This article discusses indigenous rights within the context of global governance. I begin by defining the terms “global governance” and “indigenous peoples” and summarizing the rights that are most important to indigenous peoples. The bulk of this article studies the global governance of indigenous rights in three areas. The first example is the creation of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A second example involves violations of (...) class='Hi'>indigenous rights brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A third case looks at a relatively new international regime created by indigenous peoples themselves—the Inuit Circumpolar Council. I conclude by using theories of sovereignty to assess the relative successes and failures of indigenous efforts to secure their rights. (shrink)

The modern environmental movement has a tradition of respect for indigenous cultures and many environmentalists believe that there are important ecological lessons to be learned from studying the traditional life styles of indigenous peoples. More recently, however, some environmentalists have become more sceptical. This scepticism has been sharpened by current concerns with the cause of indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly insisted on their rights to pursue traditional practices or to develop their lands, even (...) when the exercise of these rights has implications in conflict with environmentalist values. These conflicts highlight some important questions in environmental ethics, particularly about the degree to which global environmental justice should be constrained by therecognition of indigenous rights. I explore some of these issues and argue for the relevance of the “capability approach” to environmental justice. (shrink)

In 1996, the National Association of Salvadoran Indians participated in a UN-sponsored conference on the development of forest resources. Their involvement in the conference highlighted the growing international presence of Salvadoran indigenous organizations. Unfortunately, there is also very limited information available on these groups. As some have commented:The Salvadoran Indians … are an invisible or ghostly presence in the country: cautious in their public presence as an ethnic community, officially non-existent—yet still recognised by neighbours, local municipal governments and, most (...) importantly, by themselves as indios.As the country becomes more accessible to researchers and as indigenous Salvadorans gain a stronger foothold in the international forum, it is very likely indigneous peoples will emerge from the historical shadows to forcefully claim their rights as distinct members of Salvadoran society. The obstacles they face are not inconsequential. State opposition to indigenous organizations is strong and popular perceptions are often harder to dislodge than state policies. The widespread support gained by organizations like ANIS during the civil war proves that there is sympathy for indigenous rights. It remains to be seen to what extent ANIS and other organizations can use this support, and that of indigenous allies around the world, to promote the goals and aspirations of indigenous Salvadorans. While the issue of indigenous rights has long been discussed in other countries, it is only beginning to be addressed in El Salvador. (shrink)

This paper is emphatically focused in the analysis on the indigenous problem such as it had been ruled by law in the different Venezuelan Constitutions since the foundation of the Republic in 1811. Our purpose does not go as far as to treat the ancestral indigenous problem in Venezuela because this would exceeds the limits of our study; although, we will do some references in relation to this question.

The author compares the strategies used in the conquest of the American West, the imperialism of the Third Reich, the creation of Bantustans in South Africa, and cautions against sanguine readings of the Oslo Peace Talks between Israel and Palestine. He concludes that the current agreements are in fact the last stages of Israeli conquest of Palestine.

International Indigenous rights coalitions increasingly involve Indigenous and non-Indigenous civil society organizations with diverse backgrounds and interests. As these organizations more frequently interact and partner with one another, what issues are being emphasized in their advocacy efforts? This study utilizes content analysis of 60 Indigenous rights organizations’ websites, as well as interviews of several leaders and staff, to explore whether African Indigenous organizations emphasize different aspects of Indigenous rights in their messaging (...) and advocacy than their other Indigenous and non-Indigenous coalition partners, We find that African Indigenous CSOs discuss issues of unequal treatment more frequently, and issues of self-determination and assimilation less frequently, than their coalition partners. The messaging of Indigenous organizations outside of Africa contained similar themes as that of non-Indigenous CSOs. This raises questions regarding why these messages differ: do African Indigenous groups have distinct concerns and/or are there other reasons for the variance in messaging across international Indigenous rights coalitions. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of important challenges have been raised about whether arguments for granting group rights in virtue of ethnicity can really stand up to scrutiny. Two of the most pressing issues involve whether granting rights to groups in virtue of ethnicity involves a certain unfairness to non-members and whether granting such rights licenses unfairness to members . If arguments for indigenous rights are to succeed, they must address these challenges and show how (...) there is no important unfairness to non-members or members.Several arguments for indigenous rights are discussed, to show how they fall prey to one or both of the unfairness objections. The article goes on to offer an argument as to how proponents of indigenous rights might respond to claims that such rights discriminate obnoxiously between groups. This approach can accommodate the force of indigenous peoples’ claims and so grant certain kinds of groups rights, without at the same time licensing the group's oppression of its more vulnerable members. Moreover, since the argument appeals to considerations typically thought persuasive in liberal theory, it should be attractive to liberals. (shrink)

