Fourth World Approaches to International Law (FWAIL) and Asia's Indigenous Struggles and Quests for Recognition Under International Law

The Fourth World Approaches to International law (FWAIL) is proposed to challenge prevailing international legal discourse predicated on the presumed congruence between nation and state, which allows little imagination of the indigenous nation as a culturally and ideologically cohesive community of native populations that have been forcefully captured within, and/or partitioned across, the state system. The term, the Fourth World, was first coined by George Manuel, Chief of the National Indian Brotherhood of Canada, in his 1974 work, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. He states, “the Fourth World is a vision of the future history of North America and of the Indian people.” American indigenous scholar and activist Winona LaDuke defines the Fourth World as “the Host [and Original] World upon which the First, Second, and Third Worlds all sit at the present time.” FWAIL scholarship posits that all state systems from the First to Third World have been engaging in ongoing colonial occupation and exploitation of original Fourth World people, their land, and resources; the denial of indigenous government and political rights to independence; the conscious devaluation of indigenous tradition, language, and ideologies, in contrast to the conscious elevation of the “civilized” culture of external imposition; and the usurpation of indigenous knowledge and natural resources, resulting in detriment to the welfare of aboriginal communities and inter-human and cross-species relationships in indigenous lands, and to the natural environment and future survival of the Fourth World. By centering the indigenous nation in approaches to the struggles for the right to self-determination, FWAIL seeks to create a socio-legal framework that recognizes the political rights and legal equality of the nation, in order that it may participate in the formulation of national and international policies that affect the indigenous community. FWAIL further investigates the role of the state system acting as an intermediary agency seeking the predatory objectives of international institutions that the First World helped create and control, and it offers an active voice to indigenous people in order to build a culture of collective resistance and opposition across the Fourth World and to fight against both domestic and international oppression imposed by hegemonic Western domination. Lastly, FWAIL scholarship offers a prescient approach to the preservation of biodiversity and the natural environment necessary for the survival of human race in coming generations.

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