Should Past Cosmopolitan Wrongs be Redressed?: Indigenous Peoples, Kant, and Historical Injustice

What resources are there within a systematic understanding of Kant’s moral and political philosophy for developing a Kantian theory of historical redress for cosmopolitan wrongs? Cosmopolitan right is one of Kant’s three categories of ‘public right.’ As Sankar Muthu and others have said, this is where Kant condemns European colonial actions, defends protections for Indigenous peoples, and condemns the slave trade as “an offense against the hospitality of black peoples” (23:174, draft to Perpetual Peace). What should happen generations after the first violations of cosmopolitan right occur? Should historical and ongoing injustice done to Indigenous peoples be remedied? This paper examines how Kantian cosmopolitan right (and Kantian political and legal theory more broadly) might or might not support Indigenous peoples’ struggles for land, territory, and sovereignty. I argue that past and persisting cosmopolitan wrongs can change what counts as the appropriate framework for redressing injustice. The unjust history of how parties came to be side-by-side can mean that the spirit of cosmopolitan right—emphasizing Indigenous peoples’ self-determination and peoplehood—persists. I argue against those who say Indigenous claims should be evaluated in domestic terms—as claims between individual citizens of a state without reference to status as citizens of the world. This Kantian approach also differs from backward-looking “libertarian” approaches to state-to-state reparations and from forward-looking egalitarian theories of “cosmopolitan global justice.” I conclude by considering three important objections to using Kantian analysis for redressing Kantian Wrongs. It remains uncertain whether challenges arising from Kant’s conservatism, Kant’s racism, and Kant’s reliance on views of land and authority opposed to Indigenous worldviews can be fully addressed.