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On Friday, as the International Indian Treaty Council begins work on its 50th Anniversary Treaty Conference at Standing Rock, Buffalo’s Fire reporter Alicia Hegland-Thorpe shares an in-depth interview with IITC Executive Director Andrea Carmen. Alicia met with Andrea in late February while visiting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council, setting the bar for the June 21-24 assembly in Wakpala, SD. Carmen discusses the challenging situations and legacy of the organization in her 32 years as Executive Director.
Read The Alicia Hegland-Thorpe International Treaty Conference returns to Oceti Sakowin to celebrate its anniversary on June 19.
Here is the transcript of the podcast interview with Andrea Carmen:
ANDREA: I come from the Yaqui Indian Nation, which has been divided between the U. S. -Mexico border lately. But we have six Yaqui towns, or communities, in southern Arizona, to which is added a reservation and a federally identified tribal government. And then we have a giant territorial base in northern Mexico, in Sonora, Mexico. We have the treaty with an indigenous country and the government of Mexico, because we were at war with them until 1939.
So we were given a treaty and part of our classical territorial base was recognized, and we have there 8 uninterrupted classical governments that still function under a system of classical governmental consensus. Everything similar to land, land and water rights will have to be agreed upon by consensus. through the 8 classic governments, and achieve consensus among them.
On the Mexican side, by law, all our government meetings will have to be held in our language, 100%. It is therefore a classic formula of uninterrupted government. And it continues to be the majority language spoken in our lands on the Mexican side. And on the Arizona side, just like here, kids were going to school and all that. Therefore, it is tricky to maintain language proficiency on the Arizona side. But in Mexico, the maximum number of families and all people, I would say, 50 years. older and older, have Yaqui, our indigenous language, as their main language.
Alicia: How did you get this position here at IITC?What are you here? What led you to this?
ANDREA: Well, it’s been a long time. I applied to IITC as a student intern while attending the University of California, Santa Cruz. We formed an organization within the Department of Women’s Studies, where we probably had five or six Native women to respond to the U. S. government’s forced sterilization policy. of Native American women in places like Claremore, Oklahoma, Rocky Boy, Montana, Rosebud, everywhere.
“Treaties do not create nations, but only nations make treaties. And it is also foreign law. He affirmed this nation-to-nation dating and codified it in a legally binding manner.
So we formed the Coalition Against Sterilization Abuse, CASA, through the Department of Women’s Studies. We were able to earn course credit for the organization. And I met Lehman Brightman, our educational advisor. Simply Rosebud. And he took me to Bill. Wapipa, who coordinated the IITC paintings in San Francisco. And that was in 1976 more or less. And I have become an intern at the IITC.
I traveled for a while after graduating. And then they convinced me to come back and see how to work with IITC. And they started sending me to some meetings abroad, with the elders and the more experienced people. And finally, I became a full-time Staff Member in 1983. I became CEO in 1992. It’s been 31 years. It’s unexpected to think that.
I am the guilty user of IITC with a very strong team in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I am going from here to Rome for an assembly at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
IITC does many things in the area of food sovereignty, from supporting the work of grassroots food manufacturers on the ground, combining them, to sharing wisdom and information, influencing foreign policy, and supporting the perspectives of our classic food manufacturers. Because, frankly, this is what will save our lives with the climate crisis that surrounds us. I move on to those meetings, and those are the scientists and the governments. And last year, the U. S. government produced the largest domestic oil. production in history.
The year before, under Trump, 2019 was the most important. So, all of this is about climate change and energy choice. . .
And we’ve met with John Kerry, I’ve done it before, many times before. And they’re looking to shift the narrative from fossil fuel production to emissions reduction, leading to this terrifying new technology. They propose something called carbon capture and injection. And all those things that may not work and cause even more destruction.
In addition, they will expel indigenous peoples from their traditional lands. Things like forest offsets and all that stuff that communicates about net zero. Well, what does net mean? This means you can still conserve the oil fields of Fort Berthold or the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, if you invest in saving some of the Amazon forests, where other indigenous peoples are being pushed off their lands because they are now a source of carbon. Capture sink. Matrix: I mean, this is what we’re seeing, the responses that are being proposed. We have made great progress. We just did this in Dubai, the last climate negotiation, the UN COP 28, to literally help countries understand indigenous wisdom about food production. Whether it’s to restore buffalo and get rid of livestock, or to bring back our classic drought-tolerant seeds and pesticide-free methods. This is really part of a solution for climate replacement. Because healthy and living soil is the third largest absorber of greenhouse gases.
