Endurance

Native American tribes and other indigenous forms of governance worldwide today have indeed struggled to overcome genocide, assimilation, and incorporation in maintaining their societies. The cosmopolitan nature of the world indigenous peoples' movement, as they band together to confront globalization and privatization through venues at the UN and elsewhere, is the result of studiously raising consciousness about the unfairness of state-centric standards of the original international human rights regime. As they prepare to challenge the UN member states over such issues as climate change, the indigenous peoples greatest strength is legitimacy, something many governing state entities lack.