Self-determination versus the determination of self: A critical reading of the colonial ethics inherent to the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples
Journal of Global Ethics 3 (3):359 – 379 (2007)
| Abstract | The United Nations' (UN) adoption of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is intended to mark a fundamental ethical turn in the relationships between indigenous peoples and the community of sovereign states. This moment is the result of decades of discussion and negotiation, largely revolving around states' discomfort with notion of indigenous self-determination. Member states of the UN have feared that an ethic of indigenous self-determination would undermine the principles of state sovereignty on which the UN is itself grounded. However, such fears are the result of very poor understandings of the ethical principles under which the relations between indigenous peoples and nation-states already have been formed under centuries of European colonialism. The principle of self-determination embraced in this Declaration does not diverge from colonial norms; it entrenches these norms as international policy. Without doubt, indigenous peoples are more likely to benefit than suffer from states' observance of the Articles within this Declaration. Reducing the challenge of indigenous peoples' rights to the notion of self-determination set out in this document, though, misses an extraordinarily important opportunity to critically investigate the ethic of rights that has produced an opposition between nation-states and indigenous peoples to begin with. A true turn in the ethics of this relationship would see not simply the institution of a right to self-determination but, rather, indigenous peoples' right to first determine the nature of self for themselves. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesSusan Dodds (1998). Justice and Indigenous Land Rights. Inquiry 41 (2):187 – 205.
Andrew Hunter (2007). Indigenous Peoples' Intellectual Property. The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 3:97-103.
Terry Dunbar & Margaret Scrimgeour (2006). Ethics in Indigenous Research – Connecting with Community. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 3 (3).
Roy W. Perrett (1998). Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice. Environmental Ethics 20 (4):377-91.
Roy W. Perrett (1998). Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice. Environmental Ethics 20 (4):377-391.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads30 ( #40,791 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,327 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
