Ethics and Culture: Indigenous People and the concept of selfdetermination

Zusatztext

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].

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