Unfinished Constitutional Business: Rethinking Indigenous Self-Determination

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 962-963
Author(s):  
Ravi de Costa
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Many

Unfinished Constitutional Business: Rethinking Indigenous Self-Determination, Barbara A. Hocking, ed., Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005, pp. 293.In the introduction to this collection of papers from a 2001 conference in Brisbane, Australia, the editor asks, “can indigenous peoples' experiences of colonisation reshape our constitutional language?” (xv). The contributions to the book reflect the breadth of indigenous experiences as well as the range of ways that many nation-states will have to revisit their constitutions in order to satisfy the goal of decolonization/self-determination. Indeed, the book requires us to rethink what we consider to be a constitution in the context of unresolved and highly unsatisfactory indigenous-settler relations. More than a document or series of political institutions, the book explores the many ways that colonial societies have been and remain constituted by non-indigenous assumptions and ideologies and considers whether and how these impair claims for indigenous self-determination.

Strategic identity

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert E. Alejo
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Local Community ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact

This article introduces the concept of ‘strategic identity’ as a bridge between the indigenous peoples’ struggle for self-determination and their search for solidarity in the context of globalization, with a focus on the Lumads, or indigenous peoples in southern Philippines. The paper begins with an encounter with a global actor affecting a local community. We realize the impact of powerful, well-networked forces that challenge even the operation of the state. Without trivializing the threats associated with this model of globalization, we also insist that a realistic and hopeful approach may emerge if we acknowledge the many ‘selves’ in the indigenous peoples’ self-determination. At the heart of this proposal is a matrix that unpacks the complex ways that local, national, sectoral, and global actors can engage in conflict or solidarity with these strategic identity assertions. Solidarity work, then, becomes diversified and strategized in response to the evolving multiple indigenous identities that modernity paradoxically both endangers and engenders.

scholarly journals ‘Quebec Sovereignty and Indigenous Nationhoods: Critiquing The Quebec Secessionist Movement from “an Indigenous” Lens’

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-44
Author(s):  
Chadwick Cowie ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
French And English ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Secessionist Movement

The purpose of this article is to assess and critique the Quebec secessionist movement from an Indigenous lens in order to include other contexts and views on the aforementioned topic that is traditionally left to the peripheries of the Quebec secessionist movement. In order to add an Indigenous lens to the discussion of Quebec’s secessionist movement, this paper will first review the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination from both ‘western-centric’ and Indigenous views. Furthermore, this article will then review the historical formation of French and English settlers and power in what Indigenous peoples call Turtle Island, from the 1500s until 1960. Lastly, with the many political, economic, and societal changes from the 1960s and on, this paper will critique the competing views of Quebec as a sovereign entity to that of Indigenous nationhoods. This article concludes that for Quebec to truly reflect a decolonized state, the inclusion of Indigenous nations as equal partners with their own sovereignty and self-determination recognized must also occur.

scholarly journals The Right to Self-Determination of Peoples: Notes on its Compatibility With Three Models of Global Order

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Martinez Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Right ◽  
In The Beginning

The right to self-determination has become an increasing legitimate demand of peoples seeking recognition and autonomy. In the beginning, this right was conceived in favor of peoples that depended on colonial powers, but today it has become a claim of any people that considers itself a people, as in the case of indigenous peoples or non-colonized peoples. This concept of the right to self-determination seems to be the path leading to a more heterogeneous world. Conversely, the rise of various problems that affect us globally seems to require the creation of international political institutions capable of solving these problems, which would most likely lead us toward a more homogeneous global order. Although both tendencies have powerful reasons that make them irreversible, it is not clear how they can co-exist. In this article, the author discusses whether a broad notion of the right to self-determination is compatible with three different models of global order proposed by Thomas Christiano, Rafael Domingo, and James Bohman, respectively.

scholarly journals Beyond Academia: Indigenous media as an intercultural resource to unlearn nation-state history

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 29-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Indigenous Media ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State History ◽  
The Right

