This introductory chapter provides an overview of the land rights movement, drawing from the experience of the Yolngu peoples in northern Australia. This chapter identifies the different ways that land rights may be recognized. Each of these mechanisms has strengths and weaknesses, with a constitution being the most robust form of protection for land rights. However, the biggest challenge is in the implementation of land rights. Despite the challenges, Indigenous Peoples have successfully protected and reclaimed their lands under the ongoing force of dispossession, employing strategies such as direct action and litigation. Drawing from the contexts presented in this edited book, this chapter identifies the barriers to advancing land rights; the strategies to overcome these barriers and to support the reclamation of land; and identifies some of the opportunities to strengthen land rights moving forward.

In 2011, the Brazilian Government began dismantling the country’s robust framework for Indigenous land rights by enacting measures to deny Indigenous Peoples’ access to their ancestral lands. From 2019 to 2022, the government did not recognize or title a single hectare of Indigenous lands, despite more than 700 pending requests for demarcation (or formal designation and titling). A change in government and six land demarcations in 2023, however, show signs of a new era for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and relationship with the state. This chapter analyzes evolving Indigenous land rights pre- and post-constitutionalization in 1988, the result of intense political mobilization and shifting colonialist perceptions of Indigenous Peoples. This chapter also discusses the main obstacles faced by Indigenous Peoples in enforcing Brazil’s protective land rights framework, accounting for the structures of settler colonial states – structures that permit institutional and physical violence against Indigenous Peoples by state and non-state actors alike. Finally, this chapter examines the opportunities created since the change in government in 2023, proposing new avenues to advance Indigenous Peoples’ constitutional land rights in Brazil.

Despite Chile’s recent failed attempts at constitutional reform, Indigenous land rights are (still) governed by the much-contested Indigenous Law of 1993 (Law No. 19,253). The land restitution program foreseen in this law is extremely slow and controversial, and the establishment of Indigenous territories (by ordinary law) appears far from reality. At the same time, there are a few recognized Indigenous territories in Chile, and they are constantly faced with a high density of hydro-electric plants, extractivist activities, disproportionate forest and logging exploitation, salmon farming and a growing tourism industry. Over the years, Indigenous Peoples have reacted in different ways to dispossession and encroachment. Driven by frustration, some have assertively occupied their ancestral lands. Others have filed lawsuits and found a more equitable venue to claim their rights in the national courts. Against this background, this chapter analyzes the processes of dispossession faced by Indigenous Peoples in relation to their traditional lands in the north and south of Chile over recent decades, how they contested the titles to ownership and possession of such territories, and the outcomes of their litigation strategies. After the public rejections of constitutional reforms in 2022 and 2023, it remains uncertain how Indigenous land rights will be governed in the coming years or how they will be treated in any potential reforms to Pinochet’s Constitution of 1980. Despite the unfavorable legislative framework, this chapter argues that Indigenous strategic litigation can best advance and support land rights in Chile.

Despite a recent law recognizing and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the post-independence laws of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have dispossessed, and continue to dispossess, Indigenous Peoples of their customary land rights. Collective and customary property rights are enshrined in the DRC Constitution; however, in practice there is little to no recognition or protection. This is because land statutes work in cross-cutting ways to deny Indigenous Peoples the formal legal title to their traditional lands, and without title they are vulnerable to dispossession by development or conservation. In the absence of a land tenure system establishing clear collective ownership rights, “community forests” represent an alternative strategy or pathway for Indigenous Peoples to secure their customary rights over their forests and their lands (the local communities’ forest concessions, CFCLs). Despite some successful cases of securing land tenure through the CFCLs, inaccessible legal requirements and difficult procedures make these a problematic pathway for land justice. This chapter sets out recommendations for strengthening land tenure and CFCLs.

The year 2021 saw record violent dispossessions of Indigenous Peoples across Paraguay. Once heralded as an early adopter of Indigenous land rights and legal protections, Paraguay is now a site of contentious land politics that have garnered international attention and litigation. In this chapter, we draw from over forty years of collective experience working on and researching Indigenous land rights in Paraguay – from litigation before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to ongoing advocacy with communities – and we trace the major legal achievements and document the ways that land rights have been challenged and threatened. We advance a theory of “pendulum policies” for land rights to trace the shifts in state-Indigenous relations, manifesting today as an implementation gap where de jure land rights are typically undermined in practice by state and private interests. In this chapter, we show how the role of international law and strategic litigations have pushed the pendulum from violations towards justice, yet we remain cognizant of the threats, from land renting to direct violence, which push the pendulum back towards violations. This chapter provides readers with a clear overview of Indigenous land rights in Paraguay, and offers recommendations for pushing the pendulum towards land justice over the next decade.

