19 Indigeneity and Peace Morgan Brigg and Polly O. Walker Introduction Indigenous peoples pre-date the contemporary world system of nation-states, and yet are now bound with this global scheme through asymmetric power rela- tions of colonialism. As colonial exchanges saw the expropriation of Indigenous lands and the concentration of wealth in European hands from 1492, notions of progress, private property and nationhood relied upon Indigenous reference points to conjure the image of a barbaric, romantic or simply earlier past that was ‘naturally’ succeeded in the passage to a modern world. 1 The European colonial episode inflicted incredible damage on Indigenous societies, frequently pushing Indigenous peoples to the brink of extinction through genocidal vio- lence, but it also bound Indigenous and European peoples in the generation of European self-understandings that continue to reverberate and dominate in world politics. The asymmetry of many colonial encounters certainly means that many exchanges occurred – and continue to occur – on European terms, but Indigenous peoples have consistently pushed back, troubling and haunting a Eurocentric world order from a marginal position. In recent decades, Indigenous peoples have regathered and remobilized in local, national and international fora. Most notable here is the remark- able development of transnational Indigenous activism in the late twentieth century, culminating in the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indige- nous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007. 2 This and other developments have brought that which was previously represented as other, inferior and past unmistakably and decidedly into the present. 3 To encounter Indigenous approaches to peace, then, is to engage alternative and distinct understandings of peace, conflict and political order, and to be moved, in both thought and life, in ways that are often unfamiliar to mainstream schol- arship. At a time when much thought and practice about peace and order are converging on some version of the liberal peace, Indigenous approaches 259 O. P. Richmond et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace © The Editor(s) 2016