Nations within.

A group based in London, England is dedicated to protecting the world's tribal people. Survival International says that the "key message of all Native peoples the world over is that they want control of their lands." So far, indigenous peoples have scored only small victories in their battle for recognition.

There's only one piece of international law that protects the rights of indigenous people, and even that has holes you could drive a bulldozer through. In 1957, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization signed a convention which recognizes the right of indigenous people to own and control their traditional lands. The convention has been revised a couple of times since, but the people it's supposed to protect say it needs to be strengthened. For one thing, it says that governments can remove indigenous peoples from their traditional lands for reasons such as national security and national economic development.

Look at what happened to the Sioux. In 1868, the Great Sioux Reservation covered eight million hectares. Today, it's a quarter that size. As gold was found in the Black Hills of the Dakotas and the railways were built, the Sioux were simply forced off their land.

The loss of the Black Hills was the worst part. The Sioux believe the first of their people was put on earth here. Asking the Sioux to give up the Black Hills, one wrote, is like telling a Christian to reject Christ as the Son of God. It wasn't until 1980, that the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that the Sioux had been treated unfairly. The Court said the Sioux should be paid $106 million for the loss of their traditional land. The Sioux rejected the offer, which worked out to about $1,500 for each member of the tribe. The Black Hills are home to the famous presidential sculptures of Mount Rushmore -- an attraction that brings in $600 million a year in tourist revenue. Homestead Mines is estimated to have removed gold worth more than $1 billion from the Black Hills. As one writer said of the Supreme Court award, it was like giving each Indian a second-hand car in exchange for land worth billions in coal, uranium, gold, copper, molybdenum, and other precious metals.

The story of the Sioux is repeated all over the world as governments boot indigenous peoples off their land to make way for hydroelectric dams, mines, of whatever the modern economy demands. However, in recent years, the passive victims of such developments have started to fight back. They have demanded a greater say in what happens to their land, and, in some places, they are getting it. Relatively new constitutions in Nicaragua and the Philippines give greater powers to indigenous peoples. In those two countries they have full ownership rights over their ancestral lands and control of non-mineral resources. Even in Brazil, the Amerindians have been given a voice in the exploitation of the Amazon rain forest as well as a share of the profits. In addition, they've been given land rights over 11% of the country. This is a source of resentment among many Brazilians who point out the Indians only make up 0.2% of the population.

Despite the gains, it's still common to hear stories like the one that came out of the village of Haximu in August 1992. Haximu is close to the unmarked border between Venezuela and Brazil. The few survivors of what appears to have been a massacre of Yanomami Indians described what happened: "The gold miners arrived and started killing Yanomami. They did pa! pa! Pa! with their guns and zing! zong! with big knives when they chopped up the women." In all, 73 Yanomami were killed by Brazilian garimpeiro, or illegal gold miners.

The Yanomami are the last major group of forest dwellers in the Americas. Brazil has granted them land rights, but the illegal gold miners don't take much notice of that. Some 50,000 miners have rushed into the area since gold and diamonds were discovered there in 1988. Some miners use huge dredging machines that frighten away the forest animals the Indians hunt. They also brought pneumonia, tuberculosis, and malaria -- diseases to which the Indians have no resistance. Some human rights groups say that as many as 10% of the Yanomami have been wiped out in three years.

The attack on Haximu was the latest in a 500-year-old assault on the various Amerindian tribes that live in Central and South America.

The issue has almost always been the same; the Indians had something the Europeans wanted. Whether it was land, treasure, or minerals, the standard European tactic has been either to push the Indians aside or kill them. Look at the numbers. At the time Christopher Columbus arrived, there were an estimated 47 million Indians living in Central and South America. Five hundred years later, there are about 31 million indigenous people living in the same area. Meanwhile, the population of the region as a whole has risen to 420 million -- an almost tenfold increase. So, while the newcomers have expanded their numbers the Native inhabitants have dwindled.

There are an estimated 200,000 tribal Indians living in the Amazon rain forest. Ranchers, miners, and timber companies are still cutting down the forest at the rate of 10,000 k[m.sup.2] a year. As a result, according to the Observer newspaper, there are signs that many of Brazil's 180 indigenous tribes are close to cultural and physical extinction.

Francisco de Oliveira Ramos has watched this happen. He's an administrator with the Brazilian government agency for Indian affairs. "I think that in 20 years, most Indians will be growing up in slums on the edges of our cities," he says. "I don't want to live to see it. A Kayapo warrior in a city is a very sad sight."

However, Kayapo Chief Poulinho Paiakan disagrees: "To say Indians should stay as they are, should not have the benefits of white man's technology, is racism."

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the story is similar. When Britain settled Australia it declared the land to be terra nullius -- land that belonged to no one. Never mind the Aborigines who had lived there for 40,000 years, and who regarded the land as something like a second skin. The Native population was quickly relegated to second-class status after the arrival of the British, and for 200 years they have watched as their land was taken away from them and they were forced to live in poverty.

