Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

Part I. International and Transnational Indigenous Movements  

1. Setting the Stage for the Transnational Indigenous Rights Movement: Domestic and International Law and Politics  17

2. Indigenous Movements in the Americas in the 1970s: The Fourth World Movement and Pan-indigenism  46

3. International Institutions and Indigenous Advocacy in the 1980s and 1990s: Self-Determination Claims  67

4. International Indigenous Advocacy in the 1980s: Following the Model of a Human Right to Culture  100

Part II. Human Rights and the Uses of Culture in Indigenous Rights Advocacy  

5. Culture as Heritage  141

6. Culture as Grounded in Land  162

7. Culture as Development  183

Part III. Indigenous Models in Other Contexts: The Case of Afro-Colombians  

8. The History of Law 70: Culture as Heritage, Land, and Development  223

9. The Periphery of Law 70: Afro-Colombians in the Caribbean  254

Conclusion  274

Notes  279

Bibliography  349

Index  383

Winner, APSA Human Rights Section Best Book Award

“Engle argues that indigenous rights advocates should abandon essentialized cultural conceptions and move toward ‘a more nuanced (and more ‘real’) understanding of culture’. That attenuated understanding, combined with a measure of strategic creativity, may yield more productive results for indigenous self-determination. With this impressive and truly interdisciplinary approach to international law, historians, anthropologists, and lawyers alike can appreciate Engle’s account of indigenous rights advocacy and move toward a more complex strategy that successfully integrates culture.”—Giselle Barcia, The Yale Journal of International Law

“[A] deeply insightful and beautifully crafted volume. Engel shows that several polarities are oddly linked, as in a Mobius strip. Highly localized indigenous groups appeal for assistance and support from international actors and despite their low technology level deploy the Internet. Diversity and uniqueness are pursued in the languages and styles of the West. Emphases on culture and the economic intertwine. Global and local fascinatingly blend. These complexly linked polarities give her narrative a haunting grandeur.”—Charles Crothers, Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Engle’s work helps to illuminate the complexity of indigenous politics and inter-institutional dynamics. Her book contributes to discussions of indigenous rights an enlightening dynamism that I hope will inspire further work on the politics of indigeneity.”—Kirsty Gover, Melbourne Journal of International Law

“The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development is a ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in international law and native peoples, indigenous politics in the Americas, and ethnodevelopment.”—Shannan Mattiace, The Journal of Latin American Studies

“Karen Engle’s latest book The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy offers a comprehensive account of international legal initiatives, policies, and indigenous social movements.... She sketches a compelling narrative of how, as indigenous policies have changed, indigenous advocates have—with endless ingenuity—resorted to new strategies in their quest to improve the internal and external conditions of indigenous communities.”—Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, The American Journal of International Law

“[T]his book provides an invaluable summary of the ways in which the struggles of indigenous people to find a voice have been operationalized at a global scale. It provides a nuanced picture of regional indigeneity that does not homogenize different colonial, cultural, political, and historical contingencies, yet it also recognizes that the very term indigenous has had much success as a global platform through which to constitute important processes of claim making and development.”—Haidy Geismar, American Anthropologist

“...this book productively complicates scholars’ appreciation of the possibilities and risks in the application of human rights.”—Robert Albro, PoLAR

Winner, APSA Human Rights Section Best Book Award

“Engle argues that indigenous rights advocates should abandon essentialized cultural conceptions and move toward ‘a more nuanced (and more ‘real’) understanding of culture’. That attenuated understanding, combined with a measure of strategic creativity, may yield more productive results for indigenous self-determination. With this impressive and truly interdisciplinary approach to international law, historians, anthropologists, and lawyers alike can appreciate Engle’s account of indigenous rights advocacy and move toward a more complex strategy that successfully integrates culture.”—Giselle Barcia, The Yale Journal of International Law

“[A] deeply insightful and beautifully crafted volume. Engel shows that several polarities are oddly linked, as in a Mobius strip. Highly localized indigenous groups appeal for assistance and support from international actors and despite their low technology level deploy the Internet. Diversity and uniqueness are pursued in the languages and styles of the West. Emphases on culture and the economic intertwine. Global and local fascinatingly blend. These complexly linked polarities give her narrative a haunting grandeur.”—Charles Crothers, Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Engle’s work helps to illuminate the complexity of indigenous politics and inter-institutional dynamics. Her book contributes to discussions of indigenous rights an enlightening dynamism that I hope will inspire further work on the politics of indigeneity.”—Kirsty Gover, Melbourne Journal of International Law

“The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development is a ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in international law and native peoples, indigenous politics in the Americas, and ethnodevelopment.”—Shannan Mattiace, The Journal of Latin American Studies

“Karen Engle’s latest book The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy offers a comprehensive account of international legal initiatives, policies, and indigenous social movements.... She sketches a compelling narrative of how, as indigenous policies have changed, indigenous advocates have—with endless ingenuity—resorted to new strategies in their quest to improve the internal and external conditions of indigenous communities.”—Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, The American Journal of International Law

“[T]his book provides an invaluable summary of the ways in which the struggles of indigenous people to find a voice have been operationalized at a global scale. It provides a nuanced picture of regional indigeneity that does not homogenize different colonial, cultural, political, and historical contingencies, yet it also recognizes that the very term indigenous has had much success as a global platform through which to constitute important processes of claim making and development.”—Haidy Geismar, American Anthropologist

“...this book productively complicates scholars’ appreciation of the possibilities and risks in the application of human rights.”—Robert Albro, PoLAR

“The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development takes the analysis of indigenous rights advocacy and the politics of self-determination to a new level, and it brings legal and cultural struggles together in a breathtaking big picture. It is up to the moment in terms of its political scope, richly historicized, and filled with comparative and critical analysis for rethinking indigenous political movements and their enduring (and sometimes problematic) implications.”—J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity

“If you are interested in indigenous rights, social lawyering, and the strange alchemy by which identity is transformed into right, you will want to read this book. Karen Engle has written a powerful history of the indigenous rights movement, which is simultaneously a meditation on the nature of identity and a primer on international legal strategy.”—David Kennedy, author of The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism

“Could culture be, in part, the culprit? This question will not be well received by those interlocutors—activists, scholars and activist intellectuals alike—who are unwilling to subject the premises of their work to sustained critical scrutiny. For the others, Karen Engle’s text will be immensely rewarding: an invitation to take stock of how far indigenous struggles have advanced over the past four decades, with ‘right to culture’ at front and center, and a call to reflect on the limitations of this political-legal approach. She argues that the ‘right to culture’ has indeed become part of the problem, and that an alternative ‘anti-essentialist’ notion of culture could deliver more favorable political results. These are crucial assertions to engage and assess, for those on the front lines of indigenous struggles and, by extension, for scholars as well. We are indebted to Engle for putting them on our agenda with such lucidity.”—Charles R. Hale, Director, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin

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