Indigenous Rights and United Nations Standards: Self-Determination, Culture and Land

Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law

by Alexandra Xanthaki

The debate on indigenous rights has revealed some serious difficulties for current international law, posed mainly by different understandings of important concepts. This book explores the extent to which indigenous claims, as recorded in the United Nations forums, can be accommodated by international law. By doing so, it also highlights how the indigenous debate has stretched the contours and ultimately evolved international human rights standards. The book first reflects on the international law responses to the theoretical arguments on cultural membership. After a comprehensive analysis of the existing instruments on indigenous rights, the discussion turns to self-determination. Different views are assessed and a fresh perspective on the right to self-determination is outlined. Ultimately, the author refuses to shy away from difficult questions and challenging issues and offers a comprehensive discussion of indigenous rights and their contribution to international law.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2007

Reviews

[Skevi K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexandra Xanthaki’s book adds a substantial amount of content to the topic of indigenous rights and what it means to acknowledge the rights of indigenous peoples on an international legal scale. She discusses fearlessly and provides the audience with a substantial amount of legal and political history. She is able to parallel human rights law and international law so that the argument of indigenous rights does not just remain within the realm of human rights discourse. She legitimatizes the discussion of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination by applying it practically to traditional international law rather than just theoretically. She also spends just enough time on the importance of clearly accepted and formulated definitions without it dominating the entire conversation of the book. Her focus on self-determination and what that means and looks like for indigenous groups is what drives the conversation in the book.

Self-determination for Xanthaki “is a thorny topic in international law with
remarkable contradictions.” For nation states, it means acknowledging an indigenous groups autonomy, which can create a wrinkle in a state’s level of political power and legitimacy. It also opens up room to reflect on a state’s colonial history and transgressions that their nation was built off of. We are given the space to also reflect on where the line can be drawn for whether or not the recalling of colonial history allows us to apply the “victim” label on indigenous people to push the argument for indigenous self-determination. The self-determination of indigenous groups impacts how we view nationalism, statehood, and political identity. It also dives into the topic of combining self-determination with land rights, which can be seen as a further threat to traditional state sovereignty