Indigenising International Relations: Insights from Centring Indigeneity in Canada and Iraq

Abstract

This article responds to recent calls to decolonise International Relations. Despite the urgency of this task, much of this work remains at the margins or worse, bound to colonial world views and commitments. Against this backdrop, we first argue that centring Indigeneity demands scholarship that unravels the current configurations of the field and moves away from merely adding Indigeneity as a category within neoliberal, colonial, Westernised frameworks. Second, we assert that Critical Indigenous Studies offers a theoretically generative framework to begin examining international issues in new ways. To illustrate, we re-read sovereignty debates in Québec (Canada) and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) through a critical Indigenous lens to disrupt the discourse and taken-for-granted understandings of self-determination struggles for secession in these two sites. Along with highlighting a path towards Indigenising the discipline, our work also reveals how distinct, yet intertwined colonialisms function across the globe.