This chapter details the fragmented nature of the last sixty years of Aboriginal land repossession across Australia, both in terms of the nature of the rights and the level of restitution. Exploring the limited and uneven national Aboriginal land rights picture in 2024, we argue for an appreciation of the federal dimension of land rights policymaking. Uneven land restitution has resulted not just from spatially varying degrees of land commodification and the differing trajectories of land rights movements, although these were crucial. We aim to demonstrate that shifting state–Commonwealth (or Federal) relations within the Australian federation – crosscut against differing support from states and Commonwealth governments over time, and differing Commonwealth Government attitudes to federalism – led to a spatially uneven set of legislative land rights regimes across Australia. To do so, we narrate the varied responses to the Aboriginal land rights movement across the country in the wake of the Woodward Royal Commission in 1973 with an eye to the federal dimension. We argue that while the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke governments from 1972 to 1991 all failed to legislate national land rights, they did so for very different reasons, leaving the land rights agenda to the states. Ultimately, it was the centralizing power of the High Court that brought about a national but inadequate and partial resolution to the Aboriginal land question. Finally, we provide a series of maps and tables describing the jurisdictional variation in rights and interests in land restored to Indigenous Peoples at present.

The legal recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ collective land rights is contentious in Colombia. There are enduring land disputes between state actors and Indigenous communities. Land rights policies have passed through several political cycles, but these have typically been poorly implemented, routinely violated by state actions, and often rolled back with new legislation. The 1991 National Political Constitution (NPC) transformed Indigenous-state relations, where for the first time in Colombia’s history, the collective cultural and land rights of Indigenous Peoples were recognized and protected in the country’s supreme law. To date, Indigenous Peoples have secured exclusive ownership rights to over 33 million hectares of collective lands, or 28 percent of the country. However, most Indigenous lands were titled before the 1991 NPC, which was constrained in its promise by a long-lasting internal armed conflict (among other factors). A 2016 historic Peace Agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas promised to address the root cause of the conflict: land ownership disputes. This agreement has yet to resolve the land problem. Taking a historical perspective, this chapter analyzes the structural political and legal barriers to Indigenous land rights in Colombia. The chapter examines the interaction of the Peace Agreement with land rights laws and explores the strategies of Indigenous Peoples to secure and safeguard their land rights in this new context. The chapter concludes with recommendations for strengthening land rights across the nation.

Concluding chapter that synthesises the experiences from all the book, and relates these to the Sami land rights journey.

In Malaysia, three ethnic groups identify as “Indigenous Peoples”: the heterogeneous Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli, natives of Sabah, and natives of Sarawak. Malaysia’s hybrid legal system confers differing constitutional, statutory, and common law rights and privileges to Indigenous Peoples, which present distinct yet shared experiences of their land rights. These Indigenous groups were granted differing levels of constitutional privileges during Malaysia’s constitutional formation, which resulted in divergent written laws for the protection and recognition of their customary lands and resources. These differing laws and histories have functioned to dispossess these communities of their traditional lands, territories, and resources in their own ways. The strategy of litigation has afforded Indigenous communities some recourse for gaps in the written law but common law development of such rights and the court process have equally proven to be a barrier in some cases. Although international commitments to the sustainable management of resources have increased possibilities for the inclusion of Indigenous communities in matters concerning their lands and resources, constitutionally-entrenched legal privileges have yet to translate to the effective protection and recognition of traditional Indigenous lands and resources in Malaysia.

This chapter explores the complex connection between upholding land rights and the successful application of nature-based solutions (NBS) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It underscores the necessity of integrating indigenous wisdom, local customs, and community engagement into the design of NBS. By doing so, this research underscores the significance of honoring land rights, maintaining sustainable livelihoods, and achieving goals related to biodiversity conservation. By deeply examining the intricate relationship among land tenure, community engagement, and effective conservation practices, this chapter makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing academic conversation about how to practically implement NBS for conserving biodiversity.

Focusing on the afterlife of the Freedom Edict of April 7, 1800, the chapter moves the story into the nineteenth century, a period of imperial crisis that saw the emergence of liberal trends in the empire as well as new stakeholders in the historical context of the island and, more generally, of the Spanish Atlantic world. Chapter 9 focuses on the problems that the emancipated cobreros faced in actualizing a corporate community model along the lines of colonial Indian law. It further compares El Cobre’s predicament in the new period with that of two other recognized Indian pueblos of El Caney and Jiguani, a situation that resonated elsewhere in the Spanish Atlantic in the postcolonial Latin American republics. Questions about native rights, race, and citizenship, about civil and political rights, about corporate and individual land rights emerged in this new political context, especially with the globalization of El Cobre. This globalization was linked to the arrival of French refugees and the development of a British mining industry in the region. These emerging trends led to the erasure of major aspects of the Freedom Edict of 1800 by the early 1840s.