This chapter surveys attempts to provide liberal justification for specific rights available to Indigenous citizens of democratic societies. The most important of these, by Will Kymlicka, relied on the equal right of all citizens to the good of cultural membership to argue for specific rights to protect minority cultures. After noting that Rawls’s political liberalism offers other resources to argue for specific constitutional or legal rights for colonised Indigenous citizens, the chapter turns to consider James (...) Tully’s argument for an inter-cultural constitutionalism based on the principles of recognition, consent and continuity. Finally, the chapter refers to the work of Robert A. Williams Jr in order to suggest that the conditions of a just and fair colonial constitution are similar to the conditions of a just and stable political society in which there are incommensurable comprehensive moral views. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding “wild” land as terra nullius emerged during historical colonialism, entered international law, and became entrenched in national constitutions and cultural mores around the world. This has perpetuated an unsustainable and unjust human relationship to land no longer tenable in the post-Lockean era of land scarcity and ecological degradation. Environmental conservation, by valuing wild lands, challenges the terra nullius assumption of the vulnerability of unused lands to encroachment, while indigenous groups reasserting their rights to (...) communal territories likewise contest individual property rights. South American case studies illustrate routinized terra nullius prejudices. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest a number of reasons for concluding that Australia's existing Plant Intellectual Property system is incompatible with the provision of adequate protection of ownership of indigenous peoples' traditional plant knowledge.

Much controversy has existed over the claims of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples that they have a right—based on original occupancy of land, historical transfers of sovereignty, and principles of self-determination—to a political status separate from the states in which they now find themselves embedded. How valid are these claims on moral grounds? -/- Burke Hendrix tackles these thorny questions in this book. Rather than focusing on the legal and constitutional status of indigenous nations within the states (...) now ruling them, he starts at a more basic level, interrogating fundamental justifications for political authority itself. He shows that historical claims of land ownership and prior sovereignty cannot provide a sufficient basis for challenging the authority of existing states, but that our natural moral duties to aid other persons in danger can justify rights to political separation from states that fail to protect their citizens as they should. -/- Actual attempts at political separation must be carefully managed through well-defined procedural mechanisms, however, to foster extensive democratic deliberation about the nature of the political changes at stake. Using such procedures, Hendrix argues, indigenous peoples should be able to withdraw politically from the states currently ruling them, even to the point of choosing full independence. (shrink)

Inter-war Australia saw the emergence of a feminist campaign for indigenous rights. Led by women activists who were members of various key Australian women's organizations affiliated with the British Commonwealth League, this campaign proposed a revitalized White Australia as a progressive force towards improving ‘world’ race relations. Drawing upon League of Nations conventions and the increasing role for the Dominions within the British Commonwealth, these women claimed to speak on behalf of Australian Aborigines in asserting their right to (...) reparation as a usurped people and the need to overhaul government policy. Opposing inter-war policies of biological assimilation, they argued for a humane national Aboriginal policy including citizenship and rights in the person. Where white men had failed in their duty towards indigenous peoples, world women might bring about a new era of civilized relations between the races. (shrink)

