Global Indigenous Rights and Resistance

Abstract

It is estimated that there are more than 470 million Indigenous people spread across 90 countries worldwide, making up more than 6% of the world’s population. Significant advancements in global Indigenous rights have occurred in modern international law since the early 20th century. The establishment of the League of Nations provided an early framework for notions of self-governance, and the establishment of the United Nations in the mid-20th century prompted the rise of Indigenous rights to be situated within the framework of international human rights law. Human rights law emerged from the need expressed in the 1945 UN Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to protect and secure the fundamental freedoms and rights of all humans. The first recognition of Indigenous peoples in the international legal order came with the 1957 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 107. Since the first recognition, there have been numerous advancements in the establishment of rights for Indigenous populations, most notably the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the International Decades of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People, as well as in areas of Indigenous cultural heritage and cultural rights. A world-systems approach to Indigenous rights sheds light on contradictory nature of rights, namely, that the rise of human rights has dovetailed with neoliberal globalization under the law. The connection between market fundamentalism and the expansion of human rights has been met with resistance by Indigenous peoples who have provided alternative realities, ways of social organizing, and protection of land and environment that center Indigenous ways of knowing and being. As a result, Indigenous rights have been shaped by the Indigenous peoples teaching the rest of the world the importance of moving away from “individual rights” and toward mutual responsibility and obligation.