The land now called Australia was settled by humans between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and the lands and waterways sustained balanced life until 1788 when a fleet of British soldiers, settlers and convicts landed on the central east coast. This chapter traces the ways theatrical works stage ‘land’ that has been transformed and depleted by the interrelated actions of colonialism, deforestation and pastoralism. It features the ecological content and staging of three works: Yanagai! Yanagai! by Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurnai woman Andrea James (2003), Louis Nowra’s (1985) The Golden Age and The White Earth by Andrew McGahan and Shaun Charles (2009). These depict violent land-grabs violent land-grabs, massacres, stubborn farming practices and ignorance of the environment as an ecosystem with a long history of human habitation. This chapter looks at the problem of ongoing ecological damage and struggles to develop sustainable land practices.

This chapter presents agreements between Indigenous peoples and governments, specifically those in Bangladesh and Mexico that focus on their roles in promoting sustainable development. The introduction sets the stage for subsequent discussions by emphasizing the importance of global legal and policy frameworks in shaping these agreements, with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The two case studies from Bangladesh and Mexico are then analysed, shedding light on the unique characteristics, provisions, and outcomes of agreements between Indigenous peoples and governments in these contexts. A comparative analysis is conducted to identify commonalities, differences, and lessons learned from these case studies. Ultimately, the chapter concludes by highlighting the significance of ongoing dialogue, collaboration, and respect for Indigenous rights in achieving sustainable development goals globally. It underscores the importance of incorporating Indigenous perspectives and aspirations into the design and implementation of such agreements.

Chinese politics has been dominated by leaders hailing from Shanghai. Xi Jinping was its party secretary; so was Li Qiang, China’s current premier. After Tiananmen, Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji scaled the Shanghai Model to the whole of China. The Shanghai Model, the genesis of the China Model, was statist and extractive. An illustration was the development of Pudong, which relied on mass evictions of rural residents, offering low or no compensation, and auctioning off land to highest bidders. The huge spreads between acquisition costs and auction prices fueled Shanghai’s development but brought modest benefit to the average Shanghainese. The poorest segment of the Shanghai population lost relatively to other segments of the population but also lost absolutely to its former self. The income level of Shanghai’s individual proprietors was also low, relative both to rich provinces such as Zhejiang but to a poor province such as Yunnan. The statist Shanghai Model was not innovative. Shanghai lagged Zhejiang and Jiangsu in patents. By measures that track more closely the welfare of the individual citizens, the Shanghai Model is not a resounding success, and yet this is the model that has prevailed in China since 1989.

The rights of peoples in Spain and its empire formed part of wider pan-European discussions, which were informed by both secular and religious normativities. According to those, the universe was the aggregate of constant and multiple exchanges. Though these exchanges were not necessarily equal nor simultaneous, they nonetheless formed the basic skeleton of all social, political, and legal interactions. Jurists and theologians who set out to explain how this system operated suggested that a pre-set order that was stable, prescriptive, and indisputable oversaw these exchanges. This order indicated the appropriate place for all peoples and things and gave each a particular function. It resulted in a constellation, which was not arbitrary, but instead corresponded to an objective situation, a ‘state of stability’ or an ‘unaltered condition.’

Contemporary Brazilian Indigenous art is rising both in production by and public recognition of artists such as Denilson Baniwa, Jaider Esbell, Naine Terena and Daiara Tukano. Indigenous literature is also becoming increasingly visible with writers such as Daniel Munduruku, Ailton Krenak, Davi Kopenawa, Eliane Potiguara and Julie Dorrico. These trends have opened new spaces for a ‘contest of imaginaries’, expanding possibilities for Indigenous rights. For Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, racism is often connected to land and resource control. So anti-racism often takes the form of a struggle to defend ancestral territories and livelihoods, often associated with the ‘multiplication of differences’, opposing monocultures of all kinds and promoting the creation of spaces for the similarities in life and struggle that connect people across differences. First we give an overview of Brazilian Indigenous movements since the 1970s, introducing recurring themes that have concerned writers and artists. Then we describe the development of contemporary Indigenous literature and visual art in Brazil and their relation to anti-racism, with extended case studies from the Brazilian Amazon and the northeast region.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the land rights movement, drawing from the experience of the Yolngu peoples in northern Australia. This chapter identifies the different ways that land rights may be recognized. Each of these mechanisms has strengths and weaknesses, with a constitution being the most robust form of protection for land rights. However, the biggest challenge is in the implementation of land rights. Despite the challenges, Indigenous Peoples have successfully protected and reclaimed their lands under the ongoing force of dispossession, employing strategies such as direct action and litigation. Drawing from the contexts presented in this edited book, this chapter identifies the barriers to advancing land rights; the strategies to overcome these barriers and to support the reclamation of land; and identifies some of the opportunities to strengthen land rights moving forward.

