"Reclaiming Indigenous Sovereignty through Postcolonial Discourse in the Global South: Land, Knowledge, and Self-Determination Beyond Colonial Modernity,
##semicolon##
https://doi.org/10.66871/ihj.v1i1.001##semicolon##
indigenous sovereignty##common.commaListSeparator## postcolonial discourse##common.commaListSeparator## Adivasi##common.commaListSeparator## Global South##common.commaListSeparator## subaltern studies##common.commaListSeparator## epistemic justice##common.commaListSeparator## coloniality of powerसार
This paper examines the relationship between postcolonial discourse and indigenous sovereignty reclamation in the Global South, with historical attention to the Indian subcontinent. It argues that political independence from colonial rule did not resolve the structural dispossession of indigenous communities, most acutely the Adivasi populations of India, from their lands, epistemologies, and customary governance systems. The colonial legal architecture inaugurated by British forest and land legislation in the nineteenth century was substantially preserved within the postcolonial Indian state, perpetuating historical injustice in new administrative forms. Drawing on postcolonial theory (Fanon, Spivak), decolonial thought (Mignolo, Quijano), subaltern studies (Guha, Chakrabarty), and indigenous sovereignty scholarship (Smith, Coulthard), the paper proposes a three-dimensional sovereignty reclamation model comprising territorial, epistemic, and cultural-governance dimensions. This framework is applied comparatively across four Global South cases: the Adivasi movement in India, the Maori struggle in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Maasai land rights contestation in East Africa, and the Latin American plurinational movements in Bolivia and Ecuador. The analysis demonstrates that colonial modernity continues to operate through postcolonial state structures, legal regimes, and epistemic hierarchies. Postcolonial discourse enables indigenous communities to contest these structures by rewriting history, challenging colonial legality, recovering suppressed epistemologies, and asserting alternative governance identities. The paper concludes that epistemic justice is non-negotiable for meaningful sovereignty reclamation, and that indigenous sovereignty is not a nostalgic regression but a contemporary decolonial political project of enduring historical legitimacy.
##submission.citations##
Acosta, A. (2012). Buen Vivir: Sumak Kawsay. Una oportunidad para imaginar otros mundos. Abya Yala.
Agrawal, A. (2001). Common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources. World Development, 29(10), 1649-1672. <https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(01)00063-8>
Ahmad, A. (1992). In theory: Classes, nations, literatures. Verso.
Arnold, D., & Hardiman, D. (Eds.). (1994). Subaltern studies VIII: Essays in honour of Ranajit Guha. Oxford University Press.
Berkes, F. (2008). Sacred ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Bhatia, B. (2005). The Naxalite movement in central Bihar. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(15), 1536-1549.
Bhullar, L. (2008). The Indian Forest Rights Act 2006: A critical appraisal. Law, Environment and Development Journal, 4(1), 20-34.
Bijoy, C. R. (2008). The Adivasis of India: A history of discrimination, conflict, and resistance. PUCL Bulletin. http://www.pucl.org
Bijoy, C. R. (2019). Supreme Court’s forest order: A crisis of governance. Economic and Political Weekly, 54(9), 13-16.
Bose, S. (2000). The Jharkhand movement: Indigenous peoples’ struggle for autonomy in India. In G. Kingsbury & G. Clarke (Eds.), Indigenous peoples of Asia (pp. 153-172). Association for Asian Studies.
Brockington, D. (2002). Fortress conservation: The preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. James Currey.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton University Press.
Coulthard, G. S. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. University of Minnesota Press.
Dasgupta, R. (1999). Economy, society and the state: Tribal struggles in the Chotanagpur plateau. In D. Arnold & R. Guha (Eds.), Nature, culture, imperialism (pp. 191-216). Oxford University Press.
De Sousa Santos, B. (2007). Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 30(1), 45-89.
De Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers.
Dirlik, A. (1994). The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism. Critical Inquiry, 20(2), 328-356.
Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press.
Fernandes, W. (1999). Development-induced displacement in eastern India. In S. Danda (Ed.), Antiquity to modernity in tribal India (Vol. 1). Inter-India Publications.
Gadgil, M., & Guha, R. (1992). This fissured land: An ecological history of India. Oxford University Press.
Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow. Development, 54(4), 441-447. <https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2011.86>
Guha, R. (1982). On some aspects of the historiography of colonial India. In R. Guha (Ed.), Subaltern studies I (pp. 1-8). Oxford University Press.
Guha, R. (1989). The unquiet woods: Ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. Oxford University Press.
Igoe, J. (2006). Becoming indigenous peoples: Difference, inequality, and the globalisation of East African identity politics. African Affairs, 105(420), 399-420. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adl022
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press.
Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India. (2007). The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Government of India Press.
Padel, F., & Das, S. (2010). Out of this earth: East India Adivasis and the aluminium cartel. Orient BlackSwan.
Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533-580.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Sarin, M. (2005). Undoing historical injustice: Forest rights and conservancy in scheduled areas. Vasundhara.
Singh, K. S. (1982). Birsa Munda and his movement: 1874-1901. Oxford University Press.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271-313). University of Illinois Press.
Springate-Baginski, O., Sarin, M., Ghosh, S., Dasgupta, P., Bose, I., Banerjee, A., & Sarap, K. (2013). Redressing historical injustice through the Indian Forest Rights Act 2006. IDS Research Reports, 2013(75)
Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. James Currey.
United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (A/RES/61/295). https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html
Walker, R. (2004). Ka whawhai tonu matou: Struggle without end (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books.
Walsh, C. E. (2010). Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional arrangements and (de)colonial entanglements. Development, 53(1), 15-21. <https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2009.93>
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409. <https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240>
Xaxa, V. (1999). Tribes as indigenous people of India. Economic and Political Weekly, 34(51), 3589-3595.
