DILEMMAS OF RE-NATIVIZATION OF INDIGENOUS LAW

Abstract

The author in this study tests the applicability of basic categories of Leon Petrażycki’s (1865–1931) socio-psychological theory of law, pointing at ambiguity of the concept of ‘indigenous law’, ‘natives’ law’ and ‘customary law’. First, however, the right to one’s own law is followed through the history of colonization. It is essential for the plight of the indigenous people that already in 1537 Popes recognized that ‘original inhabitants’ had ‘rights’ and thus ‘legitimate claims’. If, on the one hand, there are ‘rights’ and ‘rightful claims’ then, on the other, there are duties that include not only the negative refraining from appropriation but also the positive duty to protect in exchange for the impairing the indigenous sovereignty. But whenever the nexus iuris is recognized, i.e. the link of correlative rights and duties, there is a law (Petrażycki) and ‘inherent – even if impaired, or as some say, abused – sovereignty of the indigenous people’ (Justice Marshall). The pluralist notion of ‘law’, the distinction between the ‘normative positive’ reference and the ‘normative intuition’ and the distinction between the ‘normative’ and the ‘factual’ should allow one to organize systematically the multiple issues that one encounters when approaching the area of ‘indigenous law’. From discussion of the official nonindigenous indigenous law exemplified by the federal Native American law of the United States the paper moves on to discuss the Navajo case of the official tribal law. It comes out that the native procedures and law are full of religious meaning so the ‘cultural’ sovereignty is much more fundamental and value-loaded than the secular philosophy of human rights incommensurable with the right to one’s own law. This is not considered when borrowing from native law into secular Western law (Greenland’s Criminal Code; mediation procedures in North America). The meaning of cultural sovereignty is the right to develop one’s law so that it fits one’s needs and aims. But the full success story is when the antithesis of the ‘indigenous’ and ‘dominant’ law is settled through the feedback from the former to the latter, like when the law – not only of a country but also on the global level – becomes syncretic and embraces deeper universalization of the human rights.