SAN CARLOS, Ariz. – A group of southwestern tribes has filed a collective report for the United Nations Human Rights Council, documenting the human rights violations imposed on the indigenous peoples of the area by the United States government.

The 125-page report was filed with the U.S. State Department and will become part of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, a process created by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 as a mechanism by which the human rights records of all 192 U.N. member states are reviewed every four years.

The report emerged from a historic meeting June 11, called “Southwest Tribal Summit: Enough is Enough – Tribal Voices Must be Heard.”

Tribal leaders, citizens, and tribal organizations representing dozens of southwestern nations attended the event, which was organized by San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr. The summit took place at the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s Hon-Dah Resort.

Nosie said he was prompted to reach out to the international body because of the non-responsiveness of federal and state governments to the repeated concerns of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, Navajo Nation, Colorado River Indian Tribe, Hualapai Tribe and other tribes in Arizona about the toxic effects of mining on the lands and waters.

“Our rights are continually being trampled on and there is no one taking the responsibility to correct what is wrong. Perhaps the United Nations’ Human Rights Council can get the attention of the governments.”

The report documents the federal government’s human rights violations against the tribal nations under four overarching themes: The federal government’s failure to consider and protect the tribes’ right to religious and cultural freedom; its failure to enforce its own laws to protect natural resources; its failure to conduct formal consultation regarding development that impacts tribal lands and peoples; and the lack and suppression of education about tribal history in U.S. public schools and the existing political relationship between tribes and the federal government.

Many of the human rights violations relate to the degradation and destruction of natural resources – water, land, forests – and the desecration of sacred sites by the mining, logging and extraction activities of multinational corporations, which the federal government exempts from laws and restrictions meant to protect the environment.

“While the United States of America has come a long way from its original policy of seeking the direct extermination of Indian people, we continue to suffer from the institutionalized wrongs of the past. The insatiable appetite for tribal resources, the lack of the American people to consider the future consequences of their actions upon the environment and other cultures, and then historical prejudices toward Indian people which continue to infiltrate the federal, state and local governments, regularly result in violations of our fundamental human rights,” Nosie wrote in the cover letter to the report.

The report also urges that “the United States swiftly adopt the Declaration (on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and join the rest of the world in recognizing that indigenous people around the globe, including those within its own boundaries, are entitled to freedom, religion, culture, autonomy and resources which we require for our continued existence.”

The summit report includes statements from a number of tribes and a transcript of testimonies from the summit. The documents detail the specific human rights violations regarding religious rights, protection of sacred lands, repatriation of ancestral remains and items of cultural patrimony, the wholesale destruction of lands through the appropriation of resources by mining and logging companies that are given permits by the federal government, and the absence of consultation or what the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples calls “free, prior, and informed consent” – a requirement that recognizes indigenous peoples’ inherent and prior rights to their lands and resources – whether those lands and resources are their aboriginal territories or are currently “in trust” by a nation state’s government – and respects their legitimate authority to require that third parties enter into an equal and respectful relationship with them, based on the principle of informed consent. Among the statements were:

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    • San Carlos’ opposition to Resolution Copper’s plan to conduct large scale block cave mining on the tribe’s sacred ancestral land, which was taken by the federal government and designated as “public land” and the lack of consultation about the project. The tribe, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups attest that the project will devastate the land and potentially contaminate the water supply.

    • Yavapai-Apache Nation and Western Apache Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act cited the practice by some museums to label sacred objects as “cultural items” and refuse to return them to the nation.

    • Yavapai also cited the decades-long violations of its water rights that have been upheld in federal courts and the desecration of Dzil Cho (San Francisco Peaks), a holy mountain. The federal government approved a plan for a commercial ski resort to use reclaimed sewerage, including human waste, to be sprayed on the mountain to make fake snow. The courts upheld the government’s decision.

    • White Mountain Apache cited federal government’s breach of its trust responsibilities by failing to protect the tribe’s natural resources, especially its water rights, by massive developments to benefit non-Native interests.

    • The Western Shoshone National Council cited the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination regarding federal government policies involving uranium extraction, mercury contamination of water, water rerouting, restrictions on hunting and gathering rights, and more, that indicate environmental racism.

The U.S. became a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009 and the first review of its human rights record will take place this December.