Liberal democratic inclusion

Recognising difference does not undermine liberalism’s protection of individual rights. Indigenous identity must come from somewhere. It is heavily shaped by culture and derives meaning from communal relationships. However, the degree to which difference and diversity ought to co-exist is contested. Public attitudes to differentiation and diversity influence the opportunities and practices of indigenous civil society. The tension as an intellectual contest between liberal democracy’s capacity for inclusion and its practical tendency to exclude. The chapter assesses examples of democratic inclusion and exclusion in Australia and New Zealand for the political values they reflect, before proposing the concept as one that might contribute stability and coherence to Fijian politics as foundational conditions for the greater self-determination that indigenous Fijians seek.

Liberal democracy and differentiated citizenship

Citizenship defines the terms of belonging to the modern state. It is an ideological and power laden concept which can exacerbate, exaggerate or mediate tensions over the distribution of power and authority. States have used citizenship’s exclusive capacity for the assimilation of indigenous peoples. However, there is also considerable potential for a liberal theory of indigeneity, proceeding from differentiated liberal citizenship, to develop the right to difference in cultural expression, but sameness in political opportunities; difference in forms of land tenure, but sameness in capacity to make decisions about how land is used; difference in the ways one is taught at school, but sameness in educational quality. The principal argument for differentiated citizenship is that liberal democracy alone does not guarantee the elimination of injustice, nor does it guarantee that indigenous political aspirations will not be marginalised by majoritarian politics.

Introduction1

Indigeneity is a politics of potential that transcends neocolonial victimhood. The book’s principal purpose is to explain how and why. It does so by showing that indigeneity’s relationships with discourses of reconciliation, self-determination and sovereignty allow people to find ways of asserting their culturally framed political rights of prior occupancy. These rights are potentially realised through differentiated liberal citizenship, or ‘belonging together differently’, in a single noncolonial state (...

Economic development as differentiated citizenship: Australia

Indigenous Australian economic practices and aspirations emphasise economic activity’s cultural context and purpose; practices and aspirations that routinely differ from Australian public policy’s instinctive assimilationist presumption. For example, indigenous actors’ repeated attention to trans-generational well-being shows that economic development is understood as part of a complex policy domain closely intertwined with social stability, employment, health and educational opportunities. Culture can explain economic activity’s purpose. It is also preliminary to effective schooling which is, in turn, a determinant of indigenous access to labour markets, utilisation of land rights for material purposes and access to the middle class which can be an important constituent of equal citizenship and participatory parity.

Conclusion

The book’s opening chapter described reconciliation as a theoretical framework from which contemporary indigenous politics is played out across Australia, Fiji and New Zealand; jurisdictions with marked contextual differences, but sharing a need for ordered and relationally just terms of association among indigenous peoples, the state and wider societies as they respond to British colonial legacies. While grounded in Christian public theology, reconciliation transcends the notion of a sacramental relationship between God and penitent involving sorrow, forgiveness and correcting broken relationships, to provide a metaphor for just intra-national relationships. Religious discourses of reconciliation have influenced secular indigenous politics in each jurisdiction. They help to rationalise the politics of indigeneity’s juxtaposition with liberal democracy to position differentiated citizenship as a legitimate constituent of the liberal political arrangements that prevail in Australia and New Zealand and that the international community seeks to impose on Fiji....

Economic development as differentiated citizenship: Fiji

Relatively speaking, indigenous Fijians do not enjoy high levels of self-determination. Economic underdevelopment is a significant contributing variable. Underdevelopment occurs at the intersection of political instability, incoherent understandings of the nature of political relationships and the underutilisation of natural resources. Of this book’s three nations of interest, it is Fiji that most lacks a coherent philosophy of indigenous self-determination, which is the point that most significantly sets that country’s indigenous politics apart from Australia’s or New Zealand’s. This chapter argues that indigenous Fijian economic agency is most likely to be enhanced through policies and practices of differentiated citizenship that recognise political authority’s true character and relative and relational nature. There are also lessons to be drawn from jurisdictions like Australia and New Zealand on the nature and possibilities of indigenous political influence and its relationship to economic agency.

The politics of indigeneity

Indigeneity is a theory of justice and political strategy that indigenous peoples use to develop their own terms of belonging to the nation-state. In particular it is distinct from theories of minority rights because its claims are grounded in extant rights of prior occupancy. Indigeneity’s overarching claim is to create political space for substantive and sustainable reconciliation through self-determination and through particular indigenous shares in the sovereign authority of the state itself. Australia, Fiji and New Zealand are compared to show indigeneity’s limits as well is its possibilities, whether the post-colonial context is one of significant vulnerability or one where a coherent and considered account of political power is required for the translation of political advantage into meaningful self-determination

Reconciliation

Although in very different ways, reconciliation is a political/theological nexus of foundational significance to indigenous politics in all three of Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. In each case, Christian churches have contributed to developing reconciliation from a solely religious precept to one of secular priority, deeply intertwined with the politics of indigeneity. In New Zealand, religious principles of reconciliation acquire secular expression through Treaty of Waitangi settlements and, in Australia, through the recognition of land rights and apologies to the stolen generations, for example. In contrast, contemporary Fijian politics is distinguished by an overtly religious nationalism that reconciliation has been co-opted to support. In all three jurisdictions, is preliminary to a liberal theory of indigeneity grounded in an inclusive differentiated citizenship.

Economic development as differentiated citizenship: New Zealand

Citizenship is a determinant of indigenous economic opportunity; it defines the ways in which people belong to the national political community and influences people’s access to economic agency. The relationship between economic agency and differentiated citizenship is especially close. It is a relationship that proceeds from wider relationships between culture and what people expect from economic activity. It proceeds also from the central role that differentiated citizenship plays in admitting culture into public policy. The relationship among economic opportunities, Treaty settlements and educational effectiveness are also important marks of substantive differentiated citizenship. The chapter shows that Maori ethnicity is not synonymous with victimhood, but that Maori see the purpose of economic activity from a self-determining culturally defined perspective.

Indigeneity and contemporary globalisation

Globalisation rationalised the colonisation of indigenous territories. Its pursuit of capital expansion is sometimes allowed to override indigenous cultural imperatives. However, it is also true that in its contemporary phase, globalisation provides indigenous peoples with recourse to international law and economic opportunities to strengthen their positions vis-a-vis the state in their quest for specific and proportionate shares in national sovereignty. Indigenous/state political relationships are distinguished by state reliance on domestic laws and political influence to counter indigenous claims to shared sovereignty. International legal instruments, such as the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have become sites of tension between domestic authority and international norms of justice in both Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, the Declaration’s uncertain applicability to Fiji deprives that country of a potential framework for mediating ideas about power and authority and their limits so that a relative, relational and shared sovereignty can be developed.