“We are not talking about rights, we are talking about responsibilities. And because we don’t separate humans from the rest of the herbal world.
The first is the ocean, which they pollute temporarily. Secondly, there is the atmosphere and climate change. And the third is healthy, living soil that isn’t destroyed by pesticides, chemicals, overgrazing, and everything in between.
Therefore, we have wisdom that we can bring to the negotiations. And countries are beginning to realize that the indigenous wisdom holders that we have officially engaged in those discussions over the past three years have answers to offer. We don’t just complain about the impacts, the loss of land and the things that result from it, but we have something to contribute.
And we’re starting to see that have an impact. They pay attention. And then we think, damn, they’re going to have to be afraid. They listen to us.
ALICE: But it’s hopeful.
ANDREA: Yes, but my most productive recommendation to all of you indigenous peoples is to look at your own food source and your own water source. Because other people don’t know how bad it’s going to be. I want to hear from scientists about what’s to come and what’s already there. Last year, for the first time, the global temperature exceeded what was intended to be the established ceiling. through the Paris Agreement, an increase of 1. 5 degrees Celsius.
July and August surpassed it for the first time last year. And it was the most popular year on record in the Sonoran Desert, where I live. I mean, we’ve had over a hundred degrees for 60 days straight. So we checked, look for seed paints that can do that. We have a family farm, you can simply say, and we test seeds with other indigenous people in the desert. Our original seeds, not those that have been modified and reduced to energy. , because in reality everyone has to do that.
I see buffalo here, and buffalo are a key component of other people’s resilience here in the face of climate change. Go back to your original food, that food that knows how to live in it and can cope with climate diversifications that will only get worse.
Another point that you have discussed here and that I specialize in is that we are creating a foreign mechanism for the repatriation of cultural property and human remains of Indigenous peoples that are in museums, personal collections, auction houses, and universities around the world. People don’t even know where their pieces are.
Last July, we won our sacred masakova, which literally means deer head in our Los Angeles language. This is a ceremonial deer head for our deer dance. But for us, once she’s in a ceremony, she’s alive. not as a thing. It is a living being. We say, sayi los angeles maso, our little brother of the deer.
I saw it 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago. I discovered it in a museum in Stockholm, Sweden, among other places. The Sámi invited me to this event. And it’s also a government museum. It’s like the Smithsonian. And it took us 20 years to get it back. We contracted the United Nations because the Swedish museum didn’t need to get it back. They said, “We don’t see That’s why we deserve to give it back. They gave it to us. They have no legal rights. And we forced them, thanks to the intervention of the United Nations, to return it. I mean, the UN they accepted says yes.
So, with this struggle, we understood the desire to activate, because many other indigenous people are saying the same thing. Our ghost shirt, they took our ghost shirt. We don’t know where it is. They took away our treaty pipe, they told me, in Canada. We don’t know where it is. The Chickasaw attempt to recover the skull of one of their leaders, which was taken as a war trophy. And they’ve been trying to do it for more than 30 years. And they can’t.
So we’re creating an external mechanism. We have to work with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is difficult to work with for a number of reasons. But to create a mechanism and a protocol that allows the other indigenous people, in the first place, to locate their articles, like a foreign database. And then regulations that will require that if other indigenous people claim that this object is sacred – and that all human remains, ALL human remains, will have to be returned to the rightful custodians of those items in order to see how they are buried or who cares for them.
ALICE: You’re listening to the Buffalo’s Fire podcast with special guest Andrea Carmen, IITC’s longtime executive director. She is guilty of bringing Indigenous voices to those who make decisions about the environment, climate change, food sovereignty and the repatriation of our loved ones. In the second half, he says something surprising: that in all his years working with indigenous peoples, he has never discovered an indigenous language that has a literal translation of human rights. It also talks about what happens in the assemblies of the Treaty Council. , such as the 50th anniversary council meeting scheduled at Standing Rock, where the first was held in 1974.
“We would say in Yaqui Yoemem Tekia, ‘Our legal duty or responsibility to the Creator,’ that is, to fight whenever we want, with our ceremonies, with our language, with the way we treat each other, in the way we treat others. “herbal world. “
ANDREA: It’s the result of a history of revitalization and resistance of indigenous peoples’ activism. The struggles for fishing rights on the Pacific coast, the struggles for treaty rights, the marches across the country, the armed occupations at Wounded Knee, the trials, everything. People have tried everything to make the treaties respectable and justice to be done.
