May 9, 2012 | Quote

‘We’re Not There Yet’

Elizabeth Warren Can Have 1/32nd of an Acre
“Ever ready to meddle where it's least needed, the United Nations Human Rights Council recently dispatched its special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, to inspect the United States,” PJMedia's Claudia Rosett reports:

Actually, it appears that Anaya himself is from the United States, or at least his biography says he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1983 and works as a professor of law at the University of Arizona. But for purposes of UN business, the UN tells us, Anaya was “invited” to come to America on his UN Mission–apparently the first time the UN has dispatched to the U.S. a special rapporteur of this kind–by the Obama administration, along with “indigenous Nations and organizations.”

Anaya's itinerary included twelve days visiting Washington, D.C., Arizona, Alaska, Oregon, South Dakota and Oklahoma; talking with federal and state authorities, tribal leaders, NGOs and so forth. And on Friday he held a press conference in Washington charging “racism” and “discrimination” and inspiring the Guardian headline, “US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says the United Nations.” Or, as the BBC further expounds, “UN official calls for US return of native land”–including the Black Hills of South Dakota, site of Mount Rushmore.

Rosett concludes by suggesting that if we're going to give land back to the Indians, “let's start with the ample patch of midtown Manhattan that currently houses the headquarters of the United Nations.” But the U.N. site was never Indian land. It was a bay, filled in only in the late 1860s.

Read the full article here.

Issues:

International Organizations