Fourth World Journal
Winter 2023

Relations between Fourth World Nations and the world’s states that were formed on top of their ancestral territories are complicated.

Political activists leading non-governmental organizations, scholars in academic institutions, and governing representatives of Fourth World nations are daily attempting to describe and explain the challenges these nations on every occupied continent face.

Many of these activists, scholars, and representatives engage in unending debates at the United Nations and other state-based international bodies seeking to establish recognition of the myriad social, economic, political, and cultural encounters between nations and states that can and do result in nations’ troubles requiring solutions.

While states’ governments have allowed new international agreements such as the International Labor Organization Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 (1989), the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are important achievements.

These measures advance the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC)—a process of establishing negotiated consent agreements between Fourth World Nations to support their self-determination. But these are merely symbolic gestures by the States’ governments since there are no mechanisms to implement self-determination provisions, prevent genocides against nations, or protect nations’ ancestral territories that allow Fourth World Nations to restore their cultures and make decisions without external interference.

The limited diplomatic progress over the last fifty years is essential. Still, most states continue to work to implement assimilation policies that contemplate the disappearance of Fourth World Nations (i.e., India, United States, Australia, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, Iraq, Russia, and China). However, now is the time to establish diplomatic, economic, and structural mechanisms to implement the commitments made over the last fifty years.

The Center for World Indigenous Studies is working to establish a mechanism that can facilitate Fourth World self-determination to implement the process of free, prior, and informed consent. For example, the CWIS has developed a proposal for ALDMEM (Ancestral Land Decolonization Monitoring Mechanism) that would be established to arrange consent negotiations between Fourth Nations and states’ governments or their transnational corporations seeking to access peoples and resources inside ancestral territories. ALDMEM would implement an agreed-upon policy and advance self-determination.

Our authors in this issue offer clear options for organizing and enforcing policies to implement Fourth World self-determination rooted in accepted international principles.

The concept of Genocide, as it is currently understood, contemplates mass murder as the principal criterion for prosecuting the crime. In Cultural Death, Destroying a People in Whole or in Part, Rudolph C. Rÿser argues that it is essential to reestablish culturcide and ecocide as was initially contemplated by Rafaël Lemkin when he first defined Genocide. The U.N. Secretariat and the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide are discussed, emphasizing how the proposal for “cultural genocide” as one of three crimes was initially included in the first draft of the Genocide Convention. However, it is further explained that objections by states’ governments (in Africa and the United States included) resulted in removing cultural Genocide as a crime under the Convention. The essay contends that establishing cultural Genocide as the first crime of Genocide is essential for prosecuting perpetrators committing the crime since the beginning of the 20th Century. With 160 alleged crimes of Genocide committed against Fourth World nations for which no perpetrators have been held accountable since 1945, as indicated in this essay, the author urges action.

A Voice at the Table: Strengthening Collaboration in the Governance of Environmental Agreements is the product of scholarly collaboration between Beatrice Hamilton, Jason Baldes, Gary Morishima, Elize Shakalela, Jeji Barhese, and Roger Zetter. Their essay offers a concrete set of measures to overcome obstacles to the negotiation and enforcement of intergovernmental environmental, biodiversity, human rights, and health agreements between States’ governments and Fourth World nations’ governments. The authors point out that while there are Inter-State Agreements covering these and other matters, Fourth World nations. The essay notes the non-existence of institutional mechanisms that bridge the gap between nations and states, limitations of governance capacities in Fourth World nations to support collaborations with states, and state societal norms that obstruct recognition, respect, or value for Fourth World environmental knowledge systems. The authors offer a significant discussion and a proposed mechanism with the prospect of overcoming the obstacles.

Coca Cola and Coca Leaves, A Case Study on the use of FPIC is a unique exploration of a process of implementing the principle of free, prior, and informed consent with a significant transnational corporation. Irene Delfanti, MA, is a “thought” designer and researcher in Edinburgh, Scotland, working to create a pathway for implementing and enforcing the international requirement for transnational corporations to carry out FPIC in relations with Fourth World Nations. The author notes that the Coca Cola corporation states that it is committed to protecting human rights and implementing FPIC. However, she notes that there is a degree of obfuscation acted out by the corporation when it presents to the U.N. Global Compact as a member. Delfanti notes that Coca Cola is not directly involved in dealing with Fourth World nations. Still, its subsidiaries and partners that support Coca Cola’s beverage production do—and they do not implement FPIC.

Professor Veronica Tawhai of Matike Mai Aotearoa, a Māori nation. She is a scholar at the School of Māori Knowledge, Te Pūtahi a Toi campus of Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Dr. Tawhai lectures in policy and politics with a strong emphasis on the Treaty of Waitangi, Māori, and youth political engagement, constitutional change, and electoral, civics, and citizenship education. In her essay Recognition of Indigenous Citizenship and Nationhood: Challenges for Educators in Aotearoa she examines proposals for “co-governance” based in part on the provisions of the 1853 Te tiriti o Waitangi (the Māori language version of the text that places the original peoples in a primary governing role and British subjects second) (Treaty of Waitangi) concluded with the British government. Tawhai discusses the key provisions of the Treaty from the Māori point of view as issues to be focussed on by the efforts of educators to reveal the elements of Aotearoa citizenship.

In Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Indian Country, Strategizing to strengthen Nations’ Sovereignty, FWJ presents an updated Open Letter… pointing to major points of concern considered in a day-long conversation between National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp and CWIS Chair Rudolph Rÿser. As the NCAI President prepared to meet with tribal leaders in August 2022, the two evaluated the significant threats to tribal sovereignty facing American Indian Tribes in the United States and Fourth World nations around the world. As the letter reports, “Indigenous nations of the Northern Hemisphere and nations worldwide are facing the gravest challenges to their existence since the later 19th century.” The two leaders explore the threats and the need for a working strategy, including implementing existing agreements with states, such as the process of free, prior, and informed consent to counter state terrorism, corporate destruction of ancestral territories and state, and international policies denying self-determination and sovereignty.

Sabina Singh, Ph.D. Hiroshi Fukurai, Ph.D., Melissa Farley, Ph.D., Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D., and Mathieu Demont, MA, collaborated to provide presentations in the CWIS audio/video platform Fourth World Nations and the process of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Recognizing that the process of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) can be confusing and overly burdened with international “legalese,” the Center for World Indigenous Studies media team with the “thought design” of Irene DelFanti and graphic management of CWIS’s Sam Stoker and editing by Max Montalban developed an online version of this presentation. In an effort to create online access to the central elements of the FPIC process shared with Fourth World Nations, the interactive website is previewed here with links to the online interactive platform.

With an emphasis on proactive solutions, this issue of the Fourth World Journal shares the pages to come.

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