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].

Dr. Lüdert is Assistant Professor and Associate Program Director in the School of Applied Leadership at City University of Seattle. Jan holds a PhD in International Relations from the department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is a Liu Institute for Global Issues scholar alumnus and recipient of the Killam Graduate Teaching Award. Jan holds a First Class Honors Masters of Arts in International Relations from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Business Administration and Public Policy from Hamburg University for Economics and Politics. Jan studied at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania focusing on sociology and economics. He coordinated grassroots' community programs in Botswana for Skillshare International. His research includes Leadership Theory, International Relations, Political Theory, Intergovernmental Organizations, Non-State Actors, Transnational and Cyberspace Politics, Global Norms, Human Rights. Jan is deeply involved in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research projects. Jan writes for the Ivory Tower, an E-International relations blog.