Indigenous people around the world are mobilizing for greater recognition of their political status and rights. Central to their claims is the recognition of their rights to self-determination. Existing comparative analyses of the Indigenous self-determination movement suggest there are significant variations not only in the nature of state responses to such claims but also in the very nature of the meaning of self-determination for Indigenous Peoples themselves. A number of factor can explain these variations. In this paper, we focus on the structuring effect of the welfare state and its related conception of social citizenship as a possible explanatory factor in shaping how Indigenous Peoples and the state engage in the politics of self-determination. We illustrate this theoretical point using the contrasting examples of First Nations in Canada and Sámi in Norway.
