10 - Mapping the Sustainable Development Goals onto Indian Nations

Summary

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a collection of seventeen goals set by the United Nations in 2015. They form the backbone of the organization’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The SDGs have been criticized for overlooking Indigenous peoples (IP), principally for 1) inadequate recognition of IPs in the goals and targets themselves, 2) the indicators’ failure to disaggregate IP-specific figures from country-level data, and 3) for failing to recognize the potential contributions of IPs as active participants in attaining the Goals, as opposed to mere recipients. This chapter maps the SDGs to Indian nations in the United States. The chapter highlights examples of renewable energy on tribal lands as a lens through which to examine the ways the United States, tribes, and partners are achieving the SDGs domestically, and to show the necessity of SDG implementation within a framework that protects human rights, particularly the rights expressed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.