Some Citizens are More Equal than Others

Canada has joined the US, Australia, and New Zealand in voting against a UN Resolution on the Rights of Indigenous People. There is of course a hue and cry, about Canada voting against human rights.

Right. When you see the US, Australia, and New Zealand together on one side of an issue, and Saudi Arabia, Cuba, China, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Russia—all current members of the UN Council on Human Rights—on the other, who is more likely to be defending human rights?

To put it in the most charitable light possible, the proposed charter—now an official UN resolution—is self-contradictory. It requires that indigenous people be treated as equal to all others (Article 2), then immediately contradicts this by giving indigenous peoples a wide range of rights not available to other citizens.

Governments are obliged, for example, to protect indigenous groups from “any action”—not any _government_ action, but any action by anybody—with the “aim or effect” of depriving the aboriginals of their “ethnic identities” or “cultural values.”

Apparently, if an aboriginal person fails to think like all other aboriginal people, a crime has been committed—perhaps by that aboriginal, but certainly by the nearest non-aboriginal. What values one may choose or not choose to hold, as an indigene, are strictly limited. If an evangelist convinces an Indian to convert to a new religion, for example, isn’t he depriving him of some element of his ethnic identity? Many already argue strongly that he is—see the furor about religious residential schools in Canada.

What about a converted aboriginal who manages to convert a second aboriginal? Has he committed a crime? Or is this crime only possible for non-aboriginal persons? How about a teacher who teaches them to read and write? Or even how to use a wheel? None of these are present in traditional Canadian Indian culture. Has a crime been committed?

Indigenous people also now have the right to “practice and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs,” specifically including their “religious and spiritual traditions.” Governments may not interfere.

Okay; but what if their cultural traditions involve a violation of the human rights of others? What if they traditionally practice, say, human sacrifice, or cannibalism, or slavery, or polygamy, or the exposure of unwanted grandparents, or the need to kill another adult human in order to be recognized as a full member of the community? In the past, indigenous groups in Canada did all of these things. It would seem this is now their inalienable right as aboriginals.

Even if this is okay, can the rest of us do the same?

Canada objected in particular to the requirement that no law be passed affecting indigenous people without their prior consent, through their own institutions.

And Canada should know.

Canadian aboriginals are not just one people. They are as different from one another as Scots, Hungarians, and Mauritanians. There are over 600 recognized native governments in Canada. Now, remember how hard it was to get the consent of ten different provinces in order to amend the constitution? Multiply this by 60—and to pass any law.

Now apply the principle to other groups, as equality demands: one would need the consent of all organized groups in Canada in order to pass any law. In effect, any legislation would have to pass unanimously. Pass a law against picking pockets? Not if the pickpockets’ union objected.

Aboriginals are also apparently entitled, as a matter of “equality,” to “special measures” to improve their economic and social conditions.

If this is not special treatment, what meaning is left in the term? And what can “special measures” mean—given that all honest governments, as a matter of course, already seek to improve the economic and social conditions of all citizens as much as they can? Doesn’t it necessarily mean taking money, resources, jobs, and opportunities from other citizens and giving it to aboriginals? Whatever you might want to call this, “equality” is not the right word. This is actually about how Hitler started out with the Jews—partly on the basis that the Aryans were the indigenous people, the natives, and the Jews were foreign colonizers.

Another article in the resolution grants aboriginals the right to “conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands… and resources. States shall establish and implement assistance programmes for indigenous people for such conservation.”

This is an odd right—it looks like a “right” never to fail. Wish we all had that. Given that the indigenes already hold their own lands and resources, who is it but they themselves who could possibly be depleting the productive capacity of their lands and resources? Aboriginals are guaranteed bailouts by the rest of us if they destroy their own property. A non-aboriginal, on the other hand, might instead be charged with arson, or fined for pollution.

Indigenes are also granted “intellectual property” rights over their “cultural heritage.” This “cultural heritage” includes their “genetic resources.”

This implies that aboriginals are personally responsible for their own genetic makeup as well as their entire culture. Do all Italians collect a royalty whenever anyone uses Italian DNA, or views the Mona Lisa? And, if we are really going to hold aboriginals responsible for their own genetic makeup, aren’t we opening a door to a rather unfortunate possibility? That they can just as readily be blamed and punished as rewarded for it?

The resolution also reserves the right of traditional governments not only to select their own membership (Article 33), but also to “determine the responsibilities of individuals to their communities” (Article 35).

Literally, this means any individual can be declared by any aboriginal government to be their rightful subject. Once so designated, they can be legally forced to do whatever that government chooses. And there is no escape.

There is a word for that, when done by non-aboriginals.

The word is slavery.

There are other practical problems. In demanding such special treatment for a special group designated “indigenous,” the UN resolution neglects to define what they mean by the term “indigenous.” It is, after all merely a “social construct,” indeed, a polite fiction. With one hypothetical exception, no country really has an indigenous population. All peoples started out somewhere else; nobody has sprung from the earth where they stand. Conversely, all nations have previous inhabitants, and in those in which they have not been massacred wholesale, most still retain populations of them.

There is, apparently, a reason for this, and it is the obvious one; it is not merely an oversight. No UN body has ever been able to agree on a definition.

This alone makes the entire resolution frighteningly arbitrary—any government is free to enforce or not enforce it to the benefit or detriment of any group, ensuring unequal protection from the law.

It is, in sum, an instrument of tyranny.