A Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed by the new United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday, June 29, 2006, but not all Indigenous nations are happy.
"The Declaration that was passed by the UN Human Rights Council is not the Sub commission text that was supported by the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council," stated Charmaine White Face, Spokesperson. "Many of the original working Articles were changed by the Chairperson, or totally deleted," she adds.

The Working Group Chairperson, Luis Chavez, (Peru) submitted his own version of a Declaration which he always called the Chairman's text. In December, 2004, six Indigenous representatives conducted a hunger strike-prayer fast in the meeting room at the UN to insure that the original Sub commission text would be sent to the Human Rights Commission as there was no consensus on the Chair's text. As of Feb. 2006, there was still no consensus.

It is unusual that this so-called Declaration was passed by the Human Rights Council since the Chairs' recommendations did not have the consensus of the Working Group. Unfortunately it is misleading the whole world and will give false hope to the very peoples it is to be helping, the Indigenous peoples of the world.

As an example, Preambular Paragraph 19, on page 20 of the 80 page document, which announces the declaration was originally stated in the Sub commission text as: "Solemnly proclaims the following United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:" This is the correct way to proclaim a declaration. However, even though there were debates about this particular paragraph, Chairman Luis Chavez changed the wording in his text to:"Solemnly proclaims the following United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a standard of achievement to be pursued in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect, ".

The very words, "to be pursued" affirms that this is not a Declaration, but something that is still to be sought. To state that the United Nations has passed a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is misleading. No Declaration has been passed, but only an idea "to be pursued". Unfortunately, there is nothing that states how a real Declaration is to be achieved at the United Nations.

History of the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council and the Declaration:

The spokesman for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council, the late Antoine Black Feather, Pine Ridge Reservation, and the late Garfield Grassrope, Lower Brule Reservation, a TSNTC Representative, worked diligently for the passage of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Their efforts began in 1984 when they attended the first meetings with hundreds of other Indigenous representatives in Geneva, Switzerland, to develop a Draft which was eventually approved in 1994 by two United Nations committees: the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and the Sub commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which is now the Sub commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

For the past eleven years, the Sub commission text, as the Draft of the Declaration was called, was debated at the United Nations in Geneva.