Today, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Aborigines, depending on how they are counted. It's estimated that only about 50,000 are pure blooded. They were not even considered citizens of Australia until the 1970s. Before that, they were wards of the government with about the same rights as small children.

But the Aborigines recently won a landmark court decision. The so-called Mabo ruling was handed down by Australia's High Court in 1992. The decision rejected the British notion that the land was nobody's until they arrived. Now, the Aborigines can claim title to land. However, land that now "belongs" to farmers or is earmarked for mining is protected from Native claims. The Aborigines can only claim vacant Crown land, such as woodland or unoccupied outback.

Australia's Prime Minister, Paul Keating, gets praise from Aborigines for pushing legislation through Parliament allowing them to reclaim ancient tribal lands. However, Native leader Peter Yu says Mr. Keating still has much to learn: "He has never to my knowledge been out to the bush to see the Third World conditions many of our people live in...He has no concept of how bad things really are, and a very limited concept of Aboriginal culture."

To the south of Australia, the Maoris seem to be doing better. The original inhabitants of New Zealand, the Maoris arrived, probably from Polynesia, several hundred years before the Europeans. Unlike North American Indians or Aborigines, the Maoris were never shoved off onto reserves. They were integrated into society. Today, there are 300,000 Maoris although few if any are pure blooded.

Over the last decade, there has been a resurgence of pride in Maori culture. New Zealand's first inhabitants are now beginning to assert themselves. They are using the legal system to claim their rights under the Treaty of Waitangi. This treaty was signed by European colonists in 1840 and is the cornerstone of relations with Maoris.

But, there are two versions of the treaty, one in English and one in Maori. The words used in each version differ somewhat. For example, the English version states that the Maoris gave up their sovereignty of the land to the British Crown. The Maori version uses the word meaning "governorship" of the land. There's a big difference. Similar translation differences appear elsewhere and deciding on exact meanings has proved to be a good source of income for lawyers.

The Maoris are claiming title to as much as 60% of New Zealand's land. The value of these claims is in excess of $12 billion, and many whites fear they could lose their homes, farms, and businesses. The process of sorting these claims out will take many years. However, Nature may take care of the problem. Europeans and Maoris have interbred freely. It's been estimated that sometime in the next century more than half of New Zealanders will have some Maori blood in them. Perhaps, therefore, the Maoris will assimilate the Europeans.

Cousins of the Maoris, the Fijians, have refused to be passive as so many other indigenous peoples have. The first and, so far, only coup d'etat ever to take place in the Pacific happened in Fiji in 1987. A coalition government, which was dominated by East Indians, was thrown out of office. Sitiveni Rabuka, a Native Fijian took control of the government. Since that coup indigenous Fijians have been devising ways of keeping the East Indians out of power.

The island nation lies 2,500 kilometres off the east coast of Australia. It has been called a tropical paradise. A British colony until 1970, Fiji is home to about 720,000 people. Just under half the population is ethnic Fijian. However, 52% of the population is East Indian, the descendants of people brought there more than a century ago by the British as indentured servants. The East Indians have flourished and control most of the country's commerce.

General Rabuka said he feared that ethnic Fijians were going to be squeezed out of power and their land rights by the Indians. This fear was used as his justification for kicking out the democratically elected government. Since then, a new constitution has given ethnic Fijians a guarantee of 37 seats in the 70-seat parliament, while Fijians of Indian descent will have only 27 seats. Vivek Katju, an Indian diplomat, doesn't like this deal: "It says that indigenous Fijians should always have control over the country -- and everyone else is an immigrant race."

The other side of the debate is expressed by a Western diplomat. "The Indians have maintained themselves as a separate community. Their language, their culture has remained basically unchanged, and they have shown a certain amount of condescension to the Fijians. The Fijians feel they had a guest in their house -- and he took over."

A feeling shared by indigenous people all over the world.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. For several years, the United Nations has been trying to draft a universal declaration of the rights of indigenous people. However, national governments have blocked all attempts to have the declaration guarantee Native peoples control of land and resources. Through class discussion, write your own declaration and send a copy of it to the Minister of Indian Affairs.

2. Appoint a team of students to research one of the following indigenous groups and present a report to class on their current situation: Sami (Norway); Caribs (Caribbean); Ainu (Japan); Dayak (Borneo).

3. Debate the following: "Resolved that the best solution for all concerned is that the indigenous people of the world be assimilated into mainstream society."

RELATED ARTICLE FACT FILE:

According to a 1992 Amnesty International report, 87 indigenous groups in Brazil became extinct between 1900 and 1957.

RELATED ARTICLE FACT FILE:

Two centuries ago, indigenous peoples controlled most of the world's ecosystems; their territory has shrunk to between 12% and 19% of the Earth's land surface.