The Right to Consult Ourselves: Conceptualizing the Proactive Function of the Right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.

Since the adoption of ILO Convention No. 169 in 1989, the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) has become a staple legal tool in the strategies of indigenous rights advocates. During these decades, scholars have provided reasons for both skepticism and optimism about the capacity of FPIC to advance indigenous interests. This Article makes a brief review of this literature, revealing that the academic discussion on FPIC has overemphasized its "protective function." Up to this day, both critical and optimistic scholars have conceived of FPIC as a shield that indigenous communities use to block, delay, or mitigate the impacts of projects driven by external non-indigenous actors. This Paper argues that this perspective has overlooked the possibility of using FPIC as a legal strategy to promote indigenousdriven projects. Grounded in the experience of San Francisco Pich' ataro, a Purh'epecha community in Mexico, the paper introduces a case study that highlights the "proactive function" of FPIC. After enduring years of marginalization, this community deployed their right to FPIC as a de facto right to "consult themselves" about how they wanted the State to realize the budgetary aspects of their right to indigenous self-determination. In doing so, they managed to extract financial resources from the State and buttress their own project for self-governance. The Paper concludes with an invitation for scholars and activists to look beyond the protective function of FPIC and to explore how its proactive potential could further the more ambitious aspirations of indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]