The Formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples

Publisher:  The University of British Columbia, Canada
Year Published:  1977
Pages:  23pp   Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX442

This account explores the formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) which has established a formal relationship to the United Nations and is seeking to have concepts of aboriginal rights accepted internationally as basic economic and political rights of indigenous peoples.

Abstract: 
This account explores the formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) which has established a formal relationship to the United Nations and is seeking to have concepts of aboriginal rights accepted internationally as basic economic and political rights of indigenous peoples. The account is developed under the headings: "The Early Experiments, "The Background of George Manuel," "The Confernce," Work Since 1975," and "Observations."

The article describes the early forms of political action undertaken against colonial repression in the late 19th and early 20th century by delegations to England and British Columbia and New Zealand. These attempts at resistance proved fruitless, as did later attempts in the 1930's to obtain assistance from the League of Nations.

Early in 1972, a federal government commissioner appointed to investigate the question of Canadian Indian land claims, visited both Australia and New Zealand. The same year, George Manuel, a member of the Britsih Columbia Shuswap Tribe and president of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB), initiated plans for a world conference of the Aborigines of Australia and the Sami of Scandinavia in 1971 and 1972, and of subsequent mandate from his Executive Council. In the spring of 1974 the NIB received accreditation as a U.N. Non-governemtnal organization (NGO).

After preparatory meetings in Guyana in 1974 and Copenhagen in 1975, the First International Conference of Indigenous Peoples was hosted by the Nootka Indians of Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, in October, 1975. It brought together fifty-two delegates from nineteen countries. In view of the thirty to thirty-five million indigenous people represented by the newly-formed world council at the Port Alberni Conference, the WCIP sensed an unmistakable political relatedness among groups scattered across much of the world.