On Hearing Well and Being Well Heard: Indigenous International Law at the League of Nations

This article examines four appeals to the League of Nations made by Indigenous people from British settler colonies. Diverse in form and content, these appeals nonetheless show how Indigenous communities have practiced Indigenous international law. There is a continued reiteration of Indigenous sovereignty as a matter of law, and a deployment of that sovereignty in relation to others - the dominion, the empire, and the international. In this article, I examine how these appeals show the ways Indigenous international law moves across legal times and spaces. I argue that Indigenous international law should be understood as a distinct mode of international law, operating (in part) in relation to European and Third World international laws, and I examine how these relationships can be remade.