Title Indigenous Land Rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Coloniality in Legal Thinking and Decision- Making as an Obstacle to Recognition

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2025/94544i

This article proposes a decolonial approach to Indigenous property law in the
Commonwealth Caribbean. The author presents three case-studies – Jamaican Maroons,
Toledo Maya in Belize, and Amerindians in Guyana – highlighting how these
communities’ claims to ancestral land transcend conventional property law categories
and reveal the limitations of Western legal paradigms. The analysis demonstrates that
Indigenous land rights are not adequately addressed within the private-law framework
but instead require engagement with constitutional law, human rights law, international
law, and Indigenous legal traditions themselves. The article explores how coloniality
persists in judicial reasoning and state governance, even in post-independence contexts.
Postcolonial states with Indigenous populations must reassess their views on these
groups’ property rights and embrace innovative judicial and doctrinal methodologies.
Only through such a decolonial shift can the region secure justice for Indigenous
communities and transform property law into a vehicle of cultural survival and legal
innovation.