Thus, the first assembly was born from the lack of results. In fact, more repression, more people in the criminal sphere, more people were killed. . . Leonard Peltier has been in the criminal realm ever since. And the resolve made through the elders and founders that those elders here have been talking about today. Frank Fools Crow, Matthew King, those who came here together in the first collection to seek a voice and a seat on the foreign level as nations, as treaty nations, because we were not represented there and because we may just not locate justice in the foreign realm. The so-called justice systems.
Not only from the United States, but there were also other people from Canada, Guatemala and Brazil. There were 5,000 other people from all over America telling the exact same story. “How can we find justice in the colonial systems that oppressed us?So IITC had the task of going to the United Nations, locating a seat, locating a voice, and since 1977, IITC has been the first indigenous organization to obtain what is called consultative standing with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
And in 2001 we were the only ones who still had what is called general consultative prestige because of the number of organizations in which we work. We’re still fully active in the field of human rights, we’re in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we’re in climate change, we’re in the United Nations Environment Programme, we’re in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Wherever our rights are discussed and affected, we have not only the right, but also the duty to strive to be there. CITI is not satisfied with any government money, so our fight is only about investments to reach those places. We write proposals, we sell T-shirts, we do all those things.
Alicia: Are you a 501c3?
ANDREA: Yes, we’re a 501c3 nonprofit, but we’ve also been exclusive from the beginning as an indigenous representative organization. We have 14 board members from other geographies. Bill Means remains a member of Oceti’s board of directors. And at treaty meetings like the one we are about to hold, we only commemorate 50 years of survival, you might say, but also many historic achievements. We were one of the leaders in the fight to have the United Nations Declaration. on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples followed in 2007. It took 30 years.
The first UN assembly for which IITC paved the way was held in 1977, and that assembly in Geneva convened a foreign popular meeting to detect the collective rights of indigenous peoples. Thus, when the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples came into force 30 years later, precisely in 2007, in the General Assembly, it represented the achievement of that goal, I suppose it can be said simply, since our first assembly at the United Nations. So we have a tendency to stick to the orders of our people, of our affiliates, and if you come to Standing Rock, they will make resolutions, they will be approved by consensus of all, and those are our orders on what to work on, what positions to take. What do we need to do in terms of biodiversity or intellectual property, where they patent our classic seeds?
ALICE: So, in those conferences, what other people talk about are genuine things that evidently want attention and change, a position to talk about, and how do you make changes?
“Many of the problems we face are decisions made in a foreign scenario. “
ANDREA: Exactly, and what our affiliates need IITC to do. We have made genuine progress in bringing treaties back to the forefront of the foreign stage. In the last two years, we have had at least two legally binding treaties around the world. organizations of which the United States is a part.
They will have to, they are meant to put them into effect, by asking the United States to establish a nation-to-nation procedure with treaty signatories, where there is equal participation in reporting treaty violations. It is not proper to the courts. where it is the resolution that is taken through one of the components of the treaty, usually the one that violates the treaty. How can they be the ones who if there is a violation, much less what the solution deserves to be? We’ve really reignited this debate in the United Nations bodies that are telling the United States that it will have to do it. And now the question is: how are we going to do this?It’s not just for IITC, it’s for the signatory nations that are components of IITC.
I don’t think some indigenous peoples realize how many indigenous countries are treaty countries. The Nation of Hawaii, which will participate in the conference, is on our Board of Directors. Before the United States invaded and annexed it by force in violation of its Peace Accords and Treaty of Amity with Hawaii, the country of Hawaii, signed treaties with 18 countries, and none of those countries said anything when the United States annexed Hawaii instead of respecting it as a separate country, as a country.
The draft treaty would therefore need to be revitalized. We want to make sure that all the nations that signed the treaty know each other, even know each other, and create a foreign movement to bring the discussion of the treaty back to the table, to the forefront. , at the forefront.
Three of the 4 countries that voted against the UN declaration when it was followed in the General Assembly were the 3 countries that signed the most treaties with indigenous peoples: the United States, Canada and New Zealand. The other country was Australia, where Aboriginal people would like to have a treaty. They have no treaty. But they should and they need to.
Alicia: All right, so the goal of being at Standing Rock today, if you can, a little bit more about that.
ANDREA: We came here to meet with the tribal council and the elder preservation council who had separate discussions about the 50th anniversary celebration. There was really no position in which we could hold the 50th anniversary treaty convention unless it was at Standing Rock. . So we are very pleased that they welcome us with open arms, with a lot of enthusiasm and interest, because this is part of the history of Standing Rock, not just ours, of course. And many other people need to revitalize them. debates, communicate what a treaty is and what does that mean?
