The Flemish are not sure they want to be in the same independent country–Belgium–with the Walloons. After centuries of living together, these two peoples may decide to go on their own. Like the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 creating the two separate states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic the two main nations... more →
Shortly before Spanish, Dutch and English sponsored ships arrived on the western hemisphere’s shores more than five hundred years ago, infectious disease rubbed out between 50% and 95% of the human inhabitants. Jerad Diamond’s sweeping effort to explain (in his book Guns, Germs and Steel) how it was possible for a few conquistadors to subdue... more →
It is our observation at the Center that there are from 6,000 to 7,000 nations that speak original languages and generally occupy territories in virtually every continent in the world. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) claims that indigenous peoples come from some 70 countries and have a combined population of some 370... more →
The government of Taiwan seeks to reenter as a full member of the United Nations giving the People’s Republic of China heartburn. Meanwhile, thirteen tribes as the original occupants of the contentious island seek to exercise self-government in accord with their recognized rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN... more →
The year was 1986. The United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations settled into its fifth year of operation meeting in Geneva; and its Chairman announced that it would draft a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. It was supposed at the time that just as the UN had created the climate for the... more →
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