A/HRC/30/41 focusing on common themes and patterns experienced by indigenous women across regions. The Special Rapporteur will highlight examples of specific rights violations and issues from different countries, which are illustrative but not exhaustive. In analysing the situation of indigenous women, she will consider both the gendered forms of violations against indigenous women and the gendered effects of human rights abuses that target indigenous communities as a whole. In that way, the Special Rapporteur hopes that the forms of oppression, discrimination and violence that indigenous women face —because they are women and because they are indigenous — can be better understood. A. Collective rights Self-determination 11. A cornerstone of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, selfdetermination is defined as both a choice to determine political status, as well as the right to have autonomy over economic, social and cultural development. Self-determination is a right in itself and has been conceptualized as a precondition for the fulfilment of other rights. 12. When examining the rights of indigenous women and girls, it is vital to consider the unique historical experiences of indigenous communities. Many forms of violence and abuse against indigenous women and girls have a strong intergenerational element. Violations of the broad right to self-determination of indigenous peoples are historically and currently endemic. Those have included gross and sustained assaults on the cultural integrity of indigenous peoples; denigration and non-recognition of customary laws and governance systems; failure to develop frameworks that allow indigenous peoples appropriate levels of self-governance; and practices that strip indigenous peoples of autonomy over land and natural resources. Those patterns of violations are vividly exemplified by colonization, but have also been perpetuated by post-colonial power structures and State practices. Those violations of the right to self-determination have been highly detrimental to the advancement of the rights of indigenous women and girls in a number of ways. 13. The response of indigenous communities to attacks against self-determination has, at times, additionally subjugated the rights of women. In the battle for indigenous communities to assert their right to self-determination, women’s rights have often been considered divisive and external to the indigenous struggle and connected to “external values” or “Western values” that privilege individual over communal rights. Such a false dichotomy between collective and women’s rights has, paradoxically, further entrenched the vulnerability of indigenous women to abuse and violence. Indigenous women are therefore stripped of their right to self-determination by both violations against their collective rights, as members of indigenous communities, and violations against their individual rights, as sub-collectives within those communities. 14. Such multiple victimization and the denial of the agency of indigenous women has had a pronounced impact on the prevalence of violence and abuses through the entrenchment of power structures that create and perpetuate systematic vulnerability. The further loss of women’s agency caused by those violations then negatively impacts collective efforts to fight group rights, thereby contributing to negative cyclical patterns. Land rights 15. A strong link to the land, territory and natural resources is a characteristic that is commonly associated with indigenous peoples. Despite relevant provisions in international human rights law, indigenous peoples experience weak protection of their land and property 5