Photo courtesy of @UNHumanRightsChief social media account
In April 2023, Shayai Lucero (Acoma/Laguna), President of the Board of Directors for the Changing Woman Initiative, received an invitation from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to attend a special meeting. The OHCHR is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nations that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on December 20, 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.
The office is headed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who coordinates human rights activities throughout the United Nations System and acts as the secretariat of the Human Rights Council
in Geneva, Switzerland. The eighth and current High Commissioner is Volker Türk of Austria, to whom Ms. Lucero would be meeting with.
High Commissioner Türk was visiting the United States for the first time. Normally, the first meeting/engagement of the High Commissioner is with the heads of state in any country under the UN System. But the United States does not follow this protocol, so the High Commissioner chose his inaugural engagement in the United States to meet with fifteen non-governmental organizations in an exchange of dialogue.
Ms. Lucero represented CWI at this special meeting. She attended the meeting online due to other obligations that prevented her attending in person. Each NGO was allowed three minutes to present their organization and issue to the High Commissioner Turk. Her speech is presented in this blog. After the presentations, a dialogue and conversation also took place, but was not publicly recorded. Ms. Lucero was able to conclude the conversation and educate on the intersectionality of Indigenous/Native American issues including healthcare, land extraction industries and MMIP.
The Changing Woman Initiative is an Indigenous womb keepers health collective located in central New Mexico working to restore the sovereignty of global Indigenous wellness by honoring our human right to equitable reproductive health. Our mission is to empower diverse Indigenous communities to protect cultural birth resiliency and the fundamental Indigenous human right to reproductive health, dignity, and justice.
Not only do American Indian communities have the worst physical access to healthcare, we also do not have culturally safe access. Across every indicator, American Indian and Alaska Natives face massive disparities in health. Our people suffer from higher rates of diabetes and related illnesses, heart disease and substance abuse. A contributing factor to these health disparities is that tribal communities are located in health deserts due to closures or limited services at Indian Health Service facilities. Some of the first services to be eliminated are emergency care, women’s health and related maternal health care services. The Changing Woman Initiative is working to close these gaps due to American Indian birthing people being required to travel vast distances to receive medical services. Services that are inadequate due to the lack of providers willing to work in these areas of the United States.
CWI recommends that the American Indian people should:
- Be provided access to culturally centered gender inclusive sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare,
- Be supported with our right to access and use of Native and Indigenous traditional herbal medicines, cultural healers and practices through education, service delivery, and community building and policy/advocacy; and,
- To always be included and represented in discussions in American Indian healthcare, especially where we can voice the importance of strengthening and supporting the inclusion of holistic family and community centered care.
The World Health Organization affirms that the highest attainable health is a fundamental human right of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or
social condition. So why are American Indian people still fighting against racism, genocide, forced sterilization, and discrimination when our birthing people are receiving inadequate prenatal care, risk of maternal mortality, and overall limited access?
The Missing or Murdered Indigenous People is a crisis in Indian Country. Historically, the US colonizing policies – war, human trafficking, cultural violence – through the centuries have not gone away in modern and recent times. In fact, increased violence acts against Indigenous people of all genders continually contributes to the crisis. Though grassroots efforts have brought forth the MMIP issue to the mainstream, the statistical data gap is significant and not accurate. There have been three main challenges identified by the federal government in responding to MMIP: 1. Lack of culturally specific services. 2. Complicated jurisdictional overlaps. 3. Gaps in criminal justice data about MMIP.
All types of law enforcement agencies need to work with tribal communities in developing Jurisdictional guidelines when investigating a MMIP case. Also tribal communities need to provide input in the development of culturally specific services and how to respond to MMIP especially in those tribal communities where resources are limited.
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1 National Congress of American Indians. Health Care | NCAI. April 2023.
2 Gonzales, Nicolle. “The Impacts of Racial Discrimination on Native American Birth and Midwifery.” Changing Woman Initiative (blog), April 2023. The Impacts of Racial Discrimination on Native American Birth and Midwifery – Changing Woman Initiative (cwi-health.org).
3 Gonzales, N. The Impacts of Racial Discrimination on Native American Birth and Midwifery – Changing Woman Initiative (cwi-health.org)
4 Lucero, Shayai. “Indigenous Justice Statement to the United Nations CERD Committee. United Nations, Geneva Switzerland, August 2022.
