Coates: Helping Indigenous Peoples is about more than embracing UN declarations – Ottawa Citizen
September 20, 2017
As world leaders, including our own, meet at the United Nations this week, there have been renewed calls for Canada to fully embrace the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Since the 2015 federal election campaign, when Liberal leader Justin Trudeau lifted Indigenous issues from the recesses of federal politics and established UNDRIP and the improvement of conditions for Indigenous Peoples as signature commitments of his party, UNDRIP has attracted a great deal of attention.
Indigenous Peoples celebrated the new prime minister’s obvious personal commitment to UNDRIP, but they had learned over the years to look for action more than promises. Their caution increased when the government announced – as logic, cost and Canadian realities dictated – that it would not adopt UNDRIP directly or immediately into Canadian law and practice.
