Indigenous Peoples’ Religious Freedoms and International Law

Abstract Following the Holocaust and World War II, global concern about threats to religious identity, belief, and practice helped to motivate the founding of the United Nations and its human rights framework. Accordingly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Convention to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (1965) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), all recognize the freedom of religion or belief, and/or prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion. Despite the long-standing nature and pervasive application of these instruments and their articles on religion, however, Indigenous Peoples’ religious freedoms have been somewhat neglected by the international human rights framework. Today, Indigenous Peoples face denial of access to sacred sites, repression of ritual practices, desecration of burial grounds, exploitation of plants used in ceremonial practices, and other acts violating their freedom of religion. To remedy harms and prevent them in the future, Indigenous Peoples increasingly cite the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an interpretive device for understanding and applying human rights instruments in the Indigenous Peoples’ context. It is important to identify and develop an Indigenous Peoples’ jurisprudence of religious freedoms along these lines. When informed by Indigenous Peoples’ own ‘laws, traditions and customs’ in the context of religion and spirituality, international law has the potential to protect Indigenous Peoples’ religious freedoms, while contributing to a more inclusive and meaningful understanding of the freedom of religion as a human right.