The Declaration of Independence and The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”

The writers of the Declaration of Independence claimed that many wrongs had been done to them. They created this document to state these wrongs and protect themselves from similar injustices in the future. That is why I found it ironic that they turned around and committed the same offenses to the people that they encountered in “their” new country. At the time the document was written, the Native Americans had already suffered hundreds of years at the hands of the European settlers. In the Declaration of Independence, they are even referred to as “the merciless Indian Savages.” Also it is important to note the “all” the “men” they only mean the upper class, white (of British European decent) males. All ethnicities of women are excluded in the original document.

After reading the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, I was shocked that the US, Canada, and New Zealand did not sign it right away. Another thing that surprised me was that it had taken until the year 2007 for a document of this nature to come into play. It was also interesting to see the similarities between the Declaration of Independence and the Rights of Indigenous People.