E/CN.4/2002/97 page 14 38. Comparative research and a careful scrutiny of statements and communications presented by indigenous and human rights organizations as well as reports produced by Governments, international organizations and independent sources allow us to group the major issues currently facing indigenous peoples into a number of categories, namely, land rights, homelands and territories, education and culture, social organization and customary legal systems, poverty, standards of living and sustainable development, and political representation, autonomy and self-determination. A. Land rights 39. We shall refer in the first place to issues regarding land rights, which constitute a major problem for indigenous communities and have been studied extensively over the years. From time immemorial indigenous peoples have maintained a special relationship with the land, their source of livelihood and sustenance and the basis of their very existence as identifiable territorial communities. The right to own, occupy and use land is inherent in the self-conception of indigenous peoples and generally it is in the local community, the tribe, the indigenous nation or group that this right is vested. For economically productive purposes this land may be divided into plots and used individually or on a family basis, yet much of it is regularly restricted for community use only (forests, pastures, fisheries, etc.), and the social and moral ownership belongs to the community. 40. This has often been recognized in the national legal system, but just as often certain kinds of economic interests have attempted - and frequently succeeded - in turning communal possession into individual private ownership, a process which began during the colonial period in many countries and intensified during post-colonial times. In Mexico, for example, the break-up of indigenous agrarian communities in the nineteenth century was one of the reasons for the Mexican revolution of 1910. The Mapuche communities in southern Chile were obliged to accept the disintegration of their communal territories during the military dictatorship in the 1970s. 41. Mr. Martinez Cobo reported that in some countries legal provisions existed for the protection of indigenous lands, but he also noted in the early 1980s that “efforts are now being made to abolish them and to accord to the indigenous peoples individualized and unrestricted private ownership of land ...”.11 Moreover, in numerous countries indigenous peoples have been dispossessed of their land and large outside private or corporate economic interests have been able, with or without State support, to appropriate land belonging to indigenous communities. Not much has changed since then. While legal protective measures have been enacted with greater frequency, the loss and dispossession of indigenous lands has proceeded relentlessly, in some countries more rapidly than in others, and the consequences of this process have in general been quite deplorable on the human rights situation of indigenous peoples. 42. Erica-Irene Daes notes in her study on indigenous peoples and the land that “it is difficult to separate the concept of indigenous peoples’ relationship with their lands, territories and resources from that of their cultural differences and values. The relationship with the land and all living things is at the core of indigenous societies”.12 In some countries, the concept of aboriginal title is crucial to the human rights of indigenous peoples. This is the case in parts of the British Commonwealth, where exclusive use and occupancy of land from time immemorial