Indigenous Peoples' Experiences with Self-Government: Proceedings of the seminar on arrangements for self-determination by Indigenous Peoples within national states, 10 and 11 February, 1994, Law Faculty, University of Amsterdam

Indigenous peoples all over the world are nowadays struggling to recover their ancestral lands, to obtain redress for centuries of oppres­sion and even to establish some form of self-government as one, and only one, way of exercising their right to self-determination. Some would like to enter into a modest scheme of self-government e.g. a sort of municipal authority as a first step in the direction of more autonomy. Others pursue a more comprehensive settlement in the sense of being recognized as a nation within a state that would have to become a plurinational or multiethnic state. Still others do not want to engage in debates with the national states which they regard as illegitimate autho­rities. They want to develop their own forms of government and then demarcate their jurisdictions from those of the state that claims territo­rial sovereignty also over indigenous territory.