Self-determination and Indigenous Self-constitution

Abstract

The international recognition of indigenous rights has received increasing attention over the last few decades, not least manifested in the 2007 United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). No doubt, the third article of the UNDRIP is paramount in this context, since it states that indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. The institutionalisation of this right has taken many different forms (if any) in different states. International law and the formal political discourse of indigenous self-determination have, however, also set limits to the understanding of self-determination and its realization in political practice, and the implementation process run the risk of stagnation. One reason for this is that indigenous self-determination most often has been confined within already existing structures without seriously contemplating visions and prospects defined from within indigenous communities. Moreover, in most parts of the world the right to self-determination is granted indigenous peoples from above, by the states in which indigenous peoples live, which imply that these states also constitute indigenous peoples at the same time as they are recognized. This state constitution is, however, challenged by indigenous self-constitution in many different ways.