For Indigenous Peoples, a Choice: Following Coloniser State Rules, or International Human Rights Standards

[image is from here]

What follows is a cross post from *here*:

Fourth World Eye
An Online Daily Journal of the Center for World Indigenous Studies.

Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The extension of citizenship rights to peoples that have been dispossessed and subsumed by the very States that are granting these rights is simply a form of internal colonialism. Indeed, citizenship is often associated with nation building and state legitimacy and, in fact, makes no sense outside of the framework of the nation-state. Human rights on the other hand are extra-governmental and have been traditionally used to counteract the repressive capacity of states. It is for this reason that indigenous peoples have accepted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an articulation of their rights, as opposed to the citizenship rights imposed on them by the settler state.

–Damien Short Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia