3 right to effective measures by States to prevent any interference with, alienation of or encroachment upon these rights.” 9. The Proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights approved on February 27, 1997, speaks to the existence, relevance and observance of the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples. It provides the following: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the legal recognition of the varied and specific forms and modalities of their control, ownership, use and enjoyment of territories and properties.” (Article XVIII.1). It further states that indigenous peoples “have the right to the recognition of their property and ownership rights with respect to lands, territories and resources they have historically occupied, as well as to the use of those to which they have historically had access for their traditional activities and livelihood.” (Ibid., par. 2). 10. Various bodies of law within the Ibero-American world contain similar provisions, informed by the very same historical and cultural experience. A case in point is the Constitution of Nicaragua, the country to whose jurisdiction the Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community is subject. That community is on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast. Under the heading “Rights of the Atlantic Coastal Communities,” that Constitution stipulates that: “The State recognizes the communal land-tenure systems of the Atlantic Coast communities. It also recognizes their right to enjoy, use and exploit the waters and forests on their communal lands.” This recognition must be taken into account when interpreting and applying the American Convention, in keeping with the Convention’s Article 29(a). 11. When examining this case, the Court considered the scope of Article 21 of the American Convention. Under the title “Right to Property,” that article provides that “Everyone has the right to the use and enjoyment of his property.” When the Court examined this question, it had before it the travaux preparatoires of the Convention. There one can trace the evolution of the language of Article 21 to its present-day wording. Originally, the article was to speak of the right to private property, specifically. Later, the proposed language changed until the authors finally settled on the wording we have today: “the right to the use and enjoyment of [one’s] property.” The language in which this right is framed was meant to accommodate all subjects protected by the Convention. Obviously, there is no single model for the use and enjoyment of property. Every people, according to its culture, interests, aspirations, customs, characteristics and beliefs, can institute its own distinctive formula for the use and enjoyment of property. In short, these traditional concepts have to be examined and understood from the same perspective. 12. A number of countries in the Americas are home to indigenous ethnic groups whose ancestors –this hemisphere’s aborigines- built legal systems that predate the conquest and colonization and that are to some extent still in effect. These ethnic groups established special de facto and de jure relationships with the land that they possessed and from whence they obtained their livelihood. Since the conquest, their legal institutions –which reflect their framers’ way of thinking and have the full force of law- have withstood countless attempts to undermine them and have managed to survive to this day. In a number of countries, these indigenous legal institutions have been adopted into the national legal systems and are backed by specific international instruments that assert the lawful interests and traditional rights of the original inhabitants of the Americas and their descendents. 13. Such is the case with the indigenous property system, which does not preclude other forms of land ownership or tenure that are the product of differing