# Self-Determination

> Self-Determination is mapped as the prior relation: it asserts political orders, land relations, memory, and sovereignty that precede or resist settler institutions.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:indigenous-decolonial:self-determination` |
| Family | Indigenous Governance & Decolonial Change |
| Domain | Rights |
| Kind | movement |
| Archetypal function | The Prior Relation |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Self-Determination belongs to the **Indigenous Governance & Decolonial Change** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Self-Determination asserts political orders, land relations, memory, and sovereignty that precede or resist settler institutions, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Self-Determination, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Prior Relation.** Self-Determination is mapped as the prior relation: it asserts political orders, land relations, memory, and sovereignty that precede or resist settler institutions.

## Gift

restores self-determination and plural legal-political worlds; through Self-Determination, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

gets reduced to symbolism, extraction of tradition, or a single Indigenous voice; Self-Determination can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Self-Determination to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Prior Relation enters through Self-Determination. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Self-Determination becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Self-Determination; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **translates into — Indigenous Sovereignty:** Indigenous Sovereignty translates into Self-Determination by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **enables — Tribal Government:** Self-Determination enables Tribal Government by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **translates into — Meme:** Meme translates into Self-Determination by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **enables — Disproportionality:** Self-Determination enables Disproportionality by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Self-Determination from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Self-Determination is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Self-Determination: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [The Haudenosaunee Confederacy](https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/) — Haudenosaunee Confederacy, ongoing. Contemporary self-description of governance, nations, and the Great Law of Peace.
- [S. Con. Res. 76](https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/76) — U.S. Senate, 1988. Congressional acknowledgment of Haudenosaunee influence claims; not resolution of scholarly debate.
- [UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples](https://www.ohchr.org/en/indigenous-peoples/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples) — United Nations, 2007. International declaration concerning self-determination, culture, land, and participation.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
