This article suggests that the international trend toward supporting legal autonomy from state control for indigenous communities under the guise of “self-determination,” as embodied in the recently enacted Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, has created a manifest legal conflict within the body of international human rights laws between the rights of individuals and the new concept of collective group rights. The article highlights one indigenous woman’s recent struggle in Mexico to assert her right to participate in a local election contrary to her tribe’s customary law forbidding women to do so, in order to illustrate the potential human rights conflict between recognizing indigenous customary law and human rights laws guaranteeing women's rights to equality. The article affirms that indigenous peoples’ common challenges implicate economic, land-use, and representative rights, and that the redress for these challenges lies not within the creation of parallel governments, but rather, under existing human rights instruments.