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| Name | The Myth of the Inkarri: Colonial Foundations in International Law and Indigenous Struggle |
| Author(s) | Elena Cirkovic |
| Editor | |
| Year | 2006 |
| Publication Type | Report |
| Web Location | http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/documents/WP39-Cirkovic_000.pdf |
| Keywords | human rights, UN International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UN Declaration of Human Rights, international law |
| Areas of Interest | Human Rights; Indigenous People |
| Citation | Cirkovic, Elena. 2006. The Myth of the Inkarri: Colonial Foundations in International Law and Indigenous Struggle: York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS). |
| Summary | Past and present human rights violations have compelled indigenous peoples to seek effective remediesoutside the states or territories in which they live. Increasingly, they adopt transnational discou |
| Abstract / Description | Past and present human rights violations have compelled indigenous peoples to seek effective remedies outside the states or territories in which they live. Increasingly, they adopt transnational discourses of human rights and combine them with local processes of reclaiming of indigenous cosmovisions and worldviews. One of the main goals pursued by indigenous people during the still ongoing UN International Decade of the World's Indigenous People has been the revision of the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for its eventual ratification by the General Assembly. Only 2 of the 45 articles in the Draft Declaration have been provisionally approved by the participating states. Both articles only affirm individual rights. Since the promulgation of the Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations (UN) has become a battleground for the ongoing struggle over the scope and content of an adequately inclusive human rights regime. The fight for recognition of indigenous peoples in international law, on which this research focuses, presents a formidable challenge to the universalizing mission of the UN. This is due to a continuing contestation between indigenous peoples and some states over the affirmation of indigenous peoples' legal status as "peoples", with a corresponding right to self-determination under international law, and the recognition of their collective rights as human rights.
However, while international law appears to be providing some spaces for the dispossessed on the one hand, it continues on the other, albeit subconsciously, to bow its head to its very roots, which, as this paper will attempt to show, is inextricably,connected to the colonial encounter. This paper questions whether the established human rights discourse can serve as a strategic tool for indigenous peoples, or if it is in fact working to delegitimize indigenous discourses and worldviews.Its exploration of indigenous rights and international law is part of a larger contemporary inquiry into the universalist aspirations of the public international legal system and the continued debate over the possibility of globally accepted human rights. Claims to universality of international law are regularly brought to negation or ignorance of its violent origins. Much of International Law's official history is the creation of rights among sovereign nations based on the idea that in time the legitimacy of a just order would work from the top down as it would from the bottom up. The origins of international law, however, are based on the exclusion and discrimination of the indigenous other as barbaric and incompatible with other legal addressees. This legacy casts its dark shadows on international law's claims to universality, because such universality would demand the inclusion of indigenous peoples as equal actors. In search of International Law's memory of its violent origins, this paper shall look to the existing, yet fragmented and often rejected narratives and memories of those that found themselves excluded in the creation of international law. This constitutes an act of decentring mainstream discourses and reviving indigenous memory of exclusion and oppression, which will contribute to a better understanding of international law's repressed memory of its own colonialist heritage. The objective is not to provide proposals for a reform of international law, but to outline conditions, which indigenous peoples encounter in the sphere of international law as they attempt to advance their claims. |
| Publisher/Organization | York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) |
| Cluster Library | Business and Human Rights; Governance Law and Public Policy |
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