Ethics and Culture: Indigenous People and the concept of selfdetermination

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 1.5, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: It seems a peculiarity of modern capitalist civilisation, that wherever one looks one sees squares everywhere! Just as this piece of paper, the screen and keys it was typed on are square, so are the borders of countless states around the globe, cutting through autochthonous communities separating cultures or forging them into a state [society] often lacking their prior consent. It is not without fateful irony that, for instance, the table on which the fate of the African people was decided during the Berlin conference in 1884-85 at which the [still prevailing] borders of colonial Africa were demarcated was: Square! Square people with square minds made square decisions. However, contemporary claims of many indigenous peoples who are as diverse and irregular as the world they exist in continue to challenge the plane polygon geometry of the arbitrary and artificially constructed artefact of territorial sovereignty by demanding recognition of their, partial or full self-determination. Thus questioning the moral legitimacy of sovereign states and the international society [of states].