This article proposes that settler communities cannot teach or understand our shared intercultural history without listening to ideas presented by Indigenous communities about their own history in lands currently occupied by modern nation- -states. This history enables us to understand the power of the ethnographic gaze and its relation to The Doctrine of Discovery (1493), which extinguished Indigenous rights to lands and resources, rights later transferred to the modern nation- -states through the legal notion of “eminent domain”. These rights include the ownership of intangibles such as the image and storytelling through photography and film. Maori scholars Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Barry Barclay and Merata Mita are cited on knowledge production, copyright and image sovereignty to decolonise our understanding of the right to self-representation. The study includes a brief analysis of films that help decolonise an ethnographic gaze at these relationships, particularly the Brazilian documentary “O Mestre e o Divino” by Tiago Campos Torre (2013).Keywords: Indigenous peoples. Nation-state history. Film. Self- -determination.

Toward a Comparative Politics of Environmental Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Comparative Review ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Land Water

The politics of environmental justice increasingly feature in environmental governance across multiple levels. Environmental defenders risk their lives to protect land, water, and forests. Non-human actors like rivers are gaining rights. Frontline environmental justice communities now include nation-states like Fiji that faces existential threats from climate change. Indigenous Peoples’ fights for self-determination illuminate how deeply connected and inseparable are the politics of sovereignty, representation, and environment. This chapter explores these developments to chart and examine how a politics of environmental justice can inform environmental and social policies by treating environmental justice as a driver, rather than unintended consequence, of policy and politics. Through this critical, comparative review, the chapter illuminates how and why environmental justice concerns matter for environmental governance and for the study of comparative environmental politics.

DECOLONIZATION AND SELF-DETERMINATION

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Political Boundaries

Abstract:While self-determination is a cardinal principle of international law, its meaning is often obscure. Yet international law clearly recognizes decolonization as a central application of the principle. Most ordinary people also agree that the liberation of colonial peoples was a moral triumph. This essay examines three philosophical theories of self-determination’s value, and asks which one best captures the reasons why decolonization was morally required. The instrumentalist theory holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples were unjustly governed, the democratic view holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples lacked democratic representation, and the associative view holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples were unable to affirm the political institutions their colonial rulers imposed on them. I argue that the associative view is superior to competing accounts, because it better reflects individuals’ “maker” interests in participating in shared political projects that they value. The essay further shows that if we accept the associative view, self-determination is not a sui generis value that applies to decolonization alone. Ultimately, our intuitions about decolonization can be justified only by invoking an interest on the part of persistently alienated groups in redrawing political boundaries. The same interest may justify self-determination in additional cases, such as autonomy for indigenous peoples, or greater independence for Scotland or Quebec.

Indigenizing Self-Determination at the United Nations: Reparative Progress in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Miranda Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Colonial Histories

Abstract When the United Nations General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, it introduced into the international legal lexicon a new dimension to the concept of self-determination. The declaration emphasizes indigenous peoples’ distinctive rights to land, culture, language, and collective identity. It does not propose political independence or sovereign statehood, instead insisting on indigenous peoples’ equal rights of citizenship within existing nation-states. The distinct dimension of self-determination that the declaration introduces is one that speaks of indigenous peoples’ particular colonial histories of dispossession and the restoration of their rights and identities in the present, but without disrupting the political continuity of the states that surround them. It is reparative rather than revolutionary. In this article, I examine the construction and contestation of an indigenous right to self-determination both in relation to earlier definitions, and among and between the peoples and states who drafted the declaration.

AFRICAN WOMEN AND FORBIDDEN GROUNDS: FEMALE SEXUALITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN AFRICAN LITERATURE

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
African Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Sexual Repression

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.

Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Natural Resources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Right

The issue of sovereignty over natural resources has been a key element in the development of international law, notably leading to the emergence of the principle of States’ permanent sovereignty over their natural resources. However, concomitant to this focus on States’ sovereignty, international human rights law proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination over their natural resources. This has led to a complex and ambivalent relationship between the principle of States’ sovereignty over natural resources and peoples’ rights to natural resources. This chapter analyses this conflicting relationship and examines the emergence of the right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural resources and evaluates its potential role in contemporary advocacy. It notably explores how indigenous peoples have called for the revival of their right to sovereignty over natural resources, and how the global peasants’ movement has pushed for the recognition of the concept of food sovereignty.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document