Indigeneity and the International

Abstract

What are the conditions under which international relations might become a meaningful political site for indigenous peoples' struggles against colonisation? This paper explores this question through an engagement with disciplinary struggles within international relations, on the one hand, and a reading of the politics of indigeneity, on the other. It traces the disciplinary mechanisms through which the gesture of inclusivity by scholars of international relations towards indigenous peoples functions to re-inscribe colonial relationships and, given this, considers whether and under what conditions indigenous peoples might find any relevance in the study and practice of `international relations' as inscribed through the discipline. This analysis in turn suggests two questions: one about the limits of and inscribed by the discipline read against claims to represent `world politics', the other about the strategic potentialities of `international relations' as a political site for `marginal' peoples.