So our first goal is to bring everybody together and make sure that the affiliates, the members of the nation, whoever the host is, can agree on what’s going on with the work that we’ve been doing for decades in the past, because they’re not, maybe two or three more people can go to a convention in some other country, But we need everyone to understand and listen and have the possibility to be informed and to be informed about what is happening. And I’m observing that many of the upheavals that we face directly are decisions made in an alien setting. And if we are not at the table, as they say, we are on the menu.
And as I said about climate change, we have something to offer. We are not here just to defend, even if necessary, of that there is no doubt. So we received the instructions. You know, we pass resolutions. There are commissions that are going to arrive. There are panels, you know, plenary debates for everyone.
But then the other people will be divided into teams that we call commissions. And among all the other indigenous people that are out there, you know, other people need to communicate about mining. Whether they’re from Guatemala, the Black Hills, or, you know, others put them in. Then they locate a resolution, they provide it on the last day.
Many other people are interested in more than one issue, but they have to choose, this is the time to say: well, can you come with our fight for the holy places in this resolution?And each and every one accepts it. And then the affiliates agree that this is followed by consensus, it becomes IITC policy, and that’s what we’re going to do. And usually, we have them once every two years, simply because it’s expensive.
ALICE: And so I heard you talk earlier about the importance of complying with protocol. Can you tell us a little more about why it’s vital to comply with protocol on something like this?
ANDREA: It’s part of our guiding principles. We and we protect the cultural and religious practices of each of our affiliates and they are different. And the way you find yourself in a certain position will be different. Therefore, we never need to infringe on classical cultural practices. Most, if not all, of our staff, and surely the members of the board of directors and affiliates, are very concerned about the ceremonial lifestyle of their own peoples. Last week we started our seven-week spring cycle that will end with the deer dance in about seven weeks. . And that is one of the things that we strongly defend: the right to practice our culture; the coverage of our sacred sites; our lifestyles; Our language.
Another very interesting thing I need to mention is the role, role and leadership in development of indigenous youth in working abroad. We’re going to introduce that. We have very strong young representatives who are staff members who will be here who need to meet with teams of young people here and elsewhere who have said they are excited. Climate replacement is, of course, a problem. Our other young people are very involved. We’ll have a panel of indigenous youth and, in fact, a youth commission where they can say, “Okay, like other young people, that’s where we need IITC to go. “of the organization.
“My best recommendation to all indigenous people is to locate their own food source and look at their own water source, because people don’t know how dire the situation can be.
I mean, the sustainability of our paintings depends on the participation of indigenous youth who share the same vision as the original founding of IITC. You can view the Continuing Declaration of Independence, the founding document that followed here in 1974, on our website. They have this vision at the same time that they have new strategies, they have new concepts and we have to be open to that. Sometimes it’s hard.
ALICE: I think it’s very vital. While our culture is based on the transmission of wisdom and oral traditions, I think it’s vital to recognize that there are technologies that can help sustain them as well. When we talk about returning to our classic practices before colonization, there is no digitalization. at that time. But we want to perceive this intersection of new technologies, what our traditions are, and why it’s so vital that they come together. And our young people will be a wonderful example of what that means.
ANDREA: I was like, I don’t know, 18 years old and I told my grandmother, she was probably a girl, right?By saying: how can we maintain our traditions in this fashionable world?It’s very different. I don’t even think they’re adequate. He said in Spanish: what we want to do is take the values of our classical cultures and apply them to what is happening now. Of course, I didn’t get any reaction to that. I am very clear about it. It was in the kitchen of my mother’s house.
Find other young people who understand, yes, that new technologies exist and that they can talk to each other. I think COVID gave us Zoom, for example, but we still use it because we can talk to each other. Really look at yourself, not like at a convention. But it does not update this face-to-face contact and in no way can it update our ceremonies and practices. And we are literally on it.
Let’s go back to protocol. . . These things aren’t just things to go through, they’re genuine. They are as genuine as anything else in terms of how we care for this place, how we respect this place, how we fulfill our obligations to be who we are and put our lives in one place. I’ve traveled the world, all over the world, given presentations and all that, and I’ve never discovered any indigenous people who have the words human rights in their language, a literal translation.
