Professor Sheryl Lightfoot
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed by the United Nations nearly a decade ago, but it wasn’t until last year that Canada announced its full support for the Declaration.
Sheryl Lightfoot, Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics at UBC, believes Canada is underperforming of international expectations on the rights of Indigenous peoples.
On Thursday, Lightfoot will discuss Canada’s role in the UN Declaration as a panelist at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference, taking place June 22-24 at UBC.
Despite a decade of opposing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), it wasn’t until last year that Canada announced its full support for it. Why did it take so long for Canada to finally adopt UNDRIP?
Although Canada was a strong supporter of Indigenous rights in the early years of UN working groups and in drafting the Declaration, by 2006 and 2007— the early Harper years— Canada was the most active state lobbyist against the Declaration. This was the first and only human rights document Canada has ever actively opposed.
In 2010, the Harper government officially shifted its position on UNDRIP. Yet, even while claiming to endorse the document, the Harper government tightly constrained how it could be interpreted, and refused to allow it to act as a catalyst for fundamental change in Canada, holding tightly to a structural status quo position.
It wasn’t until 2015 when the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was released with 94 Calls to Action—specific recommendations that the TRC views as essential to move toward renewed relationships with Indigenous peoples and eventually, reconciliation— that Canada announced its full support for UNDRIP.
In total, 12 individual Calls to Action referenced UNDRIP. Essentially, the TRC recommended that Canada’s pathway to reconciliation should be grounded in the goals and principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
How does Canada compare to other countries in its approach to the rights of Indigenous peoples?
When UNDRIP was presented on the floor of the UN General Assembly for a vote in September 2007, Canada was one of only four countries in the world that issued a “no” vote. Standing steadfastly with Canada was the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
These four countries engage in what I call a pattern of “over-compliance,” meaning they manipulate their commitments to Indigenous rights, watering down the international standard for themselves, so that it appears that they are compliant without actually being so. Canada isn’t alone in this pattern— out of 60 countries around the world, 72 per cent are under-complying and 17 per cent are completely non-compliant. Only about three per cent are compliant with Indigenous rights expectations.
The slow response to adopt UNDRIP demonstrates that Canada is underperforming international expectations on the rights of Indigenous peoples. While Canada announced last year at the United Nations that it would be a full supporter of the UN Declaration and “without qualification,” the fundamental and systemic changes required to build a new nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples in accordance with the UNDRIP have so far remained elusive.
Why is the UN Declaration important?
UNDRIP represents the international consensus on the rights of Indigenous peoples. It outlines a set of normative expectations for state behaviour and represents the minimum standards on what Indigenous-state relationships should look like, and is is essentially a framework for Indigenous-state relationships grounded in mutual respect, providing countries with a roadmap for domestic change.
With UNDRIP, Indigenous peoples enjoy human rights equal to all other peoples, for the very first time. As a human rights declaration, however, UNDRIP is not a treaty and is therefore not legally binding under international law. Like other human rights declarations, it takes on power by serving as a normative standard that can inform domestic policy, law making and court decisions. While it may not be applied as law at present, it is changing the dialogue, providing a forum and standard for international engagement.
