Author Description

Concerned with American Indian self-determination, this book proposes that international human rights and the international political system are the means whereby the political aspects of Indian self determination in the Americas – both North and South – must be achieved. The first half of the book deals with the legal and political status of Indian peoples, that is self determination and human rights in law and principle; the second half comprises two case studies, one on Indians in the United States, the other on the Miskitu nation in revolutionary Nicaragua. The author – herself both a professional historian and an American Indian activist – shows that what in the 1970’s became known as the new Indian wars – the growing attacks on Indians by repressive regimes, along with their dispossession as a result of the activities of transnational corporations – did not simply begin again in that decade but, along with Indian resistance, had never ceased since 1492. The distinguishing feature of the 1970’s was that Indians abandoned their defensive and purely local struggles, and took to the political offensive, this time on a world stage. No longer victims, they became fighters, allied with other indigenous peoples in a struggle for survival – aware that defeat would probably mean an end to Indian civilization in the Americas.