Indigenous Australian diplomacy and the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples

Abstract

The Australian National University’s inaugural Coral Bell Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy introduced philosophical perspectives that could underpin Indigenous Australian diplomacy. This piece uses the lecture as a starting point to discuss the possibilities and tensions of using a relationist ethos to pursue an Indigenous Australian Diplomacy approach within a survivalist system, drawing on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). First, I provide a brief history of Indigenous peoples in the survivalist international political order, then I explain what can be learnt from relational Aboriginal societal structures, and finally I use UNDRIP as a potential form of diplomatic machinery for supporting Indigenous diplomacy. This shows that an Indigenous relationalist approach to diplomacy and foreign policy that is guided by UNDRIP has the potential to transform the way in which states deal with Indigenous peoples and each other.