Realist Theory Of Native American

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3.1.1 Conflict Resolution: Critique through ethnographic data
Realism and liberal peace are the most accepted paradigms within Conflict studies. Above I offer a critique of both perspectives constructed through dialogue with members of different tribal nations.
Liberal Peace Theory: “Democracies do not go to war against each other”
For Native Americans, these premise is macabre humor. Native Americans, historically, self-define their political structure as a “consensus democracy”; which means that the majority is not the decision-maker, but through participatory means members of the community reach an agreement that satisfies all of them. Additionally, Native Americans characterize themselves as Tribal Nations, since they mention possessing …show more content…

The realist paradigm metaphorically, assumes that States are individuals acting in its own self-interest. Paradoxically, at the same time defines nation-states like political entities, as opposed to political beings.
As I previously explained, Native Americans self-define their communities as nations with a consensus democracy system. The “self-interest argument seems far-fetched under these contexts. George, a member of the Catawba nation- explained how the concept of conseus democracy operates at the individual and community level, and emphasized the lessons that could be learnt from it. She explained, that as members of a community Natives historically reached a consensus that satisfied as much as possible the members of the community. Therefore, he argued that the community members perceived that in the final outcome there is a part of them. However, he discussed that besides their tribal idenitity, other identities intersect, class, gender, profession, and so on. Since they had to reach a consensus, able to work on their favor, they could not simply decide based on their tribal identity, but consider something that also favors the intersection between their other identities. Which means, that their self-interest is group-oriented, as opposed to …show more content…

They defend the importance of oral history, story-telling and sharing knowledge as part of their identity, means to resist assimilation policies and to bond with members of their own communities. Although the term narrative has different meaning for different tribes and different individuals, there are certain elements that are shared among Native Americans. This shared features of the term narrative do not operate as a list. Contrarily, the importance lies under the interconnections and linkages among them. The following re-definition of narratives emanated from the 12 interviews, afterwards it was sent to the 12 collaborators and re-constructed until the 12 of them reached a

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