204 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
that that was the reason they did not want to recognize us as
sovereign people? The only positive thing that I feel should
come out of this conference, if you are going to include us as
part of the international family is for you to recognize us, for
you to give us this recognition. Only with that can we con
tinue to live as completely sovereign people.
And you also, because you are part of the family of this
world, you should also be very concerned, because the com
mon enemy is your enemy too, and that enemy dictates policy
to your governments also. I warn you not to be so dependent
on the country that we are under, on the government that we
are under. We have demonstrated to you how many hundreds
of years we have survived.
We wish to continue to exist.9This international work at the United Nations grew slowly at first,
but by the mid-198os it was attracting grassroots Indigenous rep
resentatives from around the world and constructing important
initiatives.
The global Indigenous cause reached a major milestone in 2007
when the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only four members of the assembly
voted in opposition, all of them Anglo settler-states-the United
States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. All four, with some
embarrassment, later changed their votes to approval.1^0 Leo Kills
back reflects the perceptions of most Native people that the declara
tion might "bring western cultures out of their old world of savagery
and closer to humanity," noting the example of the end of World
War II:After the fall of Nazi Germany, its leaders were publicly os
tracized, tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes at the
Nuremburg trials. This led to the Genocide Convention and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nazi society
members affirmed that the Holocaust occurred and some were
forced to visit concentration camps only feet from their place
of residence. Under truth and reconciliation German society