2 Indigenous issues have always emerged out of controversy and conflict. So also the UN International Year 1993 for Indigenous Peoples, which sprang out from the controversy concerning the 500th anniversary of Columbus voyage to America. After opposition from Spain and USA, the proposal was rejected. Instead, the United Nations declared 1993 as the International Year for Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous people are today a global political fact - and still developing.
But the political movement of indigenous people is more than a political awakening and mobilisation. Indigenous peoples are claiming both basic human rights, but also special rights and self-determination to their respective homelands within separate nation states. This is a claim for cultural uniqueness and self-expression, but also for equal worth, negotiation and partnership to governments and majority peoples. In spite of these differences, separation by national boundaries and confinement to the geographical, socio-political and cultural margins of nation states, indigenous peoples have increasingly succeeded in organising themselves politically, reclaiming and rebuilding their own institutions and homelands. This is truly one of the most remarkable global political events of our time.