Kant limits cosmopolitan right to a universal right of hospitality, condemning European imperial practices towards indigenous peoples, while allowing a right to visit foreign countries for the purpose of offering to engage in commerce. I argue that attempts by contemporary theorists such as Jeremy Waldron to expand and update Kant’s juridical category of cosmopolitan right would blunt or erase Kant’s own anti-colonial doctrine. Waldron’s use of Kant’s category of cosmopolitan right to criticize contemporary identity politics relies on premises that (...) upset Kant’s balanced right to hospitality. An over-extensive right to visit can invoke “Kantian” principles that Kant himself could not have consistently held, without weakening his condemnation of European settlement. I construct an alternative spirit of cosmopolitan right more favorable to the contemporary claims of indigenous peoples. Kant’s analysis suggests there are circumstances when indigenous peoples may choose whether to engage in extensive cultural interaction, and reasonably refuse the risks of subjecting their claims to debate in democratic politics in a unitary public. Cosmopolitan right accorded respect to peoples; any “domestic” adaptation of cosmopolitan right should respect indigenous peoples as peoples, absent a serious public explanation by a democratic state for why it has now become appropriate to treat indigenous peoples merely as individual citizens. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron introduced the notion of rights supersession into the philosophical discussion about restitutive justice in cases of historic injustices. He refers to land claims by indigenous peoples as a real-world example and as an application of his theory of rights supersession. He implies that the changes that have taken place in settler states since the first years of colonialism are the kind of changes that lead to a supersession of land rights. The article proposes to (...) unbundle property rights into rights of benefit, control, use, and access and to distinguish between different forms of attachment. This strategy allows for a third option of restitution and supersession, namely partial restitution. Partial restitution grants current land holders those rights that they need to satisfy their attachments and basic distributive justice claims. At the same time, rights that are not needed for either purpose will revert back to indigenous peoples as the original owners. The article argues that the notion of partial restitution allows for far more extensive land rights than a less nuanced application of the supersession thesis. (shrink)

This challenging book focuses on the problem of justice for indigenous peoples – in philosophical, legal, cultural and political contexts – and the ways in which this problem poses key questions for political theory. It includes chapters by leading political theorists and indigenous scholars from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and the United States. One of the strengths of this book is the manner in which it shows how the different historical circumstances of colonisation in these countries raise common (...) problems and questions for contemporary political theory. It examines ways in which political theory has contributed to the past subjugation and continuing disadvantage faced by indigenous peoples, while also seeking to identify resources in contemporary political thought that can assist the ongoing processes of 'decolonisation' of relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. (shrink)

The legal and normative openness of human rights allows for the integration of new subjects, arenas, violators, and protectors of human rights. Indigenous movements manage to use this flexibility and implement their claims within the human rights system. Yet, indigenous rights cause manifold discussions and ambiguities, all of which are related to the question of the concept of indigeneity. In spite of the endeavor for pragmatic and flexible approaches, scopes and implications of concepts of (...) indigeneity need to be dealt with. This paper discusses both scope and implications, starting from hegemonic criteria for a working definition of indigeneity. It shows how indigenous identity is inextricably linked to its non-indigenous other. Subsequently, indigenous human rights entail specific repercussions in indigeneity being a resource and an imperative. Those repercussions stem from indigeneity being simultaneously a source and target of indigenous human rights claims and from the self-referential duplication of the right to indigeneity for indigenes, respectively. The provided tools for an analysis of the ambiguities of indigenous human rights contribute to their further and more just development, implementation, and monitoring. (shrink)

In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three-fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative reforms designed to (...) increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political participation in nonliberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in nonliberal contexts. (shrink)

