One of the pages under The International Work Group for Indigenious Affairs  (IWGIA)  is entitled Identification of Indigenious People  offers a fairly clear definition of the concept of Indigenious people.  This site offers definitions by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as well  as Martinez Cobo(report to the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination of Minorities(1986)) and Mme Erica-Irene Daes (chairperson of the united Nations’s Working group on indigenious People).

A commonality of the definitions focuses on the ancestry of indigenious people of having inhabited a territory or area prior to colonization.  Also, the definitons indicate that indigenious peoples  have maintained an unique social, cultural, religious, linguistic and political aspects differing from the mainstream society.

Likewise several important challenges of indigenious peoples include:

Collective Rights:  rights for the collective groups not just rights for the individual.

Self- determination:  the preservation, development, and tansmission of their unique identity

Self-Identity;  identified and accepted as a group with an unique culture, language, etc.

Land and Natural resources’ rights : rights for the lands and resources that the ancestors have inhabited before colonization

Martinez Cobo states that “They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity…”