TEXAS INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL

By focusing on the conflicts between Indigenous rights and environmental protection, the author chronicles the extent and scope of conceptions of Indigenous rights within the international community. The article begins with an overview of the international community's definition of Indigenous peoples. The paper then narrows its focus to consider the position of Indigenous peoples in North America, chronicling the history of racism that has led to the current marginalized situation of Indigenous peoples.

This article seeks to clarify the meaning of "rights" in order to guide policy-making in the area of reproductive rights. At the beginning of the article the author describes the distinction drawn in ethics between positive rights and negative rights. Negative rights are usually given a higher priority by policy-makers than positive rights because negative rights are perceived as being more fundamental and requiring no social resources. The author argues that such a characterisation of negative rights is erroneous.