Experts from around the world examine an innovative proposal to promote both cultural survival and biological conservation: treating cultural and indigenous knowledge as a form of intellectual property. Currently the focus of a heated debate among indigenous peoples, human rights advocates, crop breeders, pharmaceutical companies, conservationists, social scientists, and lawyers, the proposal would allow impoverished people in biologically rich areas to realize an economic return from resources under their care. Monetary compensation could both validate their knowledge and (...) provide them with an equitable reward for sharing it, thereby compensating biological stewardship and encouraging conservation.Valuing Local Knowledge presents case studies of programs that recognize indigenous rights, and brings direct experience to bear on the international debate over intellectual property, conservation, and indigenous rights. (shrink)

The 1970s and 1980s meant an ethnic politicization of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, until this moment defined largely as a class-based movement of indigenous peasants. The indigenous organizations started to conceptualize indigenous peoples as nationalities with their own economic, social, cultural and legal structures and therefore with the right to autonomy and self-determination. Based on this conceptualization, the movement developed demands for a pluralist reform of state and society in order to install a plurinational state (...) with wide degrees of autonomy and participation for indigenous nationalities. A part of those demands was the double strategy to fight for legal pluralism while already installing it at the local level. Even if some degrees of legal pluralism have been recognized in Ecuador since the mid-1990s, in practice, the local de facto practice prevails until today. Another central part of the demand for plurinationality is the representation of indigenous peoples in the legislative organs of the state, developing since their first appearance in the 1940s in a complex way. This article will analyze the development of right-based demands within the discourse of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the visions of the implied state-reform and the organizational and political background and implication they have. Based on an analysis of the central texts of the indigenous organizations, conceptualizations of rights and laws and their appropriation within an autonomist discourse and a local practice will be highlighted. (shrink)

Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligation has led some philosophers to argue that he would reject self-government rights for indigenous peoples. Some recent scholarship suggests, however, that Kant’s critique of colonialism provides an argument in favor of granting self-government rights. Here I argue for a stronger conclusion: Kantian political theory not only can but must include sovereignty for indigenous peoples. Normally these rights are considered redress for historic injustice. On a Kantian view, however, I argue (...) that they are not remedial. Sovereignty rights are a necessary part of establishing perpetual peace. By failing to acknowledge the sovereignty of native groups, states once guilty of imperialism leave open the in principle possibility for future violence, even though no current conflict exists. Only in recognizing self-government rights can states truly commit to the cosmopolitan ideal. (shrink)

International law guarantees rights to indigenous peoples regarding traditional lands, knowledge, cultural preservation, and human security. This paper will examine the sources of these rights and legal remedies for violations of law. Protection of indigenous peoples’ cultures and resources contribute to the protection of the global environment.

Waters aries that the demands of indigenous bio-prospecting programs need to be considered against the needs of indigenous communities. Issues of sovereignty and rights to self-determination need to be resolved in the context of negotiating bio-prospecting plans. By setting out clear guidelines and priorities, as determined through the eyes and values of indigenous peoples, indigenous communities may have an opportunity to participate in the global sharing of biomedical information and healing for all our relations. Before (...) any projects get underway, however, social, political, and legal issues ought to be settled so that informed decision can be made on the part of indigenous communities to partake of the invitation to bio-prospecting, or not. (shrink)

Political theorists have begun to re-examine claims by indigenous peoples to lands which were expropriated in the course of sixteenth-eighteenth century European expansionism. In Australia, these issues have captured public attention as they emerged in two central High Court cases: Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996), which recognize pre-existing common law rights of native title held by indigenous people prior to European contact and, in some cases, continue to be held to the present day. The theoretical significance of (...) the two Australian cases is examined and the links drawn out between the current debate about Aboriginal land rights in Australia and the wider philosophical debate about indigenous land rights, property rights, and indigenous justice as characterized by Jeremy Waldron and James Tully. Justice towards indigenous groups requires substantial acknowledgement and recognition of the values and institutions of the relevant indigenous group; yet, these values and institutions may not readily fall under the framework of existing state structures. Attempts to redress injustice towards indigenous groups which do not question the justice of existing state institutions will therefore prove to be inadequate responses to indigenous peoples' demands for substantive justice. (shrink)

