Indigenous Peoples' Rights at the United Nations Human Rights Council: Colliding (Mis)Understandings?

Abstract

Indigenous peoples have been struggling worldwide to have their rights recognized. Despite relevant legal advances, such as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), the implementation gap between the adoption of international standards by States and their compliance still remains. This article relies on empirical examples from Interactive Dialogues (ID) with the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (SRIP) and the Expert Mechanism on the Right of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), held between 2011 and 2021 in the Human Rights Council sessions, to exemplify how these struggles also become noticeable in the public and global arenas. It highlights the emblematic case of conflicting narratives between Indigenous peoples and the Brazilian State in 2020, when the latter strategically used 'misunderstandings' to delegitimize Indigenous peoples' claims. It concludes that the underlying challenge in the implementation of Indigenous peoples' rights rests in ontological conflicts between States and Indigenous peoples, especially concerning the meaning of self-determination. These struggles are reflected in the disputing of narratives in the UN human rights arenas, and have been shaping interpretations of Indigenous peoples' rights that privilege a perspective antagonistic to them. The article provides some practice-oriented recommendations for reducing discourse manipulation at the HRC.