We would say in Yaqui Yoemem Tekia “our duty or legal responsibility to the Creator”, which is to fight when we want, with our ceremonies, with our language, with the way we treat each other, in the way we treat the plant world. All of this is included in this. And without the protocols that were given, the laws, the traditions and the customs, that’s what the UN Declaration said, and we use that language to repatriate our Masakova.
There are only two passages in the entire United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that use the word legislation. And in our cultural protocols, it’s there, in Article 11 of the United Nations Declaration, where we have legislation that tells us how we treat our sacred objects and our sacred places. And if we don’t respect them, how are we going to ask someone to respect them?So, here is legislation on how we will be provided in this place. And everyone who comes from the IITC is going to respect that and needs to know in order to respect this place. Because when we go to their homes, they have to tell us how to respect their protocols.
ALICE: Going back to what you said, literally no one has a word for human rights in their language because it is not necessary. It’s already a matter of respect, that’s how we treat others.
“They are looking to change the narrative from fossil fuel generation to emissions reduction, leading to this scary new technology. They’re proposing something called carbon capture and injection.
ANDREA: Because we don’t talk about rights, we talk about responsibilities. And because we don’t separate humans from the rest of the herbal world.
ALICE: So, in saying that, it’s appealing that there has to be even this word “human rights,” number one. Second, a council had to be convened because human rights were not recognized.
ANDREA: Yes, that’s right. Human rights, treaty rights, inherent rights. That means, you know, when IITC first sent through the elders here, from Oceti Sakowin, to go to the United Nations, they said, well, locate the other indigenous peoples and combine. with them. There is no one else. In the beginning, it was just us. And we discovered words that resonated with our culture, not necessarily with human rights. But the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose preamble speaks of “the inherent dignity and equivalent and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” is what it says. And we can perceive the inherent and the inalienable.
This means that no one can grant or take away rights. Neither a treaty, nor a declaration, nor a convention, nor a charter confers rights, right?Rights are inherent in the user who puts you, you know, on the ground. , in the position in which the Creator has placed you. And the rights cannot be given away or withdrawn. We cannot abandon them. They can be reputable or violated. That’s all. So, you know, fight against violations of those inherent rights. And in the UN Declaration, in the preamble, we want to outline our inherent rights.
I am sure you have read the United Nations Declaration. You know, it simply says the urgent desire to defend the inherent rights of indigenous peoples. This word comes from everything they said when we weren’t even there. We were not there in 1948 when they followed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, is said to have written those words. But we may resonate with this idea.
So I think treaty rights help inherent rights. And this is how our ancestors tried to make sure that our inherent rights were respectable through the colonizer. You know, it hasn’t been like that. But the thing about treaties, as we say in Canada, is that treaties don’t create nations, but only nations make treaties. And it is also foreign law. He affirmed this nation-to-nation dating and codified it in a legally binding manner. At least that’s what we thought, on the part of either component, that we were also complying with our treaty obligations. Sometimes by giving up land, for example, or allowing it to pass, or whatever. But they did not do the same.
ALICE: Andrea Carmen, Executive Director of the International Indigenous Treaty Council. IITC represents a host of indigenous nations, peoples, and organizations from North, Central, and South America, the Arctic, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Since the mid-1980s, Andrea has been involved in several United Nations bodies dealing with human and cultural rights, the environment, climate change, food sovereignty and repatriation. She was part of the steering committee that worked on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and has written about it. in several publications. She has led more than three hundred trainings and presentations to indigenous communities, leaders, organizations, and agencies. She graduated from the University of California with a bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies and most recently lives in Tucson, Arizona.
To the Alliance for Indigenous Media Freedom and the Buffalo Fire, my call is Alicia Hegland-Thorpe. And thank you for continuing and thanks for listening!
For more information, please see: “The International Treaty Conference returns to Oceti Sakowin for its anniversary”https://www. buffalosfire. com/international-treaty-conference-returns-to-oceti-sakowin-for–anniversary/
Our purpose is to help our network stay informed. Buffalo’s Fire newsletter is released at 12 p. m. m. CST every Wednesday. Our virtual news site is published through the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, an Indigenous-led nonprofit media organization founded through Indigenous women and founded in Bismarck, North Dakota. You can reach us at 701-301-1296.
Our purpose is to help our network stay informed. Buffalo’s Fire newsletter is released at 12 p. m. m. CST every Wednesday. Our virtual news site is published through the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, an Indigenous-led nonprofit media organization founded through Indigenous women and founded in Bismarck, North Dakota. You can reach us at 701-301-1296.
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