Mike Myers: Indigenous rights struggle undergoes major changes

The Indigenous rights struggle has gone through an extraordinary journey since 1977. Over the past while I’ve been bothered by what I see as a “split” in the movement without being able to get a handle on the nature and extent of that split until I read the Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, submitted to the UN General Assembly on August 7, 2014.

In it I found several ideas and concepts that clarified things for me. The first is found in the statement: “…the “Kirby definition”,4 recognizing as a “people” a group of persons with a common historical tradition, racial or ethnic identity, cultural homogeneity, linguistic unity, religious or ideological affinity, territorial connection, or common economic life.5 To this should be added a subjective element: "the will to be identified as a people and the consciousness of being a people.” [emphasis added]

The key elements being “will” and “consciousness” both of which can be expressed in degrees of intensity. Less will and less consciousness will produce one set of results versus higher degrees of will and consciousness.

Next was his outlining of two paths of self-determination that a people could follow, one is the lesser path of “…the possibility of exercising various degrees of cultural, economic and political autonomy within a State entity,” while the other is the higher degree of “..the aspiration to independent statehood..”