03/12/2026
McAndless Professor Kyle Whyte presents “A Primer on Indigenous Rights”
Friday, March 13th, 3:00-4:30 pm, in 111 Strong Hall
The rights of Indigenous peoples are powerful policy, legal, and movement-building instruments for enacting conservation, food security and food sovereignty, environmental protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and sustainable development. Rights are among the major policy and legal instruments Indigenous peoples use in pursuit of environmental advocacy. Yet the way that Indigenous rights work is a topic poorly understood by the public. The workshop will provide a framework for how Indigenous rights can be understood, even when considering how complex different situations are across the world. The workshop will introduce understandings of Indigenous rights based in treaties, laws, constitutions, and court decisions; the international Indigenous rights movement; and the ways Indigenous peoples are pushing the boundaries of rights through their engagement with and use of rights instruments designed to protect non-humans and ecosystems. While the examples will be environmental, the information is relevant to how Indigenous rights can be used for different topics.
In the workshop, the framework for understanding Indigenous rights will be presented in the first 40 minutes, with discussion to follow.
This event is open to the public and is approved for LBC credit.
