| Abstract | Among the more enduring oversights and omissions of international relations is its near total neglect of Indigenous peoples.1 In particular, the First
Nations of the Americas, ensconced within advanced colonial states, have
been accorded almost no attention.2 Critical reflection upon the sources of
this lapse gives rise to some important insights into the concealed commitments that underwrite mainstream international relations theory and exert
considerable authority in defining and delimiting disciplinary problems,
prospects, and possibilities. The origins of these conceptual predispositions
and of the neglect of Indigenous peoples can be traced to the travelogues of
the first Europeans in the Americas, the enduring influence of which in
social contractarian thought recommends their treatment as foundational
texts of the social sciences. This view highlights the relevance for international relations of challenges raised against the veracity of these formative
ethnographical accounts inasmuch as such re-evaluations simultaneously call
into serious question some of the most fundamental ontological commitments of orthodox international theory – commitments which have their
conceptual origins in the travelogues. Significantly, the neglect of
Indigenous peoples is inseparable from the not inconsiderable conceptual
indebtedness of orthodox international theory to these earliest writings
about the peoples of the Americas. To the extent that the accounts and
claims contained therein are not sustainable in the face of challenges
brought against them in critical anthropological literature and cannot be
reconciled with autoethnographical accounts of the peoples whose lifeways
they purport to document, then, realist-inspired international relations
theory becomes identifiable as an advanced colonial practice for perpetuating
the erasures they effect. |
