Indigenous Right to Autonomy
It should be clear that all the laws favor our civil declaration of independence as an Indigenous tribe and to possess control of our ancestral territories, we have been under our autonomous control for more than 5,000 years, why should it change now? Contemporary international environmental and human rights laws have recently empowered our people as a collective Indigenous culture; we have the right to form governments, the right to redress our colonial past, the right to self-determination, the right to associate with others, and most importantly the right to our ancestral lands. Moreover the same laws have granted us inalienable and inextricable rights to our proprietary control over our cultural and intellectual property, the natural biodiversity within our territory, and our ethnobotanical heritage.
We also have learned of new International laws, diplomatic protocols that protect our autonomy as a collective international tribute state which call for access and benefit sharing agreements for natural biodiversity and genetic resources from our territory; while other new laws require the free, prior and informed consent of our people before commercially or non-commercially using our cultural and intellectual property. Such laws are good because they make biopiracy, deforestation, illegal mining and unlawful occupancy International crimes against the environment and Indigenous peoples; but also they create new economic opportunities for us as a collective entity in control of of specific territory and our self-determination.
The conventions say that we are sovereign, we can make our own laws, that our traditions, customs and cultural ways will forever be protected. However, taking advantage of these rights is something that "we as a people" must pursue on our own as a sovereign entity, no one will do it for us; the closest we can get to anyone helping us is by engaging professionals who care, which is the basis for the formation of our foundation. Previously (50 years ago) Indigenous Amerindians were considered less than dignified citizens in our respective countries; today we are in charge of a territory the size of Belgium.
The United Nations also wants to underpin us as subjects of the state, despite the rights that the state has not made good on or fully available to us, then the annexations of the biospheres and ecosystems reducing our influence, restricting our conduct, preventing access to ancestral territory and damaging our destiny as a people. The purpose of the United Nations is to serve its member nation-states, not the subjects therein - they do not recognize Indigenous peoples as sovereign states, but they do recognize them as important cultural assets with civil and human rights, this makes programs like the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, FAO Food Sovereignty and the GEF/UNEP Biodiversity agendas important, despite the state's involvement.