Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law

Course in the Module "Main Issues in Contemporary Sociology of Law" (3 ECTS)

This course is designed to examine the latest research on the analysis of the rights of indigenous peoples and nature in the age of Anthropocene.  The Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law (ONAIL) was proposed to offer fundamentally differing interpretations and narratives of history, geography, politics, and the role of international law, ones in which the perspective of the nation is placed at the center of geopolitical analyses. ONAIL was devised to serve as a critical theoretical tool to explain and understand persistent global patterns of ethnocide and ecocide resulting from predatory policies of the state that continue to capture, occupy, oppress, and exploit original nations.  ONAIL was proposed to promote cooperation and collaboration among diverse groups of individuals and organizations, including progressive political activists, human rights lawyers, feminist groups, academics, and most importantly, peoples of resisting original nations and autonomous communities.  ONAIL exposed the history of the “state-making” and “nation-destroying” project and examined the original nation’s powerful resistance in multiple regions in the world. Specifically, the course focuses on the most current and controversial issues facing the original and indigenous nations around the globe: (1) ecocide, i.e., genocidal acts against the ecological health of Mother Earth by the state and transnational corporations, (2) ethnocide, i.e., genocidal acts against the original and indigenous peoples around the globe, (3) the rights of nature to preserve the ecological balances of the environment, (4) the rights of indigenous peoples to steward the environment with philosophies rooted in indigenous knowledge; and (5) ephemeral life cycles of the state and corporations as legal “fictions” whose lifespan has outlived their collective usefulness.