Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

Abstract

Indigenous peoples’ political resistance to conquest parallels the globalization of European dominance and the world system created as a result of it by the twentieth century By the late nineteenth century several Indigenous leaders living within the postcolonial English settler states of Canada, the United States, and New Zealand were convinced that the European settlers were not and would not respect their rights as Indigenous peoples, in spite of the fact that these rights were recognized in treaties either with the settlers or the imperial government itself. Indigenous representatives traveled to Britain to present their grievances to King George, but were denied an audience with the king and told that their concerns fell within the “domestic jurisdiction” of the settler states.1 Thus began the long quest for justice in settler-Indigenous relations, and the pattern of dislocation and relocation, forced assimilation and, at times, outright brutality, was reproduced wherever European settlers (or Indigenous agents of European state-building) expanded their control over resources and territories through the state-building process. Indigenous representatives persisted in seeking redress through international structures, approaching, but denied a voice in the League of Nations, and later, the United Nations. Finally, in the 1970s, the United Nations took up the question of Indigenous peoples within the Economic and Social Council and created a special sub-commission to study and make recommendations regarding their “situation.”