The Art of Negotiation: Teaching About Relationality and Interdependence in Land and Water

Abstract

In this chapter, I examine the usefulness of the allodial principle to educators in their attempts to teach about competing Indigenous and colonial entitlement to land and water in postcolonial, pluricultural democracies. I pose a challenge to the Harden “tragedy of the commons” thesis through consideration of a number of vestigial examples of the allodial principle that demonstrate the need for modern global citizens to have exceptional skills of negotiation. The art of negotiation here focuses on two key lenses of relationality and interdependence. I posit that such lenses might assist in the development of an alod pedagogy for educators, enabling the development of their pedagogical approach to the contemporary “working out” of difficult matters to do with balancing the rights and responsibilities of nations, regions, corporations, communal, and individual owners in the access to, use of, and transferability of land and waterways.