ABSTRACT
The Introduction lays out the central issues discussed in the book and presents its general thesis: while some proponents of international legal discourses uphold Indigenous peoples’ rights as providing control, Indigenous peoples are subjects of international law who become subject to international law by and through claiming human rights. That is as agentic as it is oppressive, and it does not provide rights claimants with control. International legal discourse on Indigenous peoples is a troubled subject, particularly because the subjectivity of Indigenous peoples is undertheorized. Accordingly, this book makes a theoretical and methodological intervention in international legal discourse on Indigenous peoples, called legal performativity. The introduction begins to explain legal performativity, or a legal performative method, by examining some of the main insights or consequences of adopting a legal performative method. It ends by outlining the chapters.
