The nomination and appointment of World Heritage sites ential a willingness from UNESCO and its member states to recognise the value of cultural and biological diversity on Earth by protecting representative or threatened cultural landscapes on behalf of all mankind and for all times. After recommendation from UNESCO, it has become increasingly popular among member states to nominate sites including living indigenous cultures, in order to provide these sites with international protection, and in order to benefit from the World Heritage status. However, the ways in which these kind of sites are protected differ greatly between states and particular sites. Whereas one indigenous people may own the land of the World Heritage site and have considerable influence on how the site is managed, another indigenous people may remain politically marginal and only play a symbolical role as carriers of indigenous culture. This paper intends to compare the situation for the indigenous people in four structurally similar World Heritage sites: Laponia in Sweden, Tongariro in New Zealand and Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Kakadu in Australia.