Københavns Universitet - Kurser

JJUA55309U Indigeneity Law and Nature

Volume 2026/2027

This course interrogates the evolving legal recognition of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Nature under international and national legal regimes. It connects “law” as a predominantly Western and anthroprocentric method of governing with other legal constructs to reveal how different legal systems and methods of governance protect and fail to protect, connect to and exploit, nature, with particular focus on Indigenous legal systems and legal developments recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including various interpretations of rights to and of nature. The nexuses between indigeneity, nature and law occur in and through different legal regimes including international law, constitutional law, and various forms of national law such as those in relation to rights and the management of natural resources.

This course draws inspiration from critical perspectives on international law including TWAIL (third world approaches to international law), post and decolonial legal studies, theories of legal pluralism, climate and green colonialism, among others. It will highlight the voices of indigenous and Global South legal scholars toexamine the climate crisis and the response to it, including climate adaptation, and maladaptation, disaster risk creation, and conflicting interpretations of notions of sustainability. The course will examine the consequences of colonization, and legal cultures of extraction on the protection of nature, drawing also on comparative legal approaches in constitutional and international law.

The course will cover:

• What are “indigenous rights” and how are they enforced? Including how the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is operationalised and incorporated into domestic legal regimes.

• What is the notion of Free Prior and Informed Consent and how should it and does it manifest in business conduct?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the international human rights regime as it relates to protection of and access to nature?

• How are non-Western and marginalized epistemologies gaining legal recognition? Including the incorporation of Indigenous legal precepts and rights into settler constitutional regimes, with specific case studies.

• What is legal pluralism and is any system of plurality compliant with the rule of law?

• How have rights of and to nature have been recognized in domestic legal regimes and to what effect?

• Contemporary interpretations of extant rights such as those which support the indigenous right to self-determination and the human right to a healthy environment

• Legal responses to disaster and the intersection with Indigenous precepts and rights

• Future legal directions

Learning Outcome

Knowledge:

Specialised legal knowledge on the relationship between Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the state, based on the highest standards in contemporary law and scholarship;
Specialised knowledge of legal developments in the rights of nature itself, including as they exist independently, and also as they relate to the human rights to self-determination and a healthy environment;
A comprehensive understanding of the various approaches to the incorporation of respect for Indigenous rights and the rights of nature into settler legal regimes, including through systems of legal pluralism, and on that basis the capacity to identify and reflect on tensions within and between them;
Specialised knowledge of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples rights and the legal and historical relationship between Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat / Greenland;
Comprehensive understanding of the tensions and distinctions between human rights law, the rights of indigenous peoples, and rights to and of nature

Skills:

Adopting and applying critical legal methodologies to address the interrelationship between indigeneity, law and nature, towards the development of mutually beneficial solutions
Providing counsel that takes into account the political, economic and social factors relevant to Indigenous Peoples, and the capacity to explain how the interpretation of law and its application as well as the underlying legal system impacts Indigenous Peoples access to, and relationship with nature, and contribute to developing legal solutions for its protection

Competences:

Students will gain competences in the provision of nuanced legal counsel across legal regimes that can be in tension;
They will be able to interpret and apply the law in ways that consider Indigenous People’s access to nature and self-determination and in advancing the development of legal solution; and
advanced competences in structuring one’s own professional development and specialisation including through contributing to the selectionof case studies, and determining the application of law to them

Literature

Mihnea Tănăsescu, Understanding the Rights of Nature: A Critical Introduction (Transcript Press, 2022)
Mattias Åhren, Indigenous Peoples Status in the International Legal System (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Usha Natarajan and Julia Dehm, ‘Introduction: Where is the Environment?’ in Usha Natarajan and Julia Dehm (eds) Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022) 1
Anthea Roberts, Is International Law Really International? (Oxford University Press, 2017) ‘Introduction’ pages 1-17.
Usha Natarajan, ‘Who Do we Think We Are? Human Rights in a Time of Ecological Change’ in Usha Natarajan and Julia Dehm, Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (2022) 200-228 (28 pages)
Alessandro Pelizzon, “Relationality, Reciprocity and Responsibility” in Ecological Jurisprudence: The Law of Nature and the Nature of Law (Springer 2025), pp. 265-320.
Lidia Cano-Pecharroman and Erin O’Donnell, ‘Relational Representation: Speaking with and Not about Nature’ (2024) 3 PLOS Water e0000236
Megan Davis, 'To Bind or not to Bind: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Five Years On' (2012) 19 Australian Journal of International Law 17.
Stefan Disko and Dalee Sambo Dorough, ‘“We are not in Geneva on the Human Rights Council”: Indigenous Peoples’ Experience with the World Heritage Convention” (2022) 29 International Journal of Cultural Property 487
Guldana Salimjan, ‘Ecotourism as Racial Capitalism: Ecological Civilization in Settler-Colonial Xinjiang’ (2023)
Arturo Escobar, ‘Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South’ (2016) 11 AIBR, Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 11.
Aaron Mills, ‘The Lifeworlds of Law: On Revitalizing Indigenous Legal Orders Today’ (2016) 61 McGill Law Journal / Revue de droit de McGill 847.

Recommended Academic Qualifications

It would be an advantage to have previously studied public international law or international human rights law.

Teaching and learning methods

Holdundervisning

Workload