THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

Abstract

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is typically read as an elaboration of classic human rights norms. Patrick Macklem in his book, The Sovereignty of Human Rights, argues that the declaration should instead be read as corrective in that it seeks to address unfair distributions of sovereignty sanctioned by international law. I suggest that instead of being based on a single justificatory model, whether human rights or historical, the declaration contains both models. This interpretative mixed model, as I call it, is based on the political history of the negotiation of the declaration and, in particular, on the advancement of a decolonization model by indigenous peoples of the Northern Anglo-settler states versus the human rights model preferred by indigenous peoples of Latin America, Asia, and Africa.