When the United Nations General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, it introduced into the international legal lexicon a new dimension to the concept of self-determination. The declaration emphasizes indigenous peoples’ distinctive rights to land, culture, language, and collective identity. It does not propose political independence or sovereign statehood, instead insisting on indigenous peoples’ equal rights of citizenship within existing nation-states. The distinct dimension of self-determination that the declaration introduces is one that speaks of indigenous peoples’ particular colonial histories of dispossession and the restoration of their rights and identities in the present, but without disrupting the political continuity of the states that surround them. It is reparative rather than revolutionary. In this article, I examine the construction and contestation of an indigenous right to self-determination both in relation to earlier definitions, and among and between the peoples and states who drafted the declaration.

联合国大会在2007年通过《土著人民权利宣言》时，将国际法律词典引入了自决概念的新层面。该宣言强调土著人民对土地，文化，语言和集体身份的独特权利。它没有提出政治独立或主权国家建制，而是主张在现有民族国家内土著人民享有平等的公民权。该宣言引入的自决的独特方面是，它谈到了土著人民特殊的殖民地剥夺历史以及目前恢复其权利和身份的情况，但并未破坏周围国家的政治连续性。它是修复性的，而不是革命性的。