Beyond the Trail of Broken Treaties: The International Indigenous Activist Movement, 1974–80

This paper explores the transition from the domestic agendas of Indigenous movements of the in the US and Canada to transnational political efforts centered on international human rights discourses in the mid-to-late 1970s as a means to strengthen Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Through comparative case studies of four Indigenous activists groups across North America—The International Indian Treaty Council, the National Congress of the American Indian, the National Indian Brotherhood, and the Organization of American States—I examine the complexities of working across colonially-imposed borders and the challenges of developing a shared international Indigenous movement. Through nuanced comparisons of specific organizations and activists, I identify specific strategies that de-centered US and Canadian settler states and highlights the influential role that Indigenous transnational organizations provided in building a foundation for the larger global Indigenous movements of today. Drawing upon a wide array of 20th and 21st century Indigenous critical theory, and reflecting recent trends in Indigenous transnational and settler colonial studies, the presentation makes visible a “transformative turn” in international Indigenous activism that laid the ground work for the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and other measures in the coming decades. As such, my work constitutes an important revisioning of trans-indigenous activism from the 1970s and 1980s at the very moment that domestic movements were being actively repressed and marginalized.