Responding to a Deeply Bifurcated World

Abstract

The final ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in November 2007 marks a certain culmination of the reconfiguring of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonizing states over several decades. It represents the triumph of the determination, persistence, and agency of Indigenous peoples who have struggled unceasingly to win recognition of their rights and of injustices perpetuated through acts of imperialism that many argue continue today (see, for example, Beier 2005a; Corntassel 2007). It also draws a line in the sand between states who choose to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous peoples to be recognized and identified as having specific rights within international law, and those who refuse to recognize these rights outside of their juridical frameworks. The reluctance of some key states to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contextualizes the demarcated responses to the needs and requirements of Indigenous peoples and the fourth world conditions in which many Indigenous communities exist inside leading industrialized states including Canada, the United States, Australia, and to a lesser extent, Aotearoa New Zealand. That these same key colonizing states have thus far refused to ratify the UNDRIP speaks to the nature of the ideological struggle that underpins any diplomatic initiatives aimed at the recognition and enactment of Indigenous rights, including soft law initiatives such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.