ABSTRACT
IITC Board Member Bill Means was in Minneapolis, having a lunch meeting with me, officially launching this research project. A universal standard of Indigenous rights has been set, those standards represent significant change in the structure and practice of global politics, and there is at least rhetorical support for those standards coming from the vast majority of the worlds nation states. Indigenous rights aim to eradicate the discursive, normative, and, ultimately, material remnants of the colonial project and complete the unfinished business of decolonization. Global Indigenous politics ultimately rests on a universal right to maintain difference a new and potentially transformational idea in global politics. English-speaking settler colonial states generally highly prize Lockean liberal notions regarding individual's natural rights of equality and private property. The UNPFII released the study report on the optional protocol in 2014, recommending that such a mechanism should be voluntary, confined to only a handful of critical issues, and negotiated between states and Indigenous peoples.
