With the 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the notion of ancestral land rights has gained greater global currency. However, this international legal instrument falls short of proffering an unambiguous definition of an indigenous person/community, for fear that no definition can capture the diversity of the world’s indigenous communities. Given this lack of a concise definition, this paper examines why there seems to be such apprehension towards ancestral land rights claims and restitution. In the Namibian context, it became particularly evident in the period leading up to and during the Second National Land Conference held in October 2018 that the concept of ancestral land remains not only highly contested but is also misunderstood; it is, therefore, easily politically abused. Drawing on these experiences, the paper identifies and examines a number of challenges and constraints that the conceptualisation and practical operationalisation of ancestral land claims and restitution has commonly encountered.

随着2007年通过《联合国土著人民权利宣言》，祖传土地权的概念已成为全球货币。但是，由于担心没有任何定义能够反映世界土著社区的多样性，因此这项国际法律文书没有对土著人/社区作出明确的定义。鉴于缺乏简洁的定义，本文探讨了为什么对祖传土地权利主张和归还似乎有这种担忧。在纳米比亚的背景下，在2018年10月举行的第二届全国土地大会之前和期间，特别明显的是，祖传土地的概念不仅受到激烈争议，而且还被人们误解了; 因此，它很容易在政治上受到滥用。