Indigenous Peoples’ Self-Determination

Recent history marks a hitherto unseen mobilization and awareness of Indigenous peoples' rights to self-determination in many parts of the world. Political science analyses of Indigenous self-determination nevertheless remain rather scarce. Today there is very little explicit focus on the political structures for Indigenous participation and representation – and even less comparative research. Currently, Indigenous political science is a discipline in the making with a need for common concepts which, with respect of the great diversity of Indigenous peoples, will allow for researchers and practitioners in one geographic area to grasp and apply the knowledge on Indigenous self-determination generated in other areas. Moreover, there is a great need for institutions that facilitate international research cooperation. A successful workshop on Indigenous politics was held at the St. Gallen Joint Sessions in 2011 (resulting in the publication of Berg-Nordlie, Saglie & Sullivan, eds, Indigenous Politics, ECPR Press 2015), but while indigenous mobilization throughout the world has greatly expanded, there has not been any workshops on this topic since then. The overall research question of the workshop reads: How does representation, organization and institution influence (i.e. facilitate or hinder) Indigenous people's self-determination? This research question may be approached with a focus on the internal politics of Indigenous peoples, the political affairs of Indigenous peoples within the state, or the political affairs relating to Indigenous peoples in international affairs. All three foci spur analyses of how Indigenous peoples' self-determination is affected by organizations and institutions (understood broadly as laws, processes, norms, values, etc.) and their interaction with concepts such as power, identity categories, and perhaps even historical paths of colonialism. Studies have investigated the internal political organization of Indigenous peoples as well as the interaction between Indigenous peoples and the nation-states. However, the analytical distinction between internal Indigenous politics and relations to the state is not always clear-cut. For example, representative Indigenous institutions may acknowledge and represent the political diversity within an Indigenous people, while they produce a majority or consensus position that gives this people one authorized voice when they deal with the national government. One such institutional solution is the representative assemblies for the Sámi people of the Nordic countries. An alternative mechanism for Indigenous representation in national politics is representation in national parliaments. One approach has been to study the influence of electoral systems on Indigenous descriptive and substantive representation, most notably the Maori seats in New Zealand. A topic which has not yet received much attention is how informal institutions affect Indigenous representation. For example, parliamentary norms that prescribe strict party discipline may make it difficult for Indigenous representatives to represent Indigenous interests. Regarding international affairs, political scientists have especially considered the way in which Indigenous peoples mobilized through international grass-roots politics as well as their cooperation in international organizations. However, it remains unclear if the ideas embedded in political science research on international relations is appropriate to the study of Indigenous peoples, whose traditional lands have been divided into several nations.