Original Instructions: an Indigenist International Relations Theory

The eurocentrism of IR theory is well known, but the field has failed to attend to Indigenous thought which has developed and existed since time immemorial. Indigenous thought opens up a radically different perspective on world politics. Indigenous thought includes explicit expectations for relations between different people that pre-date contemporary IR theory by thousands of years, but the expansive Indigenous literature has not been attended to in IR theory. Unlike rationalist approaches, like realism and liberal institutionalism, Indigenous thought is relational. This means that the goal for a good life is not made from maximizing welfare for a self/state but to create and maintain good relations. This literature broadly argues that humans are required to approach "all our relations" (other humans, human groups, plants, animals, and the land/water) with respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. When we fail to do this, crisis follows. Observation or violation of these Original Instructions explain world dis/order, and especially sustainability failures. This element answers the presumed critique from realists-- that this is utopian idealism and fails to account for the manipulation of power in anarchy. The answer to this critique is that a system that normalizes such violence and exploitation is not sustainable, it cannot last and there is always a reckoning. Attending to Indigenous thought also adds a corrective to an anthropocentric discipline that has bracketed out the vast majority of the world. Attending to the land also makes this approach deeply geopolitical in the sense that a living geography is part of the holistic concern where everything is interrelated and interdependent.