3/01 INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS · Indigenous Affairs 3/01 5 ever, for a population of only 56,000 people,...

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 1

INDIGENOUSINDIGENOUS3/01

AFFAIRS

IWGIA

SELF-DETERMINATION

2 Indigenous Affairs 3/01

contents

editorial


Christian Erni and Marianne Jensen

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RIGHTOF SELF-DETERMINATIONOF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

John B. Henriksen

FROM SOVEREIGNTY TO FREEDOM:TOWARDS AN INDIGENOUSPOLITICAL DISCOURSE

Taiaiake Alfred

LANDMARK VICTORY FOR INDIANSIN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTSCASE AGAINST NICARAGUA

The Indian Law Resource Center

SELF-GOVERNMENT IN GREENLAND

Jens Dahl

international

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6

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america

arctic


International secretariatClassensgade 11 E, DK-2100Copenhagen, DenmarkPhone.: (+45) 35 27 05 00Fax: (+45) 35 27 05 07E-mail: [email protected]: www.iwgia.org

Editor: Marianne JensenPrice: Single copies US$ 6.00 + postage - (ISSN 1024-3283)Subscription rate for 2002 (Indigenous Affairs + The Indigenous World)US$ 50.00 (individuals) US$ 80.00 (institutions)

Indigenous Affairs is published 4 times per year

INTERNATIONAL WORK GROUP FOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

Please note that the views in this journal are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect those of the Work Group. No reproduction of any part of thisjournal may be done without the permission of IWGIA.


Cover: from the left:Tom LaBlanc, Sisseton-Dakota from North Dakota. Photo: Helena NybergNeil Kunnuk in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Photo: Jack HicksWoman from Greenland. Photo: Lisbeth Lyager

NUNAVUT:THE STILL SMALL VOICE OFINDIGENOUS GOVERNANCE

Peter Jull

A 5-YEAR PLAN TO CREATEA PUBLIC GOVERNMENT IN NUNAVIK

Gérard Duhaime

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES�SELF-DETERMINATIONIN NORTHEAST INDIA

Christian Erni

asia

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S elf-determination is, to indigenous peoples, themost fundamental of the rights they ask the worldand, above all, the State they have been made a

part of, to recognize. For all but very few governments,this demand is problematic. Consequently, article 3 ofthe United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples, which deals with self-determina-tion, has become the major bone of contention in thedrafting process. Many governments want either toreplace the term “self-determination” or to narrowlydefine it to mean “self-government” and “autonomy”.This demand is raised primarily due to the fear thatrecognition of self-determination in its widest sensewould have the potential of undermining the integrityand stability of the State.

For indigenous peoples, the recognition of the rightto self-determination is, however, a question of equity,of being treated like all other peoples. Self-determina-tion is one of the fundamental rights of peoples ininternational law. It is enshrined in the Charter of theUnited Nations, the International Covenant on Civiland Political Rights and the International Covenant on

EDITORIAL EDITORIALEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights. Aware of theinherent link between the concept of peoples and theright to self-determination, many governments alsooppose using the term “indigenous peoples” in theDraft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoplesand insist on replacing it with “indigenous people” or“indigenous populations”.

As John Henriksen writes in the introduction to hisarticle in this issue of Indigenous Affairs, the UnitedNations itself has so far been reluctant to recognize anyfurther extension of the right to self-determination beyondthe traditional context of decolonization. He howeverbelieves that there are indications in the United Nationsprocess on the rights of indigenous peoples that the under-standing of the scope of the right of self-determinationmay be evolving further. And he points out that the“international process is influenced by national politicalprocesses, which often tend to be more pragmatic andflexible”, and that “national experiences of indigenousself-determination… directly influence the internationaldebate and thereby move the discourse forward”.

