Indigenous Knowledge for an Inter-Nations Law: Indigenous Approaches as International Law

Associate Professor Jonathan Liljeblad presented an ongoing project examining Indigenous "inter-nations" legal orders and their implications for the existing state-based international legal system

This presentation by Associate Professor Jonathan Liljeblad outlined an ongoing project promoting Indigenous perspectives of international law, with an edited volume scheduled for publication in 2027. The project follows Indigenous Studies discourses that assert the existence of Indigenous ‘inter-nations’ legal orders which exist concurrent to the prevailing state-based international legal system.

The presentation proposed an approach for understanding such legal orders, highlighting literature on Indigenous knowledge systems as offering a means for clarifying 1) Indigenous perspectives of ‘inter-nations’ law and 2) their implications for the current international legal system. The presentation reviewed the current status of the project, with a survey of publications that include the Australian Journal of Asian Law and the Proceedings of the American Society of International Law. The presentation finished with a summary of the project’s wider call for a dedicated research agenda to advance Indigenous conceptions of international law.

This seminar was co-hosted by the Asian Law Centre and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.