Angela R. Riley

Clarifying Cultural Property

Author Stephenie Meyer forever altered the cultural existence of Quileute Indians when she wrote them into her Twilight novels. Now a veritable global phenomenon complete with books, movies, and affiliated merchandise, the Twilight series depicts young, male members of the tribe as vampire-fighting werewolves who ferociously defend a peace and territorial treaty made with local bloodsuckers. In reality, the Quileute Tribe consists of approximately 700 Indians, many of whom live on a remote reservation in the Pacific Northwest, a tiny parcel of the once vast Quileute territory. Since Twilights unprecedented international success, the Quileute have been overwhelmed with fans and entrepreneurs, all grasping, quite literally in some cases, for their own piece of the Quileute.

Indigenous Peoples and the Jurisgenerative Moment in Human Rights

As indigenous peoples have become actively engaged in the human rights movement around the world, the sphere of international law, once deployed as a tool of imperial power and conquest, has begun to change shape. Increasingly, international human rights law serves as a basis for indigenous peoples’ claims against states and even influences indigenous groups’ internal processes of decolonization and revitalization. Empowered by a growing body of human rights instruments, some as embryonic as the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous peoples are embracing a global “human rights culture” to articulate rights ranging from individual freedom and equality to collective self-determination, property, and culture. Accordingly, this Essay identifies and provides an account of what we see as an unprecedented, but decidedly observable, phenomenon: the current state of indigenous peoples’ rights—manifesting in tribal, national, and international legal systems—reflects the convergence of a set of dynamic, mutually reinforcing conditions. The intersection of the rise of international human rights with paradigm shifts in postcolonial theory has, we argue, triggered a “jurisgenerative moment” in