Leaders of a New York tribe, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy last week held a behind closed doors session with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The confederacy is made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora Nations.
They discussed a variety of tribal concerns, including issues of sovereignty, the environment, self-determination and what role indigenous sovereign nations have in the United Nations. They would like the U.N. to extend recognition to indigenous peoples, such as their tribe.
The tribe wants to restore Onondaga Lake, and beyond that what they call “Mother Earth,” and to involve the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
One of the tribal delegation, Betty Lyons, president of the American Indian Law Alliance, plans to deliver comments urging the Permanent Forum to conduct a study on the “the effects of the man-made devastation of our fresh waters on our relationship as Indigenous peoples with sacred waters, and its catastrophic effects on the health, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being of our women, communities, Nations and our youth.”
Lyons argues that indigenous people across the globe face similar environmental issues of trying to protect their ancestral homelands from industries that often extract or wipe out natural resources through mining, building of dams, disposal of toxic wastes and hydraulic fracturing.
The Confederacy, which has had a treaty with the U.S. since the Washington presidency claim that their treaty gives them the right to clean waters. To assert their claim they have appealed to international organizations such as the U.N. and the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
