President's Teaching Scholar at international symposium this week

Glenn Morris, a professor of political science and President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado Denver, will present a paper at the University of South Australia regarding the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.

Morris is director of the CU's Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics. He also served as a delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights (now the United Human Rights Council), the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The international symposium, "2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People – Indigenous Survival: Where To From Here?" will be conducted Dec. 9-10 and will include indigenous community members, international lawyers, academics and activists who have worked in the area of international law and the rights of Indigenous Peoples from the 1970s up until the present.

Morris will present "The Twisted Journey of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." The paper examines the original philosophy and vocabulary of Indigenous liberation that motivated the strategy of Indigenous Peoples to enter the United Nations processes in 1977, the development of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1981, and the drafting of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples over a 12-year period.