NIRAKN Seminar - The 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

Join us for a NIRAKN Seminar presented by Professor Robert Miller, Arizona State University, entitled:

Free, Prior and Informed Consent and the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Where: QUT Kelvin Grove, X Block Level 5 Ipswich Room, 88 Musk Avenue
When: Monday, July 30th
Time: 1:45 pm for a 2:00 pm start

The principle that Indigenous Peoples have the right to consent, or not, to the actions of governments that might impact them became part of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) in 2007. The DRIP took thirty years to write and to be enacted. The exact language of “free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC) is found in several provisions of the DRIP and very similar ideas are part of many other articles. The FPIC language in Article 19 of the Declaration is one of the primary reasons Australia, United States, New Zealand, and Canada voted against the DRIP; the only countries in the UN to vote no. How did FPIC become part of the DRIP, how was the DRIP enacted, why is FPIC so controversial, and what does it all really mean? Professor Robert J. Miller will discuss these points and will also describe how he researched this subject in writing his 2016 law review article on this topic.

Robert J. Miller is a professor at the ASU College of Law. He is a justice on the Grand Ronde Tribe Court of Appeals and was appointed in June 2016 to the Navajo Nation Council of Economic Advisors. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014 and to the American Law Institute in 2012. He is the author of three books: Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies; Reservation Capitalism: Economic Development in Indian Country and Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark and Manifest Destiny. Bob is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.