Bizarre claim indigenous people were 'comeovers'

‘It's indicative of the priority that the plight of indigenous people has been given that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was not adopted until 2007’

I read an item recently in which its averred that the Mapuche indigenous people are ‘comeovers’ in Argentina in that its claimed they came over the Andes after the Argentinian State was set up.

The Mapuche are one of a number of indigenous groups globally that are campaigning for a better deal from the former nations that colonised them.

The group spans several countries in Latin America including Chile where the conflict for rights is fiercest. However there are also claims in Argentina and the response that the Mapuche ‘came in’ is somewhat bizarre.

There is no doubt that they crossed the Andes range and settled in Patagonia but some accounts put this well before the establishment of the Argentine State. In any case the Mapuche are assimilated with the Tehuelche people who inhabited the Patagonian region for many centuries before and indeed aided the Welsh colonists who set up the community there.

In Chile the repression of the Mapuche is at its height. Several Mapuche have been killed in clashes with police (pic) and most recently hunger strikes have been held to try to counter draconian anti-terrorism legislation by the government of Chile.

The rights and wrongs with be argued about interminably but the short answer on a global scale is that indigenous people in Australia, North, South America, the Indies even in Europe have received a bad deal from host powers. The plight of the Mapuche shows that weapons and words are still used to deny indigenous peoples their rights.

I suppose it's indicative of the priority that the plight of indigenous people has been given that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was not adopted until 2007 (though UN sub body the International Labour Organisation did address the issue in terms of workers in the 1950s).

Image: Mapuche activists killed in clashes with police in Chile.

Bernard Moffatt