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The problems facing the indigenous peoples of the world today are tied to domestic and international politics, as well as to the often conflicting hopes and desires of the indigenous peoples themselves. On the first day of the Global Forum, the unofficial summit of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) held parallel to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), leaders from the Alliance of Forest Peoples, a coalition of indigenous peoples and rubber tappers, requested the assistance of the Center for International Environmental Law(CIEL) to help them defend their land and their lives from Brazil’s powerful interest groups and insensitive government authorities. They are victims of violent attacks by those who seek to clear -cut their land for timber or to burn off the forest to provide pasture for cattle. They are falsely charged with crimes. Drug dealers are trying to force the Ashininka Indians into the drug trade. Authorities award phony land titles to rubber barons who force the Forest Peoples into debt-slavery. Later the next week, ChiefMoises of the Ashininka asked CIEL attorney David Downes to mediate a contract dispute with a photographer. Chief Moises claimed that the photographer owed his people royalty money from the sale of a book filled with pictures of his people. Speaking of the inequities posed by the international legal system, Davi Ianomarni, chief of the Ianomarni, stated unequivocally at Riocentro to a group of foreigners, “Your laws are worthless.”
At the same time, indigenous people do not always agree on what they want from the outside world. Some entertain thoughts of comfort, homes, and salaries. Others strongly wish to retain their traditional, subsistence cultures. The tension between the new and old worlds of indigenous peoples was put before me starkly when I traveled to Angoon, a Tiingit village of 400 on Admiralty Island in southeast Alaska. While there, I atetraditionally smoked salmon and dried seaweed with Tiingit friends. I also watched Karate Kid Part II on HBO and rode in one of the many trucks owned by the 11ingits to travel all of the three miles of road on the entire island.
Universally, though, indigenous and traditional peoples demand the right to choose their future without interference from multilateral development institutions, national governments, or exploitative natural resource development They had hoped for a serious and meaningful role in framing the content of the Rio documents, but instead they found themselves literally fighting to get inside the doors of Riocentro, the site of the UNCED meetings. Once again, they found themselves in the familiar position of consummate outsiders to the international law process that would affect their lives immensely. Unable to exercise their rights through the UNCED process, indigenous groups sought to address their problems at the activities of the Global Forum. One such effort was the Earth Parliament Preparatory Committee, organized by the Coalition for Biological and Cultural Diversity to create a permanent Earth Parliament for indigenous and traditional peoples.