Perspective on Convention 169, its significance to Inuit and some troubling developments

How to Be Indigenous in India?

“…During the revision process leading to the adoption of ILO 169, the chair announced that 'no position for or against self-determination was or could be expressed in the Convention, nor could any restrictions be expressed in the context of international law' (ILO, Provisional Record 1989, para 42). For some, this is a 'fatal failure' (Malezer 2020, p. 297) and for others, the apathy necessitates the gleaning of selfdetermination from some other instrument, preferably the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (Cambou 2019;Dorough 2020). We have already seen before how autonomy in Article 3 does not include the scope for secession, impelling the Adivasi towards arcane responses to co-exist with the state like Pathalgadi.…”