UNDRIP Implementation Braiding International, Domestic and Indigenous Laws

Risa previously worked for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General as counsel to the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and, prior to that, as counsel to the Ministry of the Environment (now the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change). [...] Elder Deere and his vision of human rights guided me and other young Indigenous attorneys and activists to the multi-faceted United Nations system in Geneva, Vienna and New York, and to the Russell Tribunal in Rotterdam to assist in negotiating the recognition of our humanity, personhood and human rights in international law for the benefit of Indigenous peoples and the states parties. [...] The assertion of the existence of inherent and inviolable human rights, arising either by nature or from other sources, becomes the antithesis of the will of the sovereign, even when the sovereign is viewed as residing in the people. [...] The Art of Braiding Indigenous Peoples Inherent Human Rights into the Law of Nation-States • James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson asserting that all rights are derived from the positive enactments of God or the sovereign.14 The Eurocentric attempt to reconcile the conflict between inherent human rights and the idea of law of the sovereign based on social control and violence is a perennial, unreso [...] The general orientation of the second subsections was articulated in article 38 of UNDRIP: “States in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take the appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to achieve the ends of this Declaration.” No obvious way exists to reconcile each of the inherent human rights with contemporary law as the will of the sovereign, although the