What About The Fourth World "Self"?

Amerindian Cosmovision Against Eurocentric Self-Determination

Abstract

This paper aims at engaging with Baxi’s article “The Dust of Empire: the Dialectic of Self-Determination and Re-colonization in the First Phase of the Cold War” by arguing that self-determination, as defined during the Cold War, does not include indigenous peoples Cosmovision. Considering that Amerindians were not part of the economic pattern imposed to the Third World during that period, the “self” in the eurocentric lens of self-determination excludes indigenous peoples’ selves and condemns them to being silenced, excluded, or extinct, that is, permanent victims of epistemicide. This paper uses a deductive method based on a bibliographic analysis to discuss the topic through perspectivism, as well as the Fourth-World Approaches to International Law (FWAIL). On the one hand, perspectivism emphasizes the spiritual relationship between indigenous people and nature, which is part of the amerindian cosmovision. FWAIL scholars, on the other hand, argue that international law fails to recognize indigenous peoples’ true collective selves, perpetuating the denial of their rights through the appropriation of their resources, territory and bodies. In this sense, through a critical analysis, it is advanced that such universal view put forward by global north during the Cold War is not only incapable of dealing with the cultural differences that self-determination, seen through the Amerindian cosmovision, implies, but also the reason why they are recurring victims of violations of rights. ILO convention no. 107, the Brazilian legal framework and the country’s recurring excluding actions are examples of it. At the end, it is suggested that proper attention given to the indigenous “self” seems to be a better way to contribute thoroughly to a true collective self-determination debate.

KEYWORDS: Self-determination; Cosmovision; Amerindian; Fourth World Approaches to International Law (FWAIL).