The Political Stakes of Indigenous Diplomacies

Abstract

The increasing and broadening of diplomatic engagements between Indigenous peoples and sovereign states has raised considerable interest in the possibility of difference within international politics. Historically, relations between the two have culminated largely in repeated acts of political and legal exclusion of Indigenous peoples from legitimate standing and voice within the domain of the international. The recent and remarkable achievements of Indigenous peoples to gain the serious attention of states worldwide, then, are of enormous significance, signaling the possible capacity of Indigenous peoples to transform modern international orders and the possible interest of states to open themselves to the different politics lived and aspired to by peoples in this world. The success of Indigenous diplomacies in itself, though, does not entail the introduction of difference into international politics. Indigenous diplomacies may just as well, and, perhaps, even more easily, function to reproduce the centrality or alleged normality of state sovereignty and the rights of sovereign states to subdue and fight against difference.