This article analyses the Inter-American Court of Human Rights case law concerning the rights of indigenous and tribal groups, with special reference to the right to live and to the right to property. The investigation presents, firstly, the new Inter-American specific instrument of protection, the Inter-American Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, secondly, the particularities of the legal subject interpretation. An important regional trend in is that interpreter have to take into consideration the cultural situation as well as the indigenous groups vulnerability when reading the rights established in international instruments. In this interpretative framework, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights creates an often innovative protective system concerning, among others, the right to live and the right to property, which key decisions are subject to examination
