Examines international indigenous advocacy from the 1970s to today, and considers how questions of culture play into discourses of self-determination and indigenous rights

Around the world, indigenous peoples use international law to make claims for heritage, territory, and economic development. Karen Engle traces the history of these claims, considering the prevalence of particular legal frameworks and their costs and benefits for indigenous groups. Her vivid account highlights the dilemmas that accompany each legal strategy, as well as the persistent elusiveness of economic development for indigenous peoples. Focusing primarily on the Americas, Engle describes how cultural rights emerged over self-determination as the dominant framework for indigenous advocacy in the late twentieth century, bringing unfortunate, if unintended, consequences.

Conceiving indigenous rights as cultural rights, Engle argues, has largely displaced or deferred many of the economic and political issues that initially motivated much indigenous advocacy. She contends that by asserting static, essentialized notions of indigenous culture, indigenous rights advocates have often made concessions that threaten to exclude many claimants, force others into norms of cultural cohesion, and limit indigenous economic, political, and territorial autonomy.

Engle explores one use of the right to culture outside the context of indigenous rights, through a discussion of a 1993 Colombian law granting collective land title to certain Afro-descendant communities. Following the aspirations for and disappointments in this law, Engle cautions advocates for marginalized communities against learning the wrong lessons from the recent struggles of indigenous peoples at the international level.

"“[A] deeply insightful and beautifully crafted volume. Engel shows that several polarities are oddly linked, as in a Mobius strip. Highly localized indigenous groups appeal for assistance and support from international actors and despite their low technology level deploy the Internet. Diversity and uniqueness are pursued in the languages and styles of the West. Emphases on culture and the economic intertwine. Global and local fascinatingly blend. These complexly linked polarities give her narrative a haunting grandeur.”" - Ethnic and Racial Studies

"“Engle argues that indigenous rights advocates should abandon essentialized cultural conceptions and move toward ‘a more nuanced (and more ‘real’) understanding of culture’. That attenuated understanding, combined with a measure of strategic creativity, may yield more productive results for indigenous self-determination. With this impressive and truly interdisciplinary approach to international law, historians, anthropologists, and lawyers alike can appreciate Engle’s account of indigenous rights advocacy and move toward a more complex strategy that successfully integrates culture.”" - Yale Journal of International Law

"“Engle’s work helps to illuminate the complexity of indigenous politics and inter-institutional dynamics. Her book contributes to discussions of indigenous rights an enlightening dynamism that I hope will inspire further work on the politics of indigeneity.”" - Melbourne Journal of International Law