This forward-looking resource offers readers a modern contextual framework for conducting social science research with indigenous peoples. Foundational chapters summarize current UN-based standards for indigenous rights and autonomy, with their implications for research practice. Coverage goes on to detail minimally-invasive data-gathering methods, survey current training and competency issues, and consider the scientist’s role in research, particularly as a product of his/her own cultural background. From these guidelines and findings, students and professionals have a robust base for carrying (...) out indigenous research that is valid and reliable as well as respectful and ethical. Among the topics covered: -/- · Cultural theories and cultural dominance. -/- · The legal framework of research in indigenous contexts. -/- · The role of language within indigenous peoples’ cultural rights. -/- · Methodology: how to optimally collect data in the field. · Researchers’ influence and philosophy of science. -/- · Learning how to prepare research in indigenous contexts. -/- Research Methods in Indigenous Contexts is an important reference benefitting a wide audience, including students and researchers in the social sciences, humanities, and psychology; decision-makers of NGOs and GOs that act with regard to humanitarian aid, for tourism projects, or any other contingency with indigenous contexts; and policymakers interested in the aspects of human activity upon which indigenous cultural concerns are based. (shrink)

In India, Dalits faced a centuries-old caste-based discrimination and nowadays indigenous people too are getting a threat from so called developed society. We can define these crimes with the term ‘atrocity’ means an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury. Caste-related violence has occurred and occurs in India in various forms. Though the Constitution of India has laid down certain safeguards to ensure welfare, protection and development, there is gross violation of their rights (...) such as killing, murder, torture, burning, abduction, rape and molestation. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, “Dalits and indigenous peoples (known as Scheduled Tribes or adivasis) continue to face discrimination, exclusion, and acts of communal violence. Laws and policies adopted by the Indian government provide a strong basis for protection, but are not being faithfully implemented by local authorities.” Human rights issues are very often understood and analyzed from socio-political and cultural perspectives. Apart from such perspectives, the issue of human rights also can be analyzed from a strictly philosophical perspective, which implies that the idea of human rights is centered on the inspiration of human dignity. Several studies on the situation of human rights of Dalits in several parts of India show more reports on violation of human rights than on protection of them. Dalits are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading condition, and routinely abused at the hands of the police and higher-caste groups that enjoy state protection. For example, Dalit women are regularly subjected to sexual violence as a result of their lower caste status-often in response to their demands of basic rights. Hate crimes towards indigenous peoples is a daily reality in many countries across the globe. The challenge is to change such a dehumanized situation. The challenge is to each one of us that whether engaged in governance of the civil society or voluntarily engaged in social and economic development of society, one thing to remember is that leaving behind the vulnerable units of our society – Dalits and indigenous peoples – will not take us to a prosperous society. This paper is an attempt to study the situation of human rights of two most neglected segments of society namely, Dalits and STs as a serious international human rights issue. (shrink)

David Hollenbach, working within the context of human rights theory, has developed the notion of "indigenous pluralism" as a means of coping with the problems that arise when different religious traditions hold distinct or incompatible interpretations of human rights. It will be argued that indigenous pluralism is a theoretically and practically useful concept for bioethics as well and hence should be incorporated into bioethical methodology and processes of bioethical policy formation. Subsequently, the notion of indigenous (...) pluralism will be discussed in relation to determinations of death as a means of illustrating this concept's applicability to bioethical inquiry. (shrink)

It is crucial for indigenous people living in the Arctic to harvest animals by hunting in a traditional manner, as is the case with such peoples in other parts of the world. Given the nutritional, economic, and cultural importance of hunting for aboriginal people, it seems reasonable to say that they have the moral right to hunt animals. On the other hand, non-aboriginal people are occasionally prohibited from hunting a particular species of animal in many societies. The question then (...) arises: why can aboriginal people, unlike other citizens, have special hunting rights? If indigenous people are to have the right to hunt a particular species that other citizens are denied, then it presents a significant challenge to philosophers to explore the moral grounds that justify such a special right. This exploration is the subject of the current paper. (shrink)

