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].