Challenges to indigenous political and socio-economic participation: Natural resources, Gender, Education and Intellectual Property

Indigenous peoples (whose number amounts to approximately 400 million people on a global scale) may refer to different collectivities who live in a variety of demographic, territorial, social and political contexts. These peoples include, e.g., those who live in voluntary isolation as well as in urban settings. In the last decades, they and their rights have been widely recognized. This has prompted a bulk of indigenous studies from different disciplines and perspectives (e.g., anthropology, sociology, law, and philosophy). Such intertwined and multidiscipli- nary approach allow us to gain knowledge of those historical, political, economic and social specificities and dynamics that characterize these peoples across the world. The essays of this volume adhere to such approach and deal with some of the greatest challenges that indigenous peoples face with regard to their political and socio-economic participation. This lead us to a better understanding of the different paths of their vindications, the different degrees of the recog- nition of their rights, and the crucial problems they have to handle every day. This ultimately points at that ‘significant gap’ between the (supra/inter)national legal framework and its implementation at the national level, particularly with reference to the issues of natural resources, gender, education and intellectual property.