ABSTRACT
On Human Rights Day 1992, the United Nations proclaimed an International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. In 1995, a Decade for Indigenous Peoples was launched and a Forum of Indigenous Peoples established. Unfortunately, the inaugural meeting of the Working Group was disrupted by gatecrashers. A self-styled delegation of South African Boers turned up and demanded to be allowed to participate on the grounds that they too were indigenous people, whose traditional culture, moreover, was under threat from the new African National Congress government. They were unceremoniously ejected, and no doubt their motives were far from pure, but the drama might usefully have drawn attention to the difficulty of defining and identifying Indigenous People.
