Aboriginal Nations See Boon in Free Trade 

Rick Hormung / New York Times 24apr01

HADDAM, CT  -- All this week, the Mohawks of Akwesasne used provisions of the United States' oldest major international trade agreement - the Jay Treaty of 1794 - in reacting to America's newest trade effort, the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement currently being negotiated, and fiercely opposed, in Quebec City.

As Canadian officials detained protesters flying in from North and South America, busloads trekked along New York state Route 37 to the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation. This 28,000-acre stretch of islands, coves and inlets on both sides of the St. Lawrence River has its own government. Many Mohawks consider themselves residents of an aboriginal nation.

If anything, indigenous peoples may already understand the pressures of globalization better than the negotiators in Québec. These American nations enjoy various types of constitutional and statutory sovereignty that give them - not trade officials from Washington, Brasilia, Buenos Aires. or Ottawa - the authority to negotiate development agreements for the natural resources and wildlife of their lands..

The Yanomami control the gold in their plush Amazonian jungles. Regardless of the agreements negotiated at the Summit of the Americas, these resources will not move without their consent - or so native peoples hope.

The creation of a free-trade market of 800 million people exchanging $11.5 trillion worth of goods and services is, to many aboriginal nations, a step backward. If Brazil and Venezuela cannot resist the demands of globalization, what chance will the Yanomami have?

At the same time, the FTAA agreement could give aboriginal nations access to more customers and higher prices for their prized resources. An aboriginal nation in Canada, for example, could sell its water rights for hydroelectric generation to California rather than British Columbia.

Indigenous nations, by force of experience, have a dimmer view of the promise of the FTAA. To them it looks more like exposure to a harsh northerly wind. Perhaps the indigenous people of the Americas will use their sovereign powers to create their own free-trade agreement. a federation would not, at least, be ignored the next time the other Americans get together to talk about trade.