Book Description

"This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the complicated power relations surrounding the recognition and implementation of Indigenous Peoples' rights at multiple scales. The adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 was heralded as the beginning of a new era for Indigenous Peoples' participation in global governance bodies, as well as for the realization of their rights - in particular the right to self-determination. These rights are defined and agreed upon internationally, but must be enacted at regional, national and local scales. Can the global movement to promote Indigenous Peoples' rights change the experience of communities at the local level? Or are the concepts that it mobilizes, around rights and political tools, essentially a discourse circulating internationally, relatively disconnected from practical situations? To what extent are the categories and processes associated with 'Indigenous Peoples' an extension of colonial categories and processes, and to what extent to they challenge existing norms and structures? This collection draws together the work of anthropologists, political scientists and legal scholars to address such questions. Examining the legal, historical, political, economic and cultural dimensions of the Indigenous Peoples' rights movement, at global, regional, national and local levels, the chapters present a series of case studies that reveal the complex power relations that inform the ongoing struggles of Indigenous Peoples to secure their human rights. The book will be of interest to social scientists and legal scholars studying indigenous peoples' rights, and international human rights movements in general"--