Timothy Sweet, Extinction and the Human: Four American Encounters

Animals and diplomacy: on the prospect for interspecies diplomacy

“…85 In his work on how large-fauna extinctions have been narrated by Indigenous peoples as well as settler-colonizers in North America across time, Sweet considers some of the most productive narrations to have worked within 'the paradigm of treaties or agreements between humans and nonhumans', and argues that it is particularly relevant in the current context of the so-called sixth mass extinction. 86 With reference to how the treaty form 'developed in order to resolve histories of violent relations', he draws an explicit parallel between the Treaty of Westphalia and how several Indigenous peoples' treaties with animals are 'founded on histories of interspecies violence'. 87 Furthermore, he considers one of the main attractions of thinking about treaties with animals to be that '[t]he treaty form is grounded neither in mastery nor love but in the recognition of sovereignty and mutual respect'.…”