My name is Michael Lane, and I am the Indigenous Sovereignty Advocate for the Indigenous Environmental Network and am badged and working with AIM West as a delegate on the issues relating to the Termination Agenda.
The Termination Agenda is what we are calling actions by various nation-states to extinguish inherent right of Indigenous Peoples in exchange for delegated rights from nation-states. The motive is to create certainty for economic development projects. In many of these instances they are misusing the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly Articles 3 and 4.
Historically, in the 1950s the United States of America engaged in a policy that was officially called Termination. Under this policy over 100 Indian Nations were terminated severing the legal/political relationship with USA was unilaterally extinguished and those terminated were Indian in a cultural way only and became designated as ethnic minorities. This policy was devastating for those terminated. There was significant loss of land, language and culture and extensive negative social issues.
The policy was slowly reversed beginning in 1973 with most but not all that were terminated have since been restored. Yet the damage was done, and the effects are still felt today.
In 1977 there was an effort to once again engage in termination with the introduction of 11 bills in Congress that would have extinguished Treaty reserved rights to fish, hunt and gather and one of which would have abrogated all Indian Treaties. They did not pass due to the Longest Walk from Alcatraz to Washington D.C.
We are seeing the same rhetoric arise in Aotearoa (New Zealand) with efforts to abrogate Te Tiriti o Waitangi. New Zealand also claims that the right to organize as Iwi (tribes) comes from the government and does not recognize the legal personality of Iwi and hapu and no legal/political identity. We have seen the same process used in Canada with the BC Treaty Process, which is really a comprehensive land claim process extinguishing inherent rights for delegated rights. The claim that this is not Termination is that there is a list of rights recognized, but the reality is that if it is not on the list, it does not exist and is no longer inherent.
The UN itself is engaged in the process as well, with the conflation of Indigenous Peoples with Local Communities, which places Indigenous Peoples with inherent rights and legal/political relationships with respective nation-states completely under the whims of the nation-state.
We ask the Permanent Forum for the uplifting of a Special Meeting on the Termination Agenda and misuse of the UNDRIP. We also ask that the Inherent Relationships that Indigenous Peoples have preserved be protected and that the respective Indigenous Legal systems based upon Traditional Indigenous Knowledge tied to it be recognized to be equitable with the non-Indigenous legal systems. The development of this jurisprudence needs to be researched to be referred where appropriate to counter this Termination Agenda.
3-Minute Intervention on Item 5 (a) Dialogue with Indigenous Peoples (Closed Meeting – Interactive Dialogue
Thursday, 24 April, 2025. UNPFII 24th Session.
Hau Mitakuyapi, my name is Tom Goldtooth emakiyapi-do, I’m with the Indigenous Environmental Network. In respect to this session of open dialogue between ourselves and the Indigenous members of the Forum, I would like to respond to the earlier intervention by the representative of the US – based National Indian Health Board, proposing the future Forum to be on Health issues. We support a future Forum to focus on this critical issue.
Any focus on human health issues must support the integration of environment and health concerns in all countries, where our Indigenous Peoples reside. Twenty seven years ago, we took part in a campaign successfully bringing a human/Indigenous rights-face to the UN treaty negotiating process to eliminate 12 toxic chemicals, resulting in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), an international environmental treaty signed in 2001 becoming effective in May 2004. We networked with the Inuit Circumpolar Council at the time.
The issues at that time still have not been totally resolved and still persist today. This concern is for global action to be taken on toxic exposures impacting Indigenous Peoples and our future generations. Toxic chemical substances bio-accumulate and bio-magnify in the bodies of our women and children, from exposures in the air, water, soils and our traditional food systems. These toxic chemicals, including heavy metal contamination, some from waste incineration and mining activities, pose disproportionate higher health risk that has not been thoroughly assessed, with little data and information made available to our communities; with concerns from Indigenous communities in the expansion zones of critical minerals extraction, fossil fuels and mining developments and plastics and vinyl production. Indigenous general health care and environmental health is literally a life-and-death issue already causing adverse effects to Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
Thank you
Tom BK Goldtooth, Executive Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
tomg@ienearth.org
Distinguished Forum members and Indigenous Relatives,
I am Great Grandmother Mary Lyons of the Anishinaabe Nation. I come before you today on behalf of the Indigenous Environmental Network with the support of Indigenous Knowledge Holders and Spiritual Authorities.
My intervention is to sound the alarm on a new wave of Biological, Environmental, and Conservation Colonialism and the Capitalism of Nature – of Mother Earth. We have submitted a research report revealing that Carbon Markets, REDD+ schemes, and Nature-Based Solutions consisting of the commodification and privatization of forests, soils, coastal and marine ecosystems are being pushed forward by governments, corporations, NGOs, financial institutions and UN agencies including the Sustainable Development Goals. These are false solutions for mitigating climate change!
My Relatives, we must say NO! to this Green Economy regime that places a monetary price on Nature and creates new derivative markets that will only increase inequality, violations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with increases in the destruction of Mother Earth. We cannot put the future of Mother Earth and humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms and other market systems of conservation and biodiversity offsets and payment for environmental and ecological services.
We say NO! We respectfully urge the Forum to request ECOSOC to advance these following actions across the UN system:
The United Nations needs to listen to Indigenous Peoples, to our Wisdom, our Cosmovisions and to honor the Territorial Integrity of the Sacredness of Mother Earth.
Introduction
1. The global push for renewable energy is driving an unprecedented surge in demand for critical minerals, including lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements, which are essential for green technologies such as batteries, electric vehicles and wind turbines. It is estimated that demand for the critical energy transition minerals required to enable this global energy transition will triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2040.
2. However, as States, governments, the private sector and multinational corporations race to secure these resources, there is a significant risk that the exploitative exploration and extraction practices of the past – practices that have long affected Indigenous Peoples and their territories – will be replicated in the name of the “green energy transition”. Click here to continue reading2.
