Responsibilities Into Rights : The Settler-Colonial Translation of Native Social Systems into Western Law
Eric Cheyfitz, Aline Castañeda Cadena
Volume 23, Number 1 (2025) 23 (1): 1-13, 17-31
Keywords Settler colonialism, Legal translation, Indigenous social systems, Communal responsibilities, Individual rights, Kinship, Sovereignty, U.S. Federal Law, Neoliberal capitalism, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Consensus, Reciprocity, Cultural dispossession, Nation-state, Colonial domination, Rights vs. responsibilities
Abstract
This article examines how settler colonialism translated Indigenous social systems—rooted in communal responsibilities and kinship with both humans and "more-than-human" beings—into Western structures of individual rights and state sovereignty. Eric Cheyfitz argues that, prior to colonization, Indigenous societies operated through principles of consensus, reciprocity, and responsibility, without the separation between society and state that defines Western political systems. Using examples such as U.S. federal law, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and the Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the author illustrates how this legal "translation" subordinated Indigenous peoples within colonial power structures, maintaining domination under the language of rights and sovereignty. Cheyfitz contends that imposing a regime of rights over one of responsibilities has eroded the egalitarian foundations of Indigenous societies, contributing to their cultural and political dispossession under neoliberal capitalism and state structures. Finally, he suggests that addressing today's crises requires recovering systems based on responsibilities toward both humans and the natural world.
Eric Cheyfitz
Aline Castañeda Cadena
Published August 15, 2025
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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