More than 500 nations of Native Americans are recognized by the United States, a sampling of the diversity that contained within indigenous cultures.

A lecture on “Indigenous Rights in Global Perspective,” given by Mililani Trask, a representative for the Pacific Basin on the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, began Oberlin’s fourth annual lecture series on indigenous women.

This year, the series embarks on a partnership with the Comparative American Studies department. A CAS mini-course, titled “Native American Feminisms,” incorporates the lecture series as its main focus.

Trask said that a vast majority of human rights violations are committed against indigenous peoples.

Trask said the definition of “indigenous” is becoming increasingly difficult.

“The United States, like many other nations, faces the difficult problem of defining what it means to be indigenous, and determining a course of action involving indigenous peoples,” Trask said.

Trask referred to the recognized Native American nations, none of which include native Hawaiians or the indigenous people of American Samoa, Puerto Rico or Guam.

“Is the United States to recognize these nations, and, if so, what would that recognition entail in political, economic and social terms?” Trask asked.

“Human rights,” she said “are universal, not negotiable.”

The United States stands as a nation that consumes an extremely large percentages of the world’s resources per capita, according to Trask. This occurs while smaller indigenous economies are employed primarily in single product markets or in industries such as tourism. Trask cited the instability of these economies, and said the consumer nations are obliged to put back into the world what they are using.

Trask went on to describe what these nations currently put back into the world. She described the effect of the Human Genome Project on indigenous peoples. Many indigenous peoples live in conditions that seem uninhabitable to others, like the Inuit, who survive in an environment with no significant vegetation and temperatures frequently dropping to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Trask stated that these traits are sought for their value to military technology; members of the Human Genome Project work to preserve these traits while letting the cultures that they belong to “become extinct.”

Having dedicated her work to the protest of such behavior, Trask described her fight and urged Oberlin students to take action.

“It is easy to feel defeated, it is easy to become bitter. But those who have succeeded in terms of human rights have been those who refused to take no for an answer. It is the world that is indigenous. The colonizers are the minority. The indigenous world is the real world.”