Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law

Book excerpt: This book introduces the Original Nation scholarship to examine the historical genealogy of the nation’s struggles against the state. A fundamentally different portrait of history, geography, politics, and the role of law emerges when the perspective of the nation and peoples is placed at the center of geopolitical analysis of global affairs. In contrast to traditional and canonical state-centric narratives, the Original Nation scholarship offers a diametrically distinct “on-the-ground” and “bottom-up” portrait of the struggle, resistance, and defiance of the nation and peoples. It exposes persistent global patterns of genocide, ecocide, and ethnocide that have resulted from attempts by the state to occupy, suppress, exploit, and destroy the nation. The Original Nation scholarship offers a powerful and widely applicable intellectual tool to examine the history of resilience, emancipatory struggles, and collective efforts to build a vibrant alternative world among the nation and peoples across the globe.