In addition to John Henriksen’s article, which presentsa general discussion of two fundamental questionsrelated to the right of self-determination - the benefici-aries and the scope of this right – this issue of Indig-enous Affairs includes four contributions on such na-tional experiences. Peter Jull depicts the Inuit’s dec-ades-long struggle for self-determination in Canada,which finally led to the creation of Nunavut. He believesthat the case of Nunavut is important for indigenouspeoples throughout the world: “Inuit hunter-gatherersliving scattered over a vast, isolated and politicallyundefined region have created a strong modern gov-ernment… as a means to strengthen their traditionalculture, solve recent social ills, protect the environmentand vital resources, and decide their own future in theirown language and in their own way.”

Gérard Duhaime’s article deals with the ongoingprocess in the same direction in another region ofCanada: in Nunavik, the homeland of the Inuit inQuebec province. The Nunavik Commission was cre-ated in 1999 with the mandate to make comprehensiverecommendations “on design, operation, and imple-mentation of a form of government in Nunavik”. InApril this year, the Nunavik Commission presented itsreport. Gérard Duhaime summarizes the recommenda-tions and provides the readers with an overview of thehistorical background.

The Greenlandic Home Rule, established in 1979, isoften mentioned as an ideal example of indigenous self-determination. Nevertheless, as Jens Dahl describes inhis article, two years ago the Home Rule Governmentestablished a Commission on Self-Government to lookinto the future relationship between Greenland and Den-mark. The reason is that the current construction isconsidered to be outdated by many Greenlanders andunable to satisfy their image of self-determination. How-

By Christian Erni and Marianne Jensen

4 Indigenous Affairs 3/01 Tangkhul Naga woman. Photo: IWGIA archive


ever, for a population of only 56,000 people, self-determi-nation is a process filled with many dilemmas not only inrelation to Denmark but also internally in Greenland.

While the three articles referred to above deal withnational experiences in the Arctic region, the article byChristian Erni gives a critical overview of some of theself-government arrangements made by the Indian state.India’s provisions for the protection of the rights of, andfor self-rule among, its indigenous peoples - or Sched-uled Tribes, as they are officially called – are consideredto be among the most progressive in the Asian region, oreven the world. Unfortunately, as the article tries to showby focussing on India’s north-eastern region, they pos-sess a number of inherent weaknesses, and the wide gapbetween the laws on paper and their implementation onthe ground leaves many indigenous peoples disillu-sioned. Violent confrontations between the State andindigenous movements are therefore still continuing inwhat has become one of India’s most troubled regions.

In many cases, indigenous peoples are forced tovoice their demands for, and design concrete forms of,self-determination within a framework of political-le-gal and, ultimately, cultural concepts that are not theirown. Since these concepts, and therefore the politicaldiscourse all over the world, are increasingly domi-nated by western political-legal thinking, Taiaiake Al-fred’s article will be relevant to most indigenous peo-ples even though he elaborates his arguments withreference to North America. Taiaiake Alfred embarkson a fundamental critique of the western concept ofsovereignty and an analysis of the implications of itsacceptance by indigenous peoples in the United Statesand Canada. The imposition and later promotion of“sovereignty”, he argues, has served to undermine thetraditional bases of strength for indigenous communi-ties. The indigenous peoples of North America, heconcludes, can truly free themselves from imposedpower structures only by rejecting the entire discourseof sovereignty, and promoting a traditionalist revivaland a re-formation of imposed colonial structures.

IWGIA considers it important to focus on self-determi-nation in this issue of Indigenous Affairs as it is a keyissue for indigenous peoples the world over, both atnational and international level. The struggle for self-determination is the fundamental pre-requisite for in-digenous peoples to be able to enhance their rights andimprove their situation. All the major critical problemsthat indigenous peoples are facing, such as politicalmarginalization, repression, deteriorating rights andaccess to land and other natural resources, poverty andeconomic marginalization, social problems, lack of rec-ognition of indigenous cultures etc. have, to variousdegrees, their roots in the lack of self-determination.

