Roberto Borrero will never forget standing in the United Nations General Assembly on the day that countries voted to approve the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was September 13, 2007, in New York City, and Borrero had spent years roaming those halls on behalf of the International Indian Treaty Council, urging country representatives to adopt the new human rights standard.
As he watched his fellow Indigenous advocates hugging one another and celebrating, he thought of how many times their peoples had been denigrated as savages and animals. Here was a new standard enshrining Indigenous rights as human rights. “The world is finally looking at Indigenous peoples as humans,” he thought.
The vote was a pivotal point for Indigenous advocacy. For decades, people like Borrero had turned to the United Nations to hear their pleas when colonial governments refused to do so.
Today, nearly two decades after that vote, Borrero senses Indigenous peoples are approaching another critical moment.
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