Across the world today, October 14th, is ‘Indigenous People’s Day’ and is set aside to mark recognition and identification of those described as having “cultural difference from other groups in a State, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural mode”.
While the Native American Indian people are probably the most widely recognised as being a race of indigenous people, there are in fact estimates that globally the populations of Indigenous peoples range from 250 to 600 million and that there are some 5,000 distinct groups of Indigenous peoples spread across every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world except Antarctica.
The rights of Indigenous peoples are outlined in national legislation, treaties and international law. The 1989 International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples protects Indigenous peoples from discrimination and specifies their rights to development, customary laws, lands, territories and resources, employment, education and health.
Eighteen years later, in 2007, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples including their rights to self-determination and to protect their cultures, identities, languages, ceremonies, and access to employment, health, education and natural resources.
While the UN has no formal definition of ‘Indigenous People’ it does state: “these are peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions”.
Meanwhile the World Bank states that "Indigenous Peoples are distinct social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced."
But perhaps of most interest is that Amnesty International declares that Indigenous People can be identified according to certain characteristics which include:
Self identification as Indigenous peoples;
A historical link with those who inhabited a country or region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived;
A strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources;
Distinct social, economic or political systems;
A distinct language, culture and beliefs;
Marginalized and discriminated against by the State;
They maintain and develop their ancestral environments and systems as distinct peoples.
Will anyone care about this disappearing race?
Based on the criteria listed above, and particularly in the Amnesty International definition, here in Ireland we clearly have a group that ‘ticks all the boxes’ as the Irish rural coastal communities and those who have hundreds of years in fishing tradition and heritage can certainly claim to have: (1) historical links with their region and cultures; (2) strong ties with their territories and surrounding natural resources; and (3) have been marginalised and discriminated against by the State.
Over the past 50 years the people of Ireland’s fishing industry have been subjected to a barrage of political reasons why, bit by bit, increasing amounts of their rightfully-owned natural resources is being removed from their possession and given away to other nations whilst the people of Ireland’s own coastal communities go out of business, are displaced out of their traditional homes, eventually resulting in the death of entire coastal regions as economic centres.
Throughout this persecution of fishing communities a succession of Irish governments have claimed innocence and that everything is the fault of EU rule; semi State bodies claim innocence and that they are under Irish Government instruction; environmental groups working on behalf of profiteering offshore renewable energy companies claim innocence because they’re only trying to ‘save the planet’; and the Dept of Marine see themselves so far above the law that they don’t even answer the allegations that they have historically employed a divide & conquer strategy of keeping every sector of the fishing community distracted in arguments against each other over quotas and rights whilst in reality, in overall terms, they are being robbed blind of the resources they once jointly owned.
For many years, on a daily basis, the indigenous people of the Irish fishing communities are being rained upon with different challenges of bad news and new regulations, from never-ending rising operating costs and poor market prices to inshore vessel quotas to struggles in the demersal fleet sector, and to a pelagic catching & processing sector reduced in size by over 50% in the last ten years alone - - each issue apparently unrelated to the other - - but the big picture is an industry, a sector, complete coastal communities, and an entire race of people being quietly eradicated so that someone else can profit from the natural resources traditionally the rightful claim of these indigenous people.
Even systems such as the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy has shown itself to only benefit the powerfully corrupt and is designed almost so that honest people can’t be successful - - as those who innocently adhere to the rules, thinking they are doing the morally correct thing, wind up being abused and robbed of their resources, giving credence to the old saying of ‘nice guys finish last’.
We live in a modern era of speaking out and demanding global recognition for protection of rights for the weak, the downtrodden, the persecuted and even beyond the human race, the protection for animals, wildlife, and the actual environments in which we live, and even to the point that the uttering of a word against any of those who seek to be ‘protectors’ is labelled as ‘hate speech’ and verges on being a crime against humanity…
… and yet not one of these shining examples of justice dares to stand up and openly state the obvious in recognising that the indigenous people of Ireland’s coastal communities are facing eradication through treasonous lack of national political will to support them, corrupt national and EU administration systems, and vast all-consuming financial powers with aims only to pillage the rich resources of a seemingly defenceless race of people.
If the people in the Irish fishing industry and in the Irish coastal communities are expecting the Calvary to come riding over the hill to save them at the last minute then they will be bitterly disappointed - - it is time to face the reality of having to defend a right to national resources or disappear without a trace.
I am Ireland:
I am older than the old woman of Beare.
Great my glory:
I who bore Cuchulainn, the brave.
Great my shame:
My own children who sold their mother.
Great my pain:
My irreconcilable enemy who harrasses me continually...
Great my sorrow
That crowd, in whom I placed my trust, died.
I am Ireland:
I am lonelier than the old woman of Beare.
Pádraig Pearse 1879-1916
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