Advocacy of an indigenous right to isolation in the Latin American context responds to multiple depredations, above all to plundering by extractivists. Two prominent international instruments declare a human right to indigenous self-isolation and articulate a principle of no contact between indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous majority population: Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact in the Americas and Guidelines on the Protection of Indigenous Peoples. In analyzing both, I argue against the notion (...) of a human right to indigenous isolation and for limited, controlled contact between the indigenous peoples and a narrow segment of the larger society. I propose relational human rights as rights that connect people, as rights-bearers, across borders and differences. They would allow for limited outside observation for possible human rights violations within indigenous communities. I then articulate relational human rights of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation as rights to agency, health, territory, and identity. (shrink)

Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing is the first in-depth account of the Hoodia bioprospecting case and use of San traditional knowledge, placing it in the global context of indigenous peoples’ rights, consent and benefit-sharing. It is unique as the first interdisciplinary analysis of consent and benefit sharing in which philosophers apply their minds to questions of justice in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), lawyers interrogate the use of intellectual property rights to protect traditional knowledge, (...) environmental scientists analyse implications for national policies, anthropologists grapple with the commodification of knowledge and, uniquely, case experts from Asia, Australia and North America bring their collective expertise and experiences to bear on the San-Hoodia case. -/- While much of the focus is on bioprospecting and natural product development, Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit-Sharing also draws important lessons about informed consent and benefit-sharing from the health sciences and sectors such as mining. Policymakers around the world are under significant pressure to resolve the challenges of implementing the CBD. This book’s analysis and recommendations will help them. -/- ‘It is good to see philosophers engaging with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and doing so by looking in depth at a real situation in which it has been invoked.’ Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University . (shrink)

Recent debate has focused on the use of intellectual property regimes for the protection of indigenous resources. Both domesticated crops and useful wild plants are shaped by indigenous knowledge and by their uses within indigenous cultures. This implies that the preservation of cultural systems is as important as the conservation of the associated biological resources. Intellectual property has been suggested as a means to protect indigenous resources from misappropriation, and to create increased investment in their conservation. (...) Four recent books that discuss the problems that arise from the application of IPR for the protection of indigenous resources highlight a salient issue: that current IPR systems may conflict and undermine the culture, social structure, and knowledge systems of indigenous societies. In order to support conservation through indigenous management of biodiversity, a number of steps are required for the negotiation of intellectual property systems that are more compatible with indigenous people's value systems and concepts of ownership. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the epistemic treatment of Indigenous peoples by the Inter-American Court and Commission on Human Rights, two institutions that have sought to affirm the rights of Indigeno...

Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 was passed by the Philippine Congress in order to address the concerns of the indigenous communities which had received marginal attention through the past decades. Indigenous communities have also been displaced from their lands due to armed conflicts between government soldiers and secessionist groups, particularly the Moro rebels and the communist-led New Peoples’ Army. The Philippines has been privy to peace initiatives with these two groups (...) for some time now. Political circumstances, however, and legal impediments have periodically stalled the peace processes. It is the author’s intention to focus on the predicament of indigenous communities as they seek a strategic role in shaping the content of peace agreements being negotiated by the Philippine government with the rebel groups. How have the indigenous communities made an impression on the two peace processes through the years? And, have the indigenous peoples’ rights been sufficiently protected in the context of the peace agreements? The author will draw from his own insights on the peace processes and agreements which have been negotiated and even tested before the Supreme Court of the Philippines. (shrink)

