When I was thirteen years old, my father took me to Gettysburg. It is my first recollection of my father’s growing passion for studying the history of the Civil War, which, I was only to realize long after his death, was his way of grappling with the unresolved horrors of his own experience as a battlefield medic. By escaping into the minutiae of a past and – at a distance – more heroic war, he had been probing his feelings about a war that he suspected (like Paul Fussell in Wartime, and Farley Mowat in And No Birds Sang) was dominated by ‘‘chickenshit’’ and pointless death. He was past sixty before he told me how terrified he had been, and how he had never stopped thinking and dreaming about what he had seen.

A recently concluded special session of the General Assembly adopted, for the first time by consensus, a blueprint for the coordination of national and international economic policies. Carefully worded without any reference to the “New International Economic Order,” the session’s declaration nonetheless echoed the NIEO and its principal instrument, the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, which provided: “States should co-operate in facilitating more rational and equitable international economic relations and in encouraging structural changes in the context of a balanced world economy in harmony with the needs and interests of all countries, especially developing countries, and should take appropriate measures to this end.”

A recent meeting of governmental and indigenous nongovernmental experts in Geneva paved the way for more direct indigenous participation in United Nations decision making, and challenged the international community to harness multilateral development assistance for the promotion of indigenous peoples’ rights.

Meeting for 10 days in Geneva last September, a group of 15 experts convened by the International Labour Office recommended substantial changes in ILO Convention No. 107, which for nearly 30 years has been the only binding international instrument on the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples. Noting the importance placed on the right to self-determination by indigenous peoples, the experts concluded that the Convention’s original emphasis on integration “no longer reflects current thinking” and should be replaced by the principle of affording these peoples “as much control as possible over their own economic, social and cultural development.” The Organisation’s Board of Governors approved the experts’ report in November, and placed the revision on the agenda for the 1988 General Labour Conference.

Forty-five years ago, U.S. Indian Commissioner John Collier helped persuade the members of the Pan American Union (now the Organization of American States) to establish the Inter-American Indian Institute “to elucidate the problems affecting the Indian groups within their respective jurisdictions, and to cooperate with one another, on a basis of mutual respect for the inherent rights of each to exercise absolute liberty in solving the ‘Indian Problem’ in America.” Operating under an international convention concluded in November 1940 and governed by a board of 21 state representatives, the Mexico City-based Institute is charged with “scientific investigations,” technical assistance to national Indian agencies and “the training of men and women experts devoted to the problems of the Indian.” Institute policy is also guided by an Inter-American Indian Congress of governmental administrators of Indian affairs, which is convened every four years.

The Working Group on Indigenous Populations, an organ of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, ended its fourth annual session last August by distributing seven “draft principles” to governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for comment as the first step in preparing “a draft declaration on indigenous rights, which may be proclaimed by the General Assembly.” For the first time since indigenous organizations took their concerns to the international level in 1977, a formal commitment has been made to the development of new law, probably in time for the “cinquecentennial” in 1992 of the “discovery” of the Americas and a proposed international indigenous year.