ABSTRACT
In May each year and since 2002, hundreds of representatives of indigenous peoples, together with hundreds of others including diplomats, the staff of UN agencies, delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academics, students and a fair number of onlookers gather at the UN’s Headquarters in New York for the annual session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII). The two-week meeting is dominated by the presence of indigenous peoples and the membership of the Forum itself, predominantly drawn from indigenous peoples, who account for a significant part of the speeches and interventions that occupy the time of the sessions. It is easy to imagine that the presence of large numbers of indigenous peoples in the heartland of international affairs is quite natural and almost inevitable, but it was not always so. For most of the UN’s nearly 70 years of life, indigenous peoples’ concerns were not given consideration, nor were they visible.