Tracing the political origins of the Mexican indigenous rights movement, from the colonial encounter to the Zapatista uprising, and from Chiapas to Geneva, Courtney Jung locates indigenous identity in the history of Mexican state formation. She argues that indigenous identity is not an accident of birth but a political achievement that offers a new voice to many of the world's poorest and most dispossessed. The moral force of indigenous claims rests not on the existence of (...) cultural differences, or identity, but on the history of exclusion and selective inclusion that constitutes indigenous identity. As a result, the book shows that privatizing or protecting such groups is a mistake and develops a theory of critical liberalism that commits democratic government to active engagement with the claims of culture. This book will appeal to scholars and students of political theory, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology studying multiculturalism and the politics of culture. (shrink)

El presente trabajo investiga las tesis sobre el poder civil de Alonso de la Veracruz que buscan incorporar en la comunidad política española a los habitantes autóctonos del Nuevo Mundo, tesis que suelen relacionarse con F. de Vitoria y el tomismo español, y que últimamente son consideradas parte del republicanismo novohispano elaborado desde la periferia americana. Se busca demostrar que su propósito era aplicar una teoría de derechos naturales, sin que ello implique participación política de los indios americanos. Se analiza (...) la postura del fraile frente a la diversidad cultural y la guerra contra los indios. The paper explores Alonso de la Veracruz's theses on civil power, which sought to integrate the native inhabitants of the New World into the Spanish political community. These theses, which have usually been associated with F. de Vitoria and Spanish Thomism, have recently come to be considered part of a Novohispanic republicanism developed in the American periphery. The article seeks to show that the purpose of such theses was to apply a theory of natural rights that did not entail the political participation of the indigenous population, as well as to analyze Veracruz's position regarding cultural diversity and the war against the indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Indigenous conservation through patrimonialization is the product of political and legal decisions made by a non-indigenous agent: the liberal state, using the law to retain a form of bios. We propose that patrimonialization is the device by which liberal states have processed and integrated indigenous claims into a form of bios ultimately designed to safeguard state legal structures. We argue that, to uphold the rule of law in contexts of struggle (...) and resistance that challenge the very understanding of the law, states respond by wielding the law in the form of the rule by law, that is, pushing the law to the limit to give normative content to the criteria by which the state conducts its affairs, without straying from the individual rights framework. We hold that the rule by law is an operation that defines the patrimonialization of indigenous peoples. It increases their visibility while imposing limits on political action to keep them from becoming sui juris subjects capable of breaching the distinction between zoe and bios. In this article, we try to understand the political–ideological intent of these decisions, the intentions beyond the letter of the law of patrimonialized peoples. (shrink)

In this paper I appropriate the philosophical critique of Michel Foucault as it applies to the engagement of Western science and indigenous peoples in the context of biomedical research. The science of population genetics, specifically as pursued in the Human Genome Diversity Project, is the obvious example to illustrate the contraposition of modern science and ‘indigenous science’, the tendency to depreciate and marginalize indigenous knowledge systems, and the subsumption of indigenous moral preferences in the juridical armature (...) of international human rights law. I suggest that international bioethicists may learn from Foucault’s critique, specifically of the need for vigilance about the knowledge/power relation expressed by the contraposition of modern science and ‘indigeneity’. (shrink)

Despite challenges for U.S.-Mexico border Indigenous activists in their efforts to counter dominant discourses about both border policy and Native rights, Indigenous activists assert their rights as they advocate for public policies and actions that affirm and protect these rights. This article explores some of the discursive strategies used by Indigenous activists to index Indigenous identities and lifeways and to counter mainstream conceptualizations of Native identity and Indigenous rights on the U.S.-Mexico (...) border. Through such semiotic strategies, Indigenous border activists create indigenized and legitimized political spaces for the assertion of their beliefs. Indigenous border activists achieve this through metasemiotic constructs that draw from stereotypes about Native people and their use of language as well as through the active mobilization of schemas for conceptualizing both Native American experiences and the U.S.-Mexico border. (shrink)