Advancing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is the leading international instrument articulating the individual and collective rights of Indigenous Peoples. It recognizes that Indigenous Peoples have fundamental rights to freedom, equality and non-discrimination, as well as rights related to self-determination, life, land, religion and culture. The UNDRIP underscores the interrelatedness of efforts to ensure that Indigenous Peoples can live free from violence, take care of their children, revitalize their languages, and participate in lawmaking that affects them, among other rights and interests. 

The product of decades of advocacy by Indigenous leaders, the UNDRIP is now embraced by all 193 Member States of the United Nations, including the United States. In 2014, at the conclusion of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, the United States joined a consensus resolution of the United Nations General Assembly committing to take measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP. 

More specifically, the United States committed to “taking, in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous Peoples, appropriate measures at the national level, including legislative, policy and administrative measures, to achieve the ends of the Declaration and to promote awareness of it among all sectors of society, including members of legislatures, the judiciary and the civil service.” The United States further committed to “cooperate with Indigenous Peoples, through their own representative institutions to develop and implement national action plans, strategies or other measures, where relevant, to achieve the ends of the Declaration.”

Consistent with this commitment, during the Biden-Harris administration, the Interior Department along with other federal agencies have undertaken certain measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP, and advance the rights of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples.

Those include:

• Establishment of Secretary Tribal Advisory Committee, which emphasized engagement in international issues (2021)
• Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report Volume I (2022) and Volume II (2024)
• Best Practices Guide for Identifying and Protecting Tribal Treaty Rights, Reserved Rights, and Other Similar Rights in Federal Regulatory Actions and Federal Decision-Making (2022)
• Departmental Manual; Environmental Quality Programs; Major Program Issues and Decisions; Departmental Responsibilities for Consideration and Inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge in Departmental Actions and Scientific Research Chapter 7 (2023)
• Final Rule, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Systematic Processes for Disposition or Repatriation of Native American Human Remains, Funerary Objects, Sacred Objects, and Objects of Cultural Patrimony (2023)
• Interagency Working Group on Mining Laws, Regulations, and Permitting Recommendations to Improve Mining on Public Lands (2023)
• Best Practices Guide for Federal Agencies Regarding Tribal and Native Hawaiian Sacred Sites (2023)
• 10-Year National Plan on Native Language Revitalization (2024)
• Participation in diplomatic conference leading to the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (2024)
• Statement and Guidelines on Free, Prior, Informed Consent for applicants and grantees through the Division of International Conservation (2024)

It will be important for the United States, working with Indigenous Peoples, to continue to take measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP going forward.