That the right to self-determination is the major issuefor indigenous peoples involved in international hu-

man rights processes was reflected in the most recentinternational event: the World Conference against Rac-ism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and RelatedIntolerance (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa thisyear. The indigenous caucus focussed its energies onhaving the final documents of the conference use lan-guage that genuinely recognizes the right of self-deter-mination, by using the term “indigenous peoples” with-out qualification. According to a number of fundamen-tal human rights conventions, all peoples have the rightto self-determination. However, some of the paragraphsof the WCAR Declaration severely limited this right forindigenous peoples in particular, stating that:

“The use of the term ‘peoples’ in the World ConferenceAgainst Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, andRelated Intolerance Declaration and Program of Actioncannot be construed as having any implications as torights under international law. Any reference to rightsassociated with the term ‘indigenous peoples’ is in thecontext of ongoing multilateral negotiations on the texts ofinstruments that specifically deal with such rights, and iswithout prejudice to the outcome of those negotiations.”

The indigenous delegates wanted the paragraph to bedeleted completely. As this turned out to be impossible,indigenous delegates succeeded, after heavy lobbying,to have the paragraph re-drafted to read as follows:

“The use of the term ‘indigenous peoples’ in the Declara-tion and Programme of Action of the World Conferenceagainst Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia andRelated Intolerance is in the context of, and withoutprejudice to the outcome of ongoing international nego-tiations on texts that specifically deal with this issue andcannot be construed as having any implications as torights under international law.”

Although many indigenous delegates (having hopedthe paragraph would be scrapped completely) left theconference disappointed, many others agreed that theyhad made some positive headway – a few tiny steps inthis laborious field of international law. The majorargument that the indigenous peoples used throughoutthe process was that denying indigenous peoples’ theright to self-determination represented a blatant act ofracism and discrimination in international human rightslaw. This proved to be a very convincing argument, andthe WCAR can in this way be seen to have opened up animportant argumentative avenue for indigenous peo-ples to make their point from now on. It is thus hopedthat the intense lobbying efforts made by indigenousdelegates at the WCAR will significantly influence fu-ture discussions on the Draft Declaration on the Rightson Indigenous Peoples in Geneva and the crucial issueof the right to self-determination. ❑



By J

ohn

B. H

enrik

sen

Implementationof the Right of

Self-Determinationof Indigenous

Peoples



T he principle of self-determi-nation for peoples has beenrecognized since 1919, when

the League of Nations, precursorto the United Nations, was estab-lished. At the time of the League

of Nations, the focus was on a “principle” of self-determination and not a “right” of self-determination.Following the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the“principle” of peoples’ self-determination evolved intoa “right” under international law and even jus cogens –a peremptory norm.

Although the right of self-determination has been acardinal principle of the United Nations from the verybeginning, the United Nations has so far been reluctantto recognize any further extension of this right beyondthe traditional de-colonization context (overseas colo-nization). The question of whether the right of self-determination has been recognized under internationallaw outside the context of traditional de-colonization isstill a very controversial matter. However, the UnitedNations process on the rights of indigenous peoplesindicates that understanding of the scope of the right ofself-determination may be evolving further.

The international process is influenced by nationalpolitical processes, which often tend to be more prag-matic and flexible than the international process. Na-tional experiences of indigenous self-determination, orself-government as some would call it, directly influ-ence the international debate and thereby move thediscourse forward.

The international community needs to continue totake into account the national processes in its search foreffective and non-discriminatory implementation ofthe right of self-determination, in order to ensure thatthe concept of self-determination is in line with therightful aspirations of the world’s indigenous peoples,and not only those living under “traditional coloniza-tion”.

This article considers two fundamental questionsrelated to the right of self-determination: (1) the benefi-ciaries of the right of self-determination; and (2) thescope of this right.

The right of self-determinationunder international law

The right of self-determination is a fundamental princi-ple and right under international law. The international

legal instruments on self-determination refer to theright of self-determination as belonging to “all peo-ples”. It is embodied in the Charter of the UnitedNations plus the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights and the International Covenant on Eco-nomic, Social and Cultural Rights. Common Article 1 ofthese Covenants provides that:

“1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. Byvirtue of that right they freely determine their politicalstatus and freely pursue their economic, social andcultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose oftheir natural wealth and resources without prejudice toany obligations arising out of international economicco-operation, based upon the principle of mutual ben-efits, and international law. In no case may a people bedeprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, includingthose having responsibility for the administration ofNon-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall pro-mote the realization of the right of self-determination,and shall respect that right, in conformity with theprovisions of the Charter of the United Nations.”