In 2011, the Brazilian Government began dismantling the country’s robust framework for Indigenous land rights by enacting measures to deny Indigenous Peoples’ access to their ancestral lands. From 2019 to 2022, the government did not recognize or title a single hectare of Indigenous lands, despite more than 700 pending requests for demarcation (or formal designation and titling). A change in government and six land demarcations in 2023, however, show signs of a new era for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and relationship with the state. This chapter analyzes evolving Indigenous land rights pre- and post-constitutionalization in 1988, the result of intense political mobilization and shifting colonialist perceptions of Indigenous Peoples. This chapter also discusses the main obstacles faced by Indigenous Peoples in enforcing Brazil’s protective land rights framework, accounting for the structures of settler colonial states – structures that permit institutional and physical violence against Indigenous Peoples by state and non-state actors alike. Finally, this chapter examines the opportunities created since the change in government in 2023, proposing new avenues to advance Indigenous Peoples’ constitutional land rights in Brazil.

Despite Chile’s recent failed attempts at constitutional reform, Indigenous land rights are (still) governed by the much-contested Indigenous Law of 1993 (Law No. 19,253). The land restitution program foreseen in this law is extremely slow and controversial, and the establishment of Indigenous territories (by ordinary law) appears far from reality. At the same time, there are a few recognized Indigenous territories in Chile, and they are constantly faced with a high density of hydro-electric plants, extractivist activities, disproportionate forest and logging exploitation, salmon farming and a growing tourism industry. Over the years, Indigenous Peoples have reacted in different ways to dispossession and encroachment. Driven by frustration, some have assertively occupied their ancestral lands. Others have filed lawsuits and found a more equitable venue to claim their rights in the national courts. Against this background, this chapter analyzes the processes of dispossession faced by Indigenous Peoples in relation to their traditional lands in the north and south of Chile over recent decades, how they contested the titles to ownership and possession of such territories, and the outcomes of their litigation strategies. After the public rejections of constitutional reforms in 2022 and 2023, it remains uncertain how Indigenous land rights will be governed in the coming years or how they will be treated in any potential reforms to Pinochet’s Constitution of 1980. Despite the unfavorable legislative framework, this chapter argues that Indigenous strategic litigation can best advance and support land rights in Chile.

Despite a recent law recognizing and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the post-independence laws of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have dispossessed, and continue to dispossess, Indigenous Peoples of their customary land rights. Collective and customary property rights are enshrined in the DRC Constitution; however, in practice there is little to no recognition or protection. This is because land statutes work in cross-cutting ways to deny Indigenous Peoples the formal legal title to their traditional lands, and without title they are vulnerable to dispossession by development or conservation. In the absence of a land tenure system establishing clear collective ownership rights, “community forests” represent an alternative strategy or pathway for Indigenous Peoples to secure their customary rights over their forests and their lands (the local communities’ forest concessions, CFCLs). Despite some successful cases of securing land tenure through the CFCLs, inaccessible legal requirements and difficult procedures make these a problematic pathway for land justice. This chapter sets out recommendations for strengthening land tenure and CFCLs.

The year 2021 saw record violent dispossessions of Indigenous Peoples across Paraguay. Once heralded as an early adopter of Indigenous land rights and legal protections, Paraguay is now a site of contentious land politics that have garnered international attention and litigation. In this chapter, we draw from over forty years of collective experience working on and researching Indigenous land rights in Paraguay – from litigation before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to ongoing advocacy with communities – and we trace the major legal achievements and document the ways that land rights have been challenged and threatened. We advance a theory of “pendulum policies” for land rights to trace the shifts in state-Indigenous relations, manifesting today as an implementation gap where de jure land rights are typically undermined in practice by state and private interests. In this chapter, we show how the role of international law and strategic litigations have pushed the pendulum from violations towards justice, yet we remain cognizant of the threats, from land renting to direct violence, which push the pendulum back towards violations. This chapter provides readers with a clear overview of Indigenous land rights in Paraguay, and offers recommendations for pushing the pendulum towards land justice over the next decade.

This chapter details the fragmented nature of the last sixty years of Aboriginal land repossession across Australia, both in terms of the nature of the rights and the level of restitution. Exploring the limited and uneven national Aboriginal land rights picture in 2024, we argue for an appreciation of the federal dimension of land rights policymaking. Uneven land restitution has resulted not just from spatially varying degrees of land commodification and the differing trajectories of land rights movements, although these were crucial. We aim to demonstrate that shifting state–Commonwealth (or Federal) relations within the Australian federation – crosscut against differing support from states and Commonwealth governments over time, and differing Commonwealth Government attitudes to federalism – led to a spatially uneven set of legislative land rights regimes across Australia. To do so, we narrate the varied responses to the Aboriginal land rights movement across the country in the wake of the Woodward Royal Commission in 1973 with an eye to the federal dimension. We argue that while the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke governments from 1972 to 1991 all failed to legislate national land rights, they did so for very different reasons, leaving the land rights agenda to the states. Ultimately, it was the centralizing power of the High Court that brought about a national but inadequate and partial resolution to the Aboriginal land question. Finally, we provide a series of maps and tables describing the jurisdictional variation in rights and interests in land restored to Indigenous Peoples at present.

