ABSTRACT
To grasp this phenomenon, we must first define “indigenous peoples.” The task is not easy. Indeed, both in discourse and in international law, the challenge of definition remains a “complex [and] delicate” one, in anthropologist Ronald Niezen’s appraisal.2 Nevertheless, there are “some areas of general consensus among formal attempts at definition,” well captured in a 1987 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on indigenous issues, José Martínez Cobo:
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the society now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present nondominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.3
