Attorney and activist Robert Coulter spoke last Wednesday as a part of the University of Arizona’s Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Scholar Series, sponsored by the American Indian Studies Department. Coulter has spent the past 35 years advocating for Native American rights and played a key role in the writing and passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In an impassioned speech, Coulter spoke of some of the challenges that Indian nations continue to face. “We are still suffering under a legal framework that is discriminatory, unconstitutional, irrational, and inconsistent,” he said.
Coulter added that the laws that govern Indian nations today are “analogous to Jim Crow laws and the Separate but Equal doctrine” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Coulter chronicled his years advocating for the passage of the UN Declaration, which spanned several decades until its adoption by the UN in September 2007. He argued that, despite complaints about the Declaration’s inefficacy when it comes to enforcement, the document is powerful in its ability to be persuasive. The Declaration establishes a moral code and international norms for understanding “what the countries of the world agree is right.” However, he went on to say that he doesn’t believe the Declaration to be “anything more than influential.” In other words, it should inform the laws and policies of the U.S. and other nations, but is only a starting point for legal practice and governmental policy.
In an effort to help translate the codes set forth in the UN Declaration into U.S. law, Coulter and the Indian Law Resource Center, with support from the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, issued the Draft General Principles of Law as they relate to Native lands and natural resources. The 17 Principles are written both in technical and non-technical language to make them accessible to a broad readership. The non-technical version of the first five principles follow:
Principle 1
Native nations have complete ownership of their aboriginal lands – not some limited or partial right.
Principle 2
“Discovery” did not give the discovering country any ownership of Native lands. It only gave the discovering country the exclusive right to buy land from the Native owners.
Principle 3
Legal rules that deny, take away, or reduce ownership of their lands and resources are invalid, because they violate the United States Constitution.
Principle 4
Native lands of all kinds are protected against taking and other harm by the government – just the same as all property is protected. And, in addition, some Native land is protected by other legal rules that have been created by specific treaties, acts of Congress, or common law. In other words, Native lands and resources have at least as much legal protection against taking or other harm as other lands, and sometimes will have additional legal protections as well.
Principle 5
Congress cannot take any Native lands or resources, including aboriginal title lands, unless it is done with fair compensation, for a public purpose, and in accordance with the law.
Read the remaining principles here.
Coulter concluded his talk by encouraging collaborations between scholars and tribal communities as a way to make sure tribal concerns and needs are firmly established and accessible to policymakers through publications and other public discourse. “We need more consultation and discussion with Indian leaders,” he said. “We also need more scholarship on principles like these or new principles.”
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Robert T. Coulter is an attorney who practices in the fields of Indian law and international human rights. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Montana and Washington, DC. The Center provides legal assistance for indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
Tags: land rights, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
