| Summary: | According to United Nations indigenous populations inhabit ninety different countries and although some of them have been colonized by the same empires, their colonial experiences were very varied. Even though some indigenous experiences under colonization shared certain commonalities, those of dispossession of land and resources, gradual loss of their legal capacity and sovereignty, assimilation, and evangelization; they also experienced differences, especially in the means or techniques by which these common colonial goals were achieved. Generally, scholars have narrated indigenous peoples stories in two ways, either as sovereigns recognized by colonial powers who should be considered as subjects of international law in equal footing to states; or as people deprived of their sovereignty through unlawful means and legal fictions that rendered them as objects of law, which should be invalidated and consequently corrected by recognizing them as subjects of international law. The fact that scholars have reached two different conclusions when examining the same historical accounts can be explained using specific narrative techniques and problems in their argumentation, methodological and theoretical analysis of legal concepts. This thesis contains an attempt to move past these problems by suggesting a different historical narrative build up on a Third World Approaches to International Law method, one that embraces particularities, highlights the importance of context, and follows legal institutions as they develop in time. This thesis tries to exemplify how a particular history enriches the debate and shows the impossibility of discussing legal concepts as universal truths, and hopes for a shift in scholarship from a universalistic approach of categories and homogeneity, to a more inclusive and particularly rich conception of indigenous legal history. This is achieved by the telling of an indigenous history, which has been selected in terms of its special characteristic in hopes of showing its full complexity. The ...
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