Governance, Self-Determination, and European Imperial Systems

This chapter examines the clash between Indigenous governance systems and European imperial state-building, framing it as a decisive driver of dispossession and ongoing struggles for self-determination. It characterises many Indigenous governance traditions as decentralised, ecologically embedded, and legitimacy-based—rooted in kinship, custodianship, and consensus—illustrated by examples such as the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace and other flexible, situational leadership models. Against this, the chapter analyses European governance as centralised, bureaucratic, and geared toward territorial control, taxation, standing armies, and mercantilist expansion—structures financed and reinforced by colonial extraction (including coerced labour regimes linked to imperial revenues). It highlights how sovereignty concepts diverged: relational, shared land stewardship versus absolute sovereignty and rigid borders, codified through doctrines like terra nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery and operationalised through coercive or violated treaties. The chapter also points to institutional pathways for defending or restoring Indigenous authority via legal pluralism, compacts, and co-management.