The principle is unambiguous in its application to peoples having the collective right to freely choose their own future. The right to choose is what the United States and other states like France, Britain and Canada seek to deny Fourth World peoples.

In response to this slightly more than eighty-year-old principle of international law empires have crumbled, states have lost direct control over vast resources and hundreds of millions of peoples became citizens of new states. One might suggest that the principle of self-determination is responsible for the creation of perhaps as many as 160 of the world’s 193 states. Even as these new states were created over the last eighty years they enclosed hundreds, if not thousands of indigenous nations that did not freely choose to be within the state. They became nations captive inside often hostile states.

The United States President Woodrow Wilson gave birth to this self-evident principle of self-determination in international literature in 1919 as a part of his famous 14 Point Plan designed to settle World War I. Recognition of the right of all peoples to freely choose how they live applied to the peoples formerly controlled under the Ottoman Empire—the Hungarians, Croations, Slovenians, Serbians, Montenagrans, as well as the Bosnians. The principle stood for freedom for the Moravians and Bohemians as well as the Slovaks. The self-determination principle stood for the right to choose without external influences for the peoples of Moldova too. It is a stunning fact to consider that just as the United States, France, England, Germany, Russia and Italy roll their troops into Kosovo to preserve the peace and secure human rights and self-determination, these same states have become active leaders in the drive to rewrite international law denying self-determination to Fourth World nations all around the world. Curiously, the United States Department of State (and specifically the Office of Legal Affairs) has been the most vigorous manipulator of decisions in multi-lateral organizations to limit the social, economic and political scope of self-determination as it might be applied to indigenous peoples. The United States has actively worked to achieve a drastic narrowing of the term’s meaning in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the International Labour Organization, and in the Organization of American States. The U.S. Department of State’s success is written in the rewritten version of the International Labour Organization’s 1957 Convention "tribal and semi tribal populations" in the form of the ILO’s 1989 Convention 169. It is written in the Commission on Human Rights stalled consideration of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

A Trogan Horse in the OAS

The U.S. is further demonstrating its commitment to rewriting international law and limiting the legal and political meaning of the principle of self-determination when applied to Fourth World peoples by quickly pushing through an American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the Organization of American States. As the author and principal advocate, the U.S. government wishes to portray itself as the champion of Fourth World peoples in the OAS, but the reality is that the Department of State is attempting to create a "legal Trojan Horse." Hidden in the developing American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is restrictive language that prevents indigenous peoples from fully enjoying the right of self-determination. The language will work to prevent indigenous peoples from exercising their collective right to govern themselves and practice their culture as they choose. The new Declaration under consideration at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. is now being written to lock indigenous peoples under the permanent control of states’ governments. Drafters of the new convention hope to have OAS adoption in the Fall of 1999.

The purpose of this expedited approach at the OAS is to establish an agreement between western hemispheric states designed to maintain state dominance over indigenous people, their territories and natural wealth. The strategy is to write and adopt language for a regional declaration without scrutiny or participation by indigenous peoples (the UN drafted declaration involved perhaps thousands of indigenous representatives) and then proclaim it as the model for rewriting the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Together, a rewritten UN Declaration and the OAS Declaration can then be used to author new and restrictive international legislation that controls the social, economic and political life of Fourth World nations—denying indigenous peoples the opportunity to freely choose their social, economic and political future. Fourth World nations will be left to commit war to achieve their chosen political status or sit in silence and suffer the loss of freedom because the door of peaceful political change will have been closed.

The U.S. State Department’s Legal Affairs Office has a strangle-hold over the U.S. government’s foreign policy when it comes to Fourth World peoples. That office virtually controls whether international bodies accept or reject new laws guaranteeing their right to self-determination. Proof of the U.S. government’s opposition to indigenous peoples’ exercise of the right of self-determination becomes obvious with the designation of Michael Dennis from the Office of Legal Affairs as the primary contact person at the Department of State concerned with Fourth World peoples. For Mr. Dennis and others in the Department of State it seems there is a fine line between indigenous peoples as benign minorities and indigenous peoples as a threat to the State.

The U.S. government’s determination to prevent indigenous peoples from exercising the full right of self-determination (in all of its social, economic, political and cultural dimensions) is now focused in the Organization of American States, International Labour Organization and in the United Nations. Fourth World nations have taken a confused approach to dealing with this dramatic move in international organizations. This is especially true of Indian nations, Alaskan Native communities and the Hawaiians. Indian nations in particular have been utterly absent from international meetings concerning the subject of self-determination over the last twenty years. They have been informed, but remain oblivious to the international decisions aimed at denying their right of self-determination. Fourth World nations in the South Pacific, Melanesia, Africa, and South America have been most active, but they lack the influence on U.S. policy that American Indian nations have, but fail to use. Until Indian nations take up the task of addressing international legislation concerning indigenous peoples, the Principle of Self-Determination and other principles of international law beneficial to Fourth World peoples will continue to be distorted. Indigenous peoples will be the first fatalities.