The land of nations: Indigenous struggles for property and territory in international law

Abstract

Key studies have highlighted how Western law was central to the civilizing mission of colonialism, legitimizing conquest while presenting itself as a colonizer's gift for overcoming barbarism.1 But law was not just an imposition to dispossess resources and accumulate labor; it was also transformed by the contestations of First Nations and the new practices deployed in settler societies.2 In this context, the first international legal theories were aimed at subordinating third world societies and, at the same time, provided the foundations of Western legal apparatus, shaping racially the modern concepts of sovereignty, territory, and property.