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Beyond Indigenous Property Rights: Exploring The Emergence Of A Distinctive Connection Doctrine, Eric Dannemaier

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

Human rights law has begun to offer normative protection for what remains of indigenous lands. Yet territory now better defended from conquest and encroachment is increasingly threatened by their byproducts. Water scarcity, food security, waste deposition, climate change—in short, the multiple impacts of industrial development—pose a new territorial challenge to indigenous communities that will test the reach and capacity of the human rights regime.

This Article examines that challenge and argues that a solution may lie in emerging human rights doctrine recognizing indigenous peoples’ land rights not as heirs to a European conception of property, but as peoples with a …