The Law of Exceptions
Open
Letter to the Ministers of State
and the
Public Societies of Canada-US-Mexico
NAFTA and
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
October 27, 2011
Greetings. Today the
ancient arc of pilgrimage of the Nations and Pueblos of the Indigenous Peoples
of Anahuac, Turtle Island and Abya Yala [the Americas] purposefully intersects
once more with the trajectory of the government states whom you represent on
our continent. Today the traditional representatives
of the Wixarika Nation bring the case of the Defense of Wirikuta, sacred heart of Mexico, to the
fore of the national, international and global agenda of discussions on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Rights of Mother Earth.
As Nican Tlacah, we are on a pilgrimage of purpose to generate the
collective understanding necessary among all human society for the sacredness
of life itself to be lived, to be celebrated, and to be protected in the
homelands and sacred shrines of the Indigenous Peoples.
Today in Mexico City, and at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico
a petition demanding respect and protection for the sacred sites of the
Wirikuta is being delivered to the Mexican and Canadian governments. We here-now,
Nican Tlacah
Izkalotecah,
extend our solidarity and commitment to rectify the historical and social
injustices that have created the immoral and illegal complicity among corporate
interests and government officials who should be defending the common good and
not acting as agents of corporate profits.
Context
Within the provisions of the 1994
North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among your governments, each
nation-state reserved the right to deny investors rights or preferences
provided to “aboriginal peoples”, “socially or economically disadvantaged
minorities”, or “socially or economically disadvantaged groups” in from two to
five designated areas. These provisions
of exception are cited in Annex II, as follows:
· “Canada
reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure denying investors of
another Party and their investments, or service providers of another Party, any
rights or preferences provided to aboriginal peoples,”
· “The
United States reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure according
rights or preferences to socially or economically disadvantaged minorities,
including corporations organized under the laws of the State of Alaska in
accordance with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,”
· “Mexico
reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure according rights or
preferences to socially or economically disadvantaged groups,”
In reference to these
provisions of exception of NAFTA,
professor Valerie J. Phillips correctly stated, “All three nation-states
remembered indigenous peoples, but only long enough to put them in their place.
All of these exemptions simply continue the ongoing nation-state subordination
and marginalization of indigenous peoples.”
The terms subordination and
marginalization are only the skin of the beast.
The actual process which has been ongoing since October 12, 1492 is
genocide and colonialism, implemented via trade agreements and economic
development policies that favor the process of colonization by European American “white”
elites continentally and their corporate accomplices. The Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, the
Mayflower: the NAFTA and the NARCO.
The invasion of Turtle Island Abya Yala
continues, yet our resistance, as Indigenous Peoples is also unbroken. We resist and rebel, we regenerate and call
out once more today for rectification and clarity, purpose and solidarity as
children of the Nations
and Pueblos of Mother Earth.
Clarifications:
From the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General
Assembly September 13, 2007:
Article 32
States shall consult and cooperate in good
faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative
institutions in order to obtain their free
and informed consent prior
to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other
resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or
exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
It is evident that the
of lack of processes and accountability for violations of the Right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent for Indigenous
Peoples is a fatal flaw not
only the consultations which led to the NAFTA as a regional commercial compact,
but for the actual ongoing implementation of the agreement. The case of Wirikuta in Mexico is mirrored in the crisis of the Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada and Mt. Tenabo in Nevada as well as scores of other development
projects impacting Indigenous Nations across North America including the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. The violation of the right of
Free, Prior and Informed Consent extends across the entire spectrum of economic
development programs that are promoted and protected with preferential policies
by the governments of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regime.
The violations of the Right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent is systemic under the neoliberal policies of these states, as is their complicity
in the criminal exploitation and expropriation of the natural resources and labor of our Nations and Pueblos. This is a grave
foreign policy issue of crisis that must be addressed under the standards of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General
Assembly on September 13, 2007.
Focusing in on the US context
of the issues, Anthony Bothwell, remarks that the European taking of America
involved “the most extensive land fraud and the largest holocaust in world
history”. He argues persuasively that,
within the United States, the Supreme Court distorted international “laws” or doctrines regarding conquest and
discovery to “rationalize white supremacist
usurpation of Indian nation sovereignty, even while conceding that the great
injustice may have violated international law principles”. Bothwell goes even further than the mere
analysis of then-existing international laws to assert that the taking of
America violated
binding treaties, the law of nations as recognized in the U.S.
Constitution, as well as the Supremacy, Commerce, Takings, Contracts, and Fifth
Amendment Due
Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Yet, in spite of these assessments
and predictions of the Master’s Narrative, today
the Wixarica
speak to the World once more from the ceremonial ground of Mexico
in pilgrimage of purpose and clarification. The Cuachichilcameh
Izkalotecah respond and relay the following message, once more:
Continental Proclamation
Abya Yala
Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues
Fifth Period of
Sessions May 15- 26, 2006
United Nations NY, NY
Recalling the memory, will and
spirit of our ancestors of time immemorial, they who gave origination to we the
Indigenous
Nations of the Continent Abya Yala,
Reclaiming the power of destiny
as Peoples
of Humanity,
In safeguard of the Rights of the
Future
Generations of our Nations of Indigenous Peoples,
Invoking the ancestral mandates of
our Continental
Confederation of the Eagle and the Condor, and the respective
pronunciations ratified in Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples in Quito,
Ecuador 2004, and in Mar de Plata, Argentina 2005,
WE HEREBY PROCLAIM
Presenting ourselves as Nations
of the Indigenous Peoples of our continent Abya Yala before this Fifth Period
of Sessions of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the United Nations,
and upon being received as such by the convoking authorities on the floor of
the General
Assembly,
That the Papal Bull Inter
Caetera of Pope Alexander VI (1493) is hereby ANNULLED,
as well as whatever Doctrine of Discovery
proceeding from which that pretends to deform the relationship of Harmony,
Justice, and Peace of we the Indigenous Peoples of Humanity in its entirety.
May 18, 2006
CONCLUSION
We call upon the ministers of
government at all levels of Canada-US-Mexico and the public
constituencies of their respective societies to address without
prejudice or discrimination the above clarifications. We assert that these
clarifications command rectification of the crime of colonialism
and a moratorium
on all NAFTA economic development projects impacting the territories of the Nations
and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples until the right of Free,
Prior and Informed Consent of the Indigenous Peoples is fully
recognized, respected, and protected in the spirit of the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as follows:
“Affirming that
Indigenous Peoples are equal to all other peoples,…..”
NAHUACALLI
Embassy of Indigenous Peoples
www.nahuacalli.org
