October 10, 2022
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Human Rights Educators USA (HRE USA) announced today its first Human Rights Educators USA Impact Award honoring the nearly 50 years of extraordinary contribution of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) to human rights education in the United States and around the world.
The IITC, an organization of Indigenous Peoples from North, Central, South America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, works for the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and the recognition and protection of their human rights, treaties, traditional cultures, and sacred lands. The IITC brings Indigenous Peoples together to share information and develop collective strategies to defend their rights, and ways of life at International Indian Treaty Conferences hosted by Indigenous Nations in South Dakota, Oklahoma, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Florida, Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Panama, Mexico, Guatemala, and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Since its foundation in 1974, the IITC and its many leaders have worked in numerous capacities to further human rights training and education throughout the United States and in global arenas, including at the United Nations. In 1977, the IITC was the first Indigenous organization to receive Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In recognition of its long-standing and wide-ranging work within the UN system on behalf of Indigenous Peoples January, in 2011, the IITC became the first Indigenous organization to be granted full General Consultative Status at the UN.
IITC provides training, capacity-building, and access for Indigenous Peoples to utilize a human rights framework to advance the struggles of their Nations and communities and to engage effectively in UN human rights bodies and mechanisms, especially after the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted by the UN in 2007. Key human rights focus areas for IITC include cultural rights and protection of sacred sites, prisoners’ rights, access to justice, right to health, racial discrimination, rights of Indigenous women and children, water and land rights, Free Prior and Informed Consent, Truth in History, decolonization and protection for Human, Treaty and Environmental rights defenders.
IITC will be recognized at the HRE USA Training As Action Series workshop on “Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights & Climate Change” session on Monday, October 24, 2022 at 7:00 pm ET. On behalf of IITC, IITC Executive Director Andrea Carmen and IITC Board members, Bill Means and Lisa Bellanger, will share words about its founding and current human rights education initiatives. In addition, IITC will be recognized at the formal HRE USA Human Rights Day Celebration virtual event on Friday, December 9, 2022, at 4 pm ET.
For more information on IITC see https://www.iitc.org or contact Andrea Carmen at andrea@treatycouncil.org.
HRE USA 