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. While much has been written on indigenous social movements and advocacy in the Americas over the last 25 years, few writers have placed this literature in conversation with legal studies. Native appeals to international law have become a crucial strategy for activists in making claims vis-à-vis their states and in international fora. Yet even while acknowledging the importance of international legislation in providing a foundation and often a bulwark for indigenous advocacy, Karen Engle warns readers not to expect too much from this legislation. Examining the different strategies that indigenous activists and advocates have used to advance rights claims, she argues that every single strategy has its limitations and insists that there is no one ‘successful’ path. She is, however, particularly wary of strategies that separate culture from resource claims, arguing that activists who highlight indigenous culture as a basis for making demands may allow more powerful actors to marginalise and water down these claims, with very little for indigenous peoples in terms of concrete results. One of Engle's main arguments is that the way demands are framed and articulated matters a great deal to movements because these frames limit and expand the range of available possibilities for achieving their demands.

The book begins with an examination of the historical differences between British and Spanish colonialism that set the groundwork for nineteenth- and twentieth-century social movement strategies in the United States and in Latin America respectively. It then turns to two primary paths of political and legal advocacy: those based on self-determination, and those based on the human right to culture. Engle notes that each of these paths can be articulated in a weak and a strong form. For example, a strong form of self-determination would assert the right of secession or independence, while the strong form of the culture argument would imply robust collective rights for land and territory. Engle deals with each of these paths separately in chapters 3 and 4.

Most of the book is focused on the culture path of political and legal advocacy, rather than the self-determination one. Over the past 20 years, Engle notes, a consensus has developed among tribal representatives, indigenous rights activists, lawyers, anthropologists and even most states that the human right to culture ‘provides a secure and relatively uncontroversial means by which to protect the rights of indigenous people, if not peoples, internationally’ (p. 6). Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are devoted to the uses of culture in indigenous rights advocacy. Chapter 5 examines culture as heritage; chapter 6 looks at culture as grounded in land; and chapter 7 focuses on culture as development.

Much of parts I and II (chapters 1–7) is devoted to examining declarations emerging from myriad United Nations agencies, as well from inter-American organisations. Engle analyses the wording of the documents, introduces the actors involved in the discussions, and shows how these actors have used the declarations to put forward rights claims. Much of the detail from these declarations is included in footnotes, allowing Engle to preserve a fluid narrative. The process of examining the many decrees and ordinances stemming from international organisations might be tedious in the hands of another author, but Engle reminds readers of her purpose and of the book's larger arguments throughout. Engle covers some of the better-known international decrees dealing with indigenous rights, such as ILO Convention 169, but spends time on some that are not as well known, such as the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 27). She also includes some very useful information on the recent (2007) United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In Part III Engle shifts gears somewhat to examine the uses of the culture framework in a non-indigenous context, that of Afro-Colombians. I found this section interesting, as there is far less written on Afro-descendant peoples and rights in the Latin American context than on native peoples. In chapter 8, she speaks more broadly about the application of the indigenous model to Afro-Colombian communities, while in chapter 9 she introduces a case study based on fieldwork that she did in several Afro-Colombian communities in the Caribbean. Engle is not afraid in this book to highlight tensions within advocacy organisations, and in chapter 9 she calls attention to internal debates in the community over how best to organise and frame its demands. Engle seems to be suggesting that honest critiques of movement strategies may, in fact, be more useful to marginalised peoples than pushing these tensions under the rug. If scholars present indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples and their struggles in an uncritical or romanticised light, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples are then burdened with the responsibility of upholding unrealistic understandings of ‘culture’ and ‘sustainability’.

These unrealistic understandings of culture, which become reified and fixed into law, are a concern of Engle's throughout the book. At times, she seems to suggest that indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples might be better off if they focused more explicitly on resource or class demands and less on culture-based demands. While I agree with her on this point, it is important to mention that many indigenous organisations in Latin America were, during the 1970s and 1980s, quite closely allied to left-wing unions and parties. Ultimately, however, indigenous peoples' demands were not adequately addressed within these organisations and many indigenous peoples left them because of rampant ethnic and racial discrimination. It is a minor point, but Engle might have drawn this out, given her emphasis on indigenous movement history.

In conclusion, Engle has written a provocative book about the use of legal strategies and the law in indigenous struggles for greater rights. Like all social phenomena, she argues, the law cannot ‘save us’, just as no single strategy or idea can. Yet, at the same time, she argues that indigenous peoples throughout the Americas have used the law to make claims and to exercise rights, and they have been successful to lesser and greater degrees. She does not discount the successes that have occurred, but urges us to understand them as having strengths and limitations. Engle's message is somewhat sobering, which may disappoint those who seek easier answers. Yet, finally, Engle's pragmatism and willingness to confront ‘the dark side of virtue’ (the term is David Kennedy's) left me feeling strangely elated. Certainly social science cannot save us from the limitations that are built into our social and political institutions, but it can help us to confront these limitations squarely and honestly and, in so doing, bring greater clarity and vision to our lives and our work. I believe that Engle does just that in this excellent book.