 The importance of indigenous land rights to the management of our common future cannot be overstated. And what is crucial there is to understand that indigenous communities have developed effective ways of managing their natural resources through processes of trial and error that have lasted centuries to millennia. What they have come up with has therefore stood the test of time and is worthy of respect. What that means is that it is up to states and their modern legal systems to carve out the space necessary for indigenous people to exert in freedom their rights to manage ably their own natural resources.