Rethinking the Role of Indigenous Peoples as Rightsholders, Stakeholders, and Valuable Market Participants in the Global Trade and Investment Spaces

At the Margins of Globalization and Indigenous Peoples and International Trade are remarkable in the sense that only few texts have successfully undertaken any meaningful and comprehensive analyses, from a multidimensional perspective, of the situation of indigenous peoples within the context of global economic development and international trade and investment law. The pertinence of the many critical issues explored by Sergio Puig in At the Margins of Globalization, and Jon Burrows and Risa Schwartz in Indigenous Peoples and International Trade, in terms of facilitating greater understanding about the connectedness of the fields of global economic development, trade, and investment with indigenous peoples’ rights, and the implications brought about by such connection, cannot be overstated. This review therefore interrogates not only how the issues explored in the two books significantly contribute to the framing of discussions about the indigenous peoples’ participation in the market space, but also how those discussions fit into the larger discussion regarding how to improve the sociocultural and economic conditions of indigenous peoples and other marginalized populations.