104 van Genugten et al. urges the State party to issue birth certificates upon the birth of a child and for free.22 More promising is a case in the southern Philippines, which demonstrates that all kinds of practical obstacles to ensuring birth certificates, even for remote indigenous people, can be overcome. Here, in order to prevent statelessness and to tackle the root causes of further problems, a UNHCR-funded programme was carried out by the government’s Department of Social Welfare and Development, aiming to provide birth certificates to indigenous communities living in the Autonomous Region Mindanao.23 To meet this purpose, a 15-member team travelled long distances to meet and register people in those remote areas. Undoubtedly, their reward for this effort lies in the following reactions from indigenous individuals: ‘I can now say that I am really who I am’; ‘The first thing that I will do with my birth certificate is apply for a job’; ‘I also want to go to school. And I want to help my fellow Teduray and become a member of the registration team.’24 3.2 Recognition of Indigenous Identity Papers A slightly different issue we would like to touch upon is the phenomenon of ‘Indigenous passports’ as it reveals the surprising resilience of (some) indigenous peoples and a tremendous confidence in their ‘own’ nationality and maintaining a sense of national belonging and cultural identity. The following example of the Iroquois, also called Haudenosaunee, passport illustrates that (some) indigenous peoples are not so much interested in obtaining the nationality of a particular State, but rather in keeping and cultivating their own nationality. The Iroquois Confederacy, a confederation of six Indian tribes (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora) across upper New York State,25 is a formal government established a thousand years ago and is considered by some to be ‘the oldest continually operating democracy in North America’.26 The Iroquois passport was first used in 1923 by Cayuga statesman 22 23 24 25 26 Ibid. ‘Statelessness: A New Lease on Life Thanks to a Birth Certificate’ News Stories (3 November 2011) <http://www.unhcr.org/4eb2d8136.html> accessed 21 October 2013. ‘Statelessness: A New Lease on Life Thanks to a Birth Certificate’ News Stories (3 November 2011) <http://www.unhcr.org/4eb2d8136.html> accessed 21 October 2013. Iroquois Confederacy, (Britannica Academic Edition) <http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/294660/Iroquois-Confederacy> accessed 21 October 2013. ‘Rights of Indigenous Peoples gained international attention, support in 2010’ Native Times (17 January 2011), <http://nativetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view tilburg law review 19 (2014) 98-107