LAST MONTH, 40 Aztec Indians led a march from downtown Vienna to the Austria Centre, venue of the World Conference on Human Rights, to highlight the plight of the world's 300 million indigenous people. Lobbying for the rights of indigenous people at the conference was appropriate, 1993 being the Year of the Indigenous People.

Delegates to the conference, which brought together 3,300 people from 1,500 nongovernmental organisations, asked the UN to declare a Decade of Indigenous People and to approve the Universal Declaration of Indigenous People. They averred development is a human right and that it included the right to protect the environment. They demanded development projects be formulated only in consultation with tribes.

Delegates said the best way to protect forests and ensure the survival of the 5,000 indigenous tribes of the world is to grant land titles to tribals. Anderson Mutang Urud of the Kelabit tribe of Malaysia flayed commercial logging, saying, "In areas that are logged, fish, wild animals and medicinal plants disappear. Wild pigs vanish and with them, our source of protein."

Yokonoschtietel Gomora, an Aztec from Mexico, besides demanding tribal land ownership and autonomy, said indigenous people do not want to be labelled minorities. "We constitute 47 per cent of Latin America's total population. Is that a minority?" he asked.

Ted Moses of the Cree tribe in Canada minced no words when he pointed out "the government that was meant to ensure our human rights has become an adversary." He said Canada's policy regarding the James Bay hydroelectric dams requires indigenous people to relinquish their land.

However, Pedro Inacia Pinheiro, a Tikuna Indian from Brazil, took a positive approach, saying, "By 1993, all indigenous land must be demarcated. This will allow us to be independent and take our own decisions about how the land will be used."