Native American Human Rights

Native American people are in their origin previous to the formation of the Colombian state. They have had to do with the long historical process leading to European settlement, through the struggles for independence, and the establishment of the republic. It has been a hard road of resistance in cultural and territorial defense, but also significant contribution to culture and national life. Since many years ago native American people have been and known as a representation of the ancient cultures, but nowadays things have changed a lot, because of the industrialization and other external reasons which are related to the lack of presence of the government in native American aspects as health, education, territory and economical and social aspects , which is a persistent fact in Colombia.

Colombia is a country divided into two rather large territorial areas, on the one hand we find the urban area and on the other hand we find the rural area from which the majority of the Native American population belongs to, and even though Colombia counts with a large number of participation of the population, native American participation does not exceed the 3.4% of the total population. As well this is not the only problematic that affect Native American cultures: The loss of territories and territorial control in many areas of their land from non-Native American people is one of the big issues that affect this communities and that prevents native American people to acquired their right to development of conformity with their own needs.(U.N 2008), native American cultures suffer the encroachments by individual people, groups or corporations, The current law has shown it inefficacy to solve this problems, and on the other hand authorities have not been interested in pursuing real solutions to this problematic. As territory aspects clearly affect these cultures, health is an aspect and a service that is very poorly developed in native American areas due to the poor care of the state in this areas of the country. The service that is offered to native American people don’t take into account either the customs or traditional medicines, does not take into account demographics aspects of the population or the places where they live, and because the western model of care is not fully accepted by their cultures, because their believes that western medicines are based on many chemicals that could affect the population, so service and access to health is fairly restricted to native American people which affect the negatively.

In conclusion, Native American people have been affected by many problematic because of many reasons but principally because of the limited presence and care of the state toward native cultures, this lack of presence affect many aspects such as the implementation of educational systems, political and ideological schemes and territorial aspects, as the taking of native American lands by foreign individuals who don’t

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