How Western Sovereignty Occludes Indigenous Governance: the Guarani and Kaiowa Peoples in Brazil

Abstract

Recent international relations (IR) scholarship has developed a growing awareness of this discipline's colonial roots, prompting a search for decolonising approaches. This article is about indigenous sovereignties and how they have been occluded in the currently globalised European system of states. The method employed is a case study of two of the most impoverished and bru-talised Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: the Guarani and the Kaiowa. In an attempt to transit between the world of Westphalia and non-European worlds, it starts by engaging in a conversation with Guarani and Kaiowa knowledge. Then, through a long-term historical analysis, it examines the main colonial processes that caused the occlusion of Guarani and Kaiowa sovereignty. Finally, it provides a broader perspective on how the diffusion of the European model of sovereignty, confronted with Indigenous resistance, has led to the social exclusion of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. It was ymã guare, ancient time. It was during the Third Earth, when white people entered the territory now known as Brazil. Ñanderu was recreating the world, after his father had destroyed the Second Earth with darkness and fire. In order to decide what the white people and the Guarani and Kaiowa people would be like, he proposed a game. Ñanderu put a series of objects on the ground: to one side, he put male adornments used during religious Guarani rituals; to the other, he put pen, pencil, paper, and the Bible. Ahead, he put the children: a Guarani boy and girl, and a white boy and girl. Ñanderu told them to choose their preferences. While the Guarani children chose the objects related to learning through the Guarani spiritual experience, the white children chose the objects related to learning at school (Vietta 2007; Crespe 2015). As a result, the Guarani and Kaiowa ancestors decided to continue following their ñande reko, their own way. That is one of the central narratives of Guarani and Kaiowa history, and one that provides the foundations for their political sovereignty. As I will show, they are organised as an anti-state polity, structured around three main forms of authority: religious leaders (ñanderu or shamans), secular leaders (tendotá), and the great assembly (Aty Guasu) (Pi