The right of self-determination has also been recog-nized in many other international and regional humanrights instruments, such as Part VII of the Helsinki FinalAct 1975 and Article 20 of the African Charter of Humanand Peoples’ Rights as well as the Declaration on theGranting of Independence to Colonial Territories andPeoples1. It has been endorsed by the InternationalCourt of Justice2. Furthermore, the scope and content ofthe right of self- determination has been elaboratedupon by the United Nations Human Rights Committee3

and the United Nations Committee on the Eliminationof Racial Discrimination4.

In addition to being a right under international law,peoples’ right of self-determination should also be re-garded as Jus cogens - a peremptory norm of generalinternational law. Article 53 of the Vienna Conventionon the Law of Treaties provides that a peremptory normof general international law is accepted and recognizedby the international community as a norm from whichno derogation is permitted and which can be modifiedonly by a subsequent norm of general international lawof the same nature. Moreover, it provides that a treaty

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 7Kuna man, Panama. Photo: Andrew Young


is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts witha peremptory norm of general international law.

The principle and fundamental right to self-determi-nation of all peoples is firmly established in interna-tional law, including human rights law, and it musttherefore be applied equally and universally.

The term “peoples”

The term “peoples” is not defined in international law.The lack of definition is not due to intellectual failure todefine the term but reflects the fact that the meaning ofthe term is closely linked to sensitive political and legalissues, in particular “peoples” right of self-determina-tion.

However, peoples are often described as a group ofindividual human beings who enjoy some or all of thefollowing common features: (1) a common historicaltradition; (2) ethnic identity; (3) cultural homogeneity;(4) linguistic unity; (5) religious or ideological affinity;(5) territorial connection; and (6) common economiclife. Moreover, the group should possess the will orconsciousness to be a people, and institutions to expressthe identity of the people. This is widely regarded asbeing the ordinary meaning of the term “peoples”. Thisshould therefore be the starting point for determiningwho are the title holders to the right of self-determina-tion. It is a well-established international legal princi-ple, contained in the Vienna Convention on the Law ofTreaties, that terms in international legal instrumentsare to be interpreted according to their ordinary mean-ing. This maxim of international law has also beenaffirmed by the International Court of Justice: “If thewords in their natural and ordinary meaning makesense in their context, that’s the end of the matter.”5

The concept of “indigenous peoples”

There is no international agreement on the definition ofindigenous peoples. In the Draft United Nations Decla-ration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the term“indigenous peoples” is used, although some govern-ments oppose the usage of the term “peoples” in theindigenous context 6. Most countries currently seekingto address indigenous issues tend to view such a defi-nition as falling within the context of their nationalconstitutional and historical framework rather than asan issue of universal character. The international dis-course related to the concept of “indigenous peoples”has been addressing the two main questions: (1) whoshould be identified as “indigenous”, and (2) the term“peoples”.

Although, there is no general agreement on thedefinition, or indeed the need for a definition of indig-enous peoples at international level, there have been

several attempts to define or describe indigenous peo-ples.

The Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission,José Martinez Cobo, formulated a “working definition”in his Study of the Problem of Discrimination againstIndigenous Populations, which states that:

“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are thosewhich, having a historical continuity with pre-invasionand pre-colonial societies that developed on their terri-tories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors ofthe societies now prevailing in those territories, or partsof them. They form at present non-dominant sectors ofsociety and are determined to preserve, develop andtransmit to future generations their ancestral territo-ries, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of theircontinued existence as peoples, in accordance with theirown cultural patterns, social institutions and legalsystems.”7

Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur outlines a list offactors that may be relevant in defining indigenouspeoples and identifying their historical continuity. Heexpresses the view that such historical continuity mayconsist of the continuation, for an extended periodreaching into the present, of one or more of the follow-ing factors: (1) occupation of ancestral lands, or at leastof part of them; (2) common ancestry with the originaloccupants of these lands; (3) culture in general, or inspecific manifestations, (4) language; (5) residence incertain parts of the country, or in certain regions of theