The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Mixed-Model Interpretative Approach

This dissertation offers a distinctive means of reading the key international instrument for promoting indigenous peoplesâ rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. The current orthodoxy is to read the Declaration as containing human rights adapted to the indigenous situation. This is supported by a particular reading of the political history of the Declaration â that is, that initial claims based on anti-colonialism advanced by Northern indigenous advocates were abandoned in favor of a more pragmatic human rights model. However, this reading does not do full justice to the complexity and diversity of indigenous peoplesâ participation in the Declaration negotiations. I provide a fresh account of the political history of the international indigenous movement as it intersects with the Declaration negotiations. What this reveals is tension between two movements that can be broadly separated along the lines of the North and South. Northern indigenous peoples were the originators of the international movement and sought to shoehorn their sovereignty-based claims into an international project. They relied in particular on anti-colonial justifications drawn from the UN-directed decolonization movement (decolonization model). But they were soon joined by a vibrant and skilled Southern movement of indigenous peoples representing Latin America, Asia and Africa. This movement placed greater emphasis than their Northern counterparts on human rights and especially the right to culture (human rights model). One of my core arguments is that contrary to conventional accounts, the decolonization model was not eclipsed by the human rights model but maintained throughout the Declaration negotiations. And it is the decolonization model that accounts for what I describe as the self-determination framework in the Declaration. This argument is developed through chapters 1-3. As a result the Declaration reflects two normative models, aimed at the two different regions: human rights for the South; and decolonization for the North (the mixed-model). The principal benefit of this bifurcated reading of the Declaration is that it enables both the Northern and Southern indigenous movements to gain the rights they seek from the Declaration. But how, precisely, does this political history translate into a legal justification for this mixed-model? In Chapter 4, I argue that the mixed model is also supported by legal and political justificatory arguments. The challenge of my mixed-model is to avoid the decolonization model being absorbed by the human rights model through the practices of interpretation. I hope to assist advocates to reposition their arguments and set out two case studies in chapter 5 that seek to show the potential implications of the decolonization model.S.J.D