Indigenous Diplomacy and the Limits of the State-Centric International Order

Diplomacy is conventionally defined as a set of practices through which political communities manage relations, negotiate interests, and prevent or regulate conflict in the international sphere. In dominant International Relations literature, diplomacy is closely tied to the emergence of the sovereign state system and is treated as a function of formally recognized state actors. This state-centric understanding has rendered alternative diplomatic traditions largely invisible, particularly those that predate the consolidation of the Westphalian order. Against this background, the growing presence of Indigenous peoples within international institutions – especially the United Nations – tends to be framed as a novel or exceptional development. This paper challenges that assumption by asking a central research question: Is Indigenous diplomacy in the contemporary international system a new phenomenon, or the re-emergence of long-standing diplomatic practices that were historically marginalized and suppressed? The paper begins by revisiting classical and historical definitions of diplomacy, drawing on pre-modern and early modern knowledge tradition that understands diplomacy as a relational practice rather than an exclusively state-bound institution. Renaissance diplomacy, treaty-making among non-sovereign polities, and early intercultural negotiations demonstrate that diplomacy long existed without the rigid territorial sovereignty that later became its defining feature. The consolidation of the modern international system, however, progressively “cemented” diplomacy as a state monopoly, delegitimizing non-state diplomatic actors and practices. Against this theoretical backdrop, the paper conceptualizes Indigenous diplomacy not as a deviation from diplomacy, but as its continuation under different ontological, ethical, and cosmological assumptions. Indigenous diplomacy is understood as political engagement grounded in relationality, reciprocity, responsibility to territory, and collective continuity. Rather than seeking territorial sovereignty in the Westphalian sense, Indigenous diplomatic practices prioritize stewardship, consent, and the maintenance of relationships across human and non-human worlds. As such, Indigenous diplomacy challenges not diplomacy per se, but the narrow, state-centric definition that has dominated modern international thought. Empirically, the paper examines Indigenous engagement within the United Nations system as a contemporary manifestation of these practices. It traces the role of Indigenous actors in shaping and sustaining institutional spaces such as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), which illustrates how Indigenous diplomacy operates through coalition-building, historical claims, and procedural innovation rather than formal sovereignty. The paper further draws on recent climate diplomacy, including Indigenous mobilization around COP processes (in particular, COP30 in Belém) to illustrate how Indigenous actors challenge international arenas through protest, negotiation, and strategic disruption, which do not represent a radical break from diplomatic tradition, but rather expose the limits of a system that only partially recognizes non-state diplomatic agency.