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A Tragedy of Incommensurability: Indigenous Rights and the Limits of Human Rights Law
This thesis explores the tragedy of incommensurability between indigenous rights and international human rights law. Despite the emergence of frameworks like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous calls for sovereignty remain fundamentally unintelligi...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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AUC Knowledge Fountain
2025
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| Summary: | This thesis explores the tragedy of incommensurability between indigenous rights and international human rights law. Despite the emergence of frameworks like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous calls for sovereignty remain fundamentally unintelligible within a liberal order structured to preserve settler-state legitimacy. Tracing the historical and theoretical evolution of indigenous advocacy, this study critiques the strategic shift from demands for self-determination to claims of cultural rights. It argues that this shift offers no real alternative: self-determination and cultural rights are functionally equivalent, as both are ultimately filtered through legal and political frameworks that cannot encapsulate the ethos of indigenous autonomy, history, or relationality. International human rights law, built on liberal universalism, tolerates indigeneity only when stripped of its political substance and assimilated into state structures. Through an analysis of legal theory, settler-state practices such as federal recognition, and movements like #NoDAPL, this thesis demonstrates that the promise of rights is not liberation but continued containment. True indigenous emancipation demands a radical reimagining beyond the human rights paradigm, rejecting frameworks that render sovereignty perpetually deferred or domesticated. |
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