Surfing the Westphalian Wave. Reclaiming Indigenous Sovereign Agency in the International System

The June 2023 World Championship in lacrosse saw the Haudenosaunee team competing against the likes of the United States and Canada. In surfing, Hawaiian (Kānaka Maoli) sportspeople compete under their own flags, separate from the United States (nominally their colonial power), even though no one recognises these polities as independent states. In contrast to cases such as CONIFA – the football world cup for unrecognised polities – these competitions are ostensibly reserved for independent states, and the Indigenous teams compete on par with their "Westphalian" (i.e. territorially demarcated, non-overlapping, and internationally recognised) sovereign peers. At the same time, neither the Haudenosaunee Confederacy nor Hawaii is ostensibly pursuing secession and independence; their ability to compete under their own flags is also limited to those two, generally niche disciplines. This paper investigates the significance of this phenomenon by asking why the Hawaiian and the Haudenosaunee insist on competing under their own flags in surfing and lacrosse, respectively, despite the ostensible misfit between their form of sovereignty and that of the other competitors. I argue that participation in international sports competitions under their flags allows the Indigenous peoples to reclaim sovereign agency in an international system which is biased against non-Westphalian forms of sovereignty. As has been well documented, the current international system, Eurocentric and colonial as it is at its core, prioritises a homogenous form of statehood and generally fails to recognise other sovereignties, which do not link to territorially exclusive statehood, as recently demonstrated by the 2023 Voice referendum in Australia. As such, Indigenous communities have to creatively navigate the system to find openings for the assumption of their sovereign agency. Surfing and lacrosse carry huge cultural relevance in the respective Indigenous communities and have both been violently appropriated by white settler colonialists during the conquest of North America. Having survived (and thrived) despite the white suppression of Indigenous practices, the sports offer an important avenue to pursue recognition for Indigenous sovereignty. This paper marries research into the role of sports in nation-building and nationalism, and practices of sovereignty. Exploring the complex nexus between the Westphalian-oriented international system and Indigenous sovereignty contributes to the pluralisation and decolonisation of the discipline. The research is heavily practice-oriented – instead of exploring the conceptual background of Indigenous sovereignty, it aims to empirically assess the opportunities for finding Indigenous sovereign agency on the international, Westphalian-centric stage. At the same time, it highlights important limitations. Most importantly, it shows that international recognition by non-state actors, such as sports governing bodies, can provide a modicum of legitimation and recognition to Indigenous policies while also reinforcing the international hierarchy precisely by being an exception to the "normal" rules of recognition. In particular, the inability of both Indigenous peoples to field their teams in the Olympic Games – an event governed by much more rigid, Westphalian rules than individual sports – shows that the reclaiming of sovereign agency through locally significant sports can be both an opportunity for recognition and a reminder of the subaltern status.