"We Can Do... Better":* Rights of Singular Peoples and the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Authors

Keith D. Nunes, Pace University School of Law

First Page

521

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In the multiplication of European voyages of discovery and exploration between the years 1487 and 1780, the slow process of direct sea contact between regions and continents ultimately yielded a worldwide network of relationships for a new era, an era in which humankind continues to participate. North America was opened to European settlement as a result of an aborted series of English, French, and Dutch voyages intended to find a northern route to Asia. These voyages were attempts to erase the claim of monopoly to the navigation of trade routes in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, as well as to breach the privileged position of the Portuguese and Spanish in the profitable spice, gold, and slave trades. Cabot's rediscovery of Newfoundland in 1497 and Verrazzano's tracing of the east coast of North America resulted in the opening of this area. The recent celebration of Columbus' voyage to the Americas was an opportunity to rethink our legal values. We have begun to ask whether we have been paying an unbelievable price for progress. "[I]t has become very clear," as Margaret Mead said, "that we have neglected essentials, that somehow in our attempt to bring an abundance of material goods to the world's people we have taken a wrong turn in our socioeconomic development, that we have made some fundamental mistakes." The human rights codex has enabled us to gain a new perspective, a wider view of the billion years of life on this planet and of the shorter period of civilized men and women as creatures who are part of nature. As our conception of the universe expands and our planet's place in it shrinks to a blue ball vulnerable in space, human rights are helping us "to concentrate our attention on those parts of the planet which have been forgotten, on the two billion people who live with many deprivations - but who have great strengths that are their legacy from the past." Numbered among such people are those who are the instant focus.

Recommended Citation

Keith D. Nunes, "We Can Do... Better":* Rights of Singular Peoples and the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 7 St. Thomas L. Rev. 521 (1995).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol7/iss3/13