other facilities that produce dioxins and furans.

In 2006, Dr. Dae-Hee Lee and colleagues found people with the highest rate of exposure to persistent organic pollutants were roughly 38 times more likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest rate of exposure. However, people who were obese but did not have high levels of persistent organic pollutants were not at an increased risk to develop diabetes.