This book provides a broad introduction to the conceptual issues of the debate on human rights, indigenous rights and indigenous peoples' self-determination. It provides a series of analyses of concrete experiences with arrangements purporting to allow for self-determination and self-government by indigenous peoples, and concludes with a discussions of the issue of policy development from a governmental perspective and from the perspective of a non-governmental organization.

This publication is the outcome of papers presented by indigenous representatives and various scholars during a seminar in February 1994 in Amsterdam (Law Faculty), during which the video-film "A Sketch of Freedom" was presented and discussed.