Indigenous anarchism names the recognition that many Indigenous governance systems embody the principles anarchist analysis describes — non-hierarchy, consensus decision-making, direct participation, communal stewardship of land — without deriving from the European anarchist tradition or needing its label. This is not a claim that Indigenous peoples are anarchists. It is the observation that the European anarchist tradition arrived, through theoretical argument, at principles that some Indigenous peoples have practiced for millennia.
The relationship is complex and must be handled with care. Some Indigenous thinkers and organizers have explicitly adopted anarchist language and organizational forms — Lucy Parsons (Muscogee Creek) is a historical example. Others reject the label entirely, arguing that their governance traditions are self-sufficient and do not need validation through a European political framework. Both positions are legitimate, and Indigenous anarchism as a concept must not become another form of recuperation — absorbing Indigenous practices into a European tradition that then claims credit for them.
What the convergence reveals is the provinciality of the European political imagination: the assumption that hierarchy, the state, and private property are universal features of complex societies is contradicted by the extensive historical and anthropological record of non-hierarchical, non-state societies documented by Vine Deloria Jr., David Graeber, and others. Anarchism is not a utopian aspiration; it is a description of social relations that have existed and continue to exist.