Chapter 8 focuses on the imperial state level to examine the legal and political logic informing the final adjudication of the case in 1799, a decision that constituted a shift in the decisions the Council of the Indies and colonial tribunals had been taking in the 1780s. The chapter examines the political reasons related to mining utility and security that informed the shift and the juridical basis imperial jurists used to ground the case’s outcome. Ultimately, the Bourbon Crown ruled in favor of the cobreros but attached caveats related to Indian law to their collective freedom. The chapter ventures into the immediate aftermath of the Freedom Edict of 1800 to examine the challenges that emerged in the colony regarding the actualization of the decreed emancipation. It also interrogates the possibility of compensation or reparations to the cobreros for their wrongful enslavement.

The cobreros entered the Age of Revolutions in 1780 in a calamitous position but emerged in 1800 in a stronger one with an edict recognizing their freedom and their pueblo. Although they retained their formal civil freedom, the limited political freedoms they obtained were eroded during the first decades of the nineteenth century given wider colonial and global changes. Yet the cobreros continued using the courts invoking the Freedom Edict of 1800, but how the local identity of natives of El Cobre continued to be mobilized or how it changed in subsequent generations with the arrival of other settlers and the globalization of El Cobre remains uncertain. After summarizing the main findings and arguments of the study, the book concludes with a reflection on the significance of the category of local nativeness for racial colonial subjects and the political uses and rights claimed for this category in changing historical contexts in the past and its reemergence in various Latin American nations in the twenty-first century.

As a result of anthropogenic climate change, Inuit in the Arctic and island inhabitants in the Pacific Ocean both experience interrelated changes in their maritime environments. Global warming causes Arctic ice to melt, which leads to rising sea levels. As a result, local inhabitants in both regions experience the disappearance of their space (land and ice), paired with the arrival of new stakeholders with a diverse range of interests in the areas. As the inhabitants of the regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Inuit and Pacific Islanders have engaged in counter-mapping and counter-narrating their space that colonial powers have previously conceptualized as isolated, remote, and peripheral. In contrast, the maps of Inuit Nunangat and the Blue Pacific illustrate and tell the stories of transnational spaces that have been collectively shared and used since time immemorial. These counter-mapping and counter-narrative approaches shape a new perception of the regions. This chapter contributes to conceptual development of environmental violence by discussing case studies of counter-mapping and counter-narration in the Arctic and the Pacific Ocean – as locals’ responses to experiences of structural and cultural violence to overcome their vulnerability, challenge power differentials, and satisfy their human needs.

This chapter will analyse the right of self-determination in respect of its external and internal dimension, the rights of minorities and the rights of indigenous peoples. Self-determination is the point of reference for any discussion of indigenous and minority rights, although it is far broader than both of these. Minority rights in turn are not considered collective entitlements in relevant international human rights instruments. None the less, as the reader will come to appreciate, they are not devoid of a collective character altogether. Indigenous rights are largely based on soft law and some of their fundamental premises (for example, land rights) are hotly disputed by interested states. Yet, it is indisputable that the international community recognises that the vulnerable status of indigenous peoples necessitates a distinctive approach based on the adoption of measures that allow the preservation of their culture and traditions, while on the other hand helping them to develop, whether technologically, financially, educationally or otherwise. Group rights are controversial primarily because they give rise to questions of ‘us’ and ‘others’ in addition to challenging traditional notions of state sovereignty.

Australian novels of recent decades, canonical and lesser-known works, created by both Indigenous and non-indigenous writers, have been telling stories the nation and its readers have not wanted to hear for most of Australia’s colonial history. While novelists did engage, prior to the 1980s, with Indigenous presence on the continent, such engagement was sporadic and mostly peripheral to grander stories of pioneering bravado, white achievement and the battle with nature on the frontier. Now, peripheral stories have moved to the centre, for Australia was not an empty land settled peacefully by the British. The land was already occupied by sovereign nations of people. Storied, sung place was invaded with orchestrated violence; the land was taken, not ‘taken up’. Indigenous peoples now demand that their ‘ancient sovereignty’ be allowed to ‘shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood’ via constitutional amendment and treaty. Read against the backdrop of relatively recent developments – land rights, the Mabo decision, Stolen Generations, History Wars – this chapter examines work by non-indigenous authors like Kate Grenville and Andrew McGahan as well as Indigenous writers such as Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch, in tracing the rise of the postcolonial novel in Australian fiction.