The legal recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ collective land rights is contentious in Colombia. There are enduring land disputes between state actors and Indigenous communities. Land rights policies have passed through several political cycles, but these have typically been poorly implemented, routinely violated by state actions, and often rolled back with new legislation. The 1991 National Political Constitution (NPC) transformed Indigenous-state relations, where for the first time in Colombia’s history, the collective cultural and land rights of Indigenous Peoples were recognized and protected in the country’s supreme law. To date, Indigenous Peoples have secured exclusive ownership rights to over 33 million hectares of collective lands, or 28 percent of the country. However, most Indigenous lands were titled before the 1991 NPC, which was constrained in its promise by a long-lasting internal armed conflict (among other factors). A 2016 historic Peace Agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas promised to address the root cause of the conflict: land ownership disputes. This agreement has yet to resolve the land problem. Taking a historical perspective, this chapter analyzes the structural political and legal barriers to Indigenous land rights in Colombia. The chapter examines the interaction of the Peace Agreement with land rights laws and explores the strategies of Indigenous Peoples to secure and safeguard their land rights in this new context. The chapter concludes with recommendations for strengthening land rights across the nation.

Concluding chapter that synthesises the experiences from all the book, and relates these to the Sami land rights journey.

In Malaysia, three ethnic groups identify as “Indigenous Peoples”: the heterogeneous Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli, natives of Sabah, and natives of Sarawak. Malaysia’s hybrid legal system confers differing constitutional, statutory, and common law rights and privileges to Indigenous Peoples, which present distinct yet shared experiences of their land rights. These Indigenous groups were granted differing levels of constitutional privileges during Malaysia’s constitutional formation, which resulted in divergent written laws for the protection and recognition of their customary lands and resources. These differing laws and histories have functioned to dispossess these communities of their traditional lands, territories, and resources in their own ways. The strategy of litigation has afforded Indigenous communities some recourse for gaps in the written law but common law development of such rights and the court process have equally proven to be a barrier in some cases. Although international commitments to the sustainable management of resources have increased possibilities for the inclusion of Indigenous communities in matters concerning their lands and resources, constitutionally-entrenched legal privileges have yet to translate to the effective protection and recognition of traditional Indigenous lands and resources in Malaysia.

This chapter explores the complex connection between upholding land rights and the successful application of nature-based solutions (NBS) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It underscores the necessity of integrating indigenous wisdom, local customs, and community engagement into the design of NBS. By doing so, this research underscores the significance of honoring land rights, maintaining sustainable livelihoods, and achieving goals related to biodiversity conservation. By deeply examining the intricate relationship among land tenure, community engagement, and effective conservation practices, this chapter makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing academic conversation about how to practically implement NBS for conserving biodiversity.

Focusing on the afterlife of the Freedom Edict of April 7, 1800, the chapter moves the story into the nineteenth century, a period of imperial crisis that saw the emergence of liberal trends in the empire as well as new stakeholders in the historical context of the island and, more generally, of the Spanish Atlantic world. Chapter 9 focuses on the problems that the emancipated cobreros faced in actualizing a corporate community model along the lines of colonial Indian law. It further compares El Cobre’s predicament in the new period with that of two other recognized Indian pueblos of El Caney and Jiguani, a situation that resonated elsewhere in the Spanish Atlantic in the postcolonial Latin American republics. Questions about native rights, race, and citizenship, about civil and political rights, about corporate and individual land rights emerged in this new political context, especially with the globalization of El Cobre. This globalization was linked to the arrival of French refugees and the development of a British mining industry in the region. These emerging trends led to the erasure of major aspects of the Freedom Edict of 1800 by the early 1840s.

Chapter 8 focuses on the imperial state level to examine the legal and political logic informing the final adjudication of the case in 1799, a decision that constituted a shift in the decisions the Council of the Indies and colonial tribunals had been taking in the 1780s. The chapter examines the political reasons related to mining utility and security that informed the shift and the juridical basis imperial jurists used to ground the case’s outcome. Ultimately, the Bourbon Crown ruled in favor of the cobreros but attached caveats related to Indian law to their collective freedom. The chapter ventures into the immediate aftermath of the Freedom Edict of 1800 to examine the challenges that emerged in the colony regarding the actualization of the decreed emancipation. It also interrogates the possibility of compensation or reparations to the cobreros for their wrongful enslavement.

The cobreros entered the Age of Revolutions in 1780 in a calamitous position but emerged in 1800 in a stronger one with an edict recognizing their freedom and their pueblo. Although they retained their formal civil freedom, the limited political freedoms they obtained were eroded during the first decades of the nineteenth century given wider colonial and global changes. Yet the cobreros continued using the courts invoking the Freedom Edict of 1800, but how the local identity of natives of El Cobre continued to be mobilized or how it changed in subsequent generations with the arrival of other settlers and the globalization of El Cobre remains uncertain. After summarizing the main findings and arguments of the study, the book concludes with a reflection on the significance of the category of local nativeness for racial colonial subjects and the political uses and rights claimed for this category in changing historical contexts in the past and its reemergence in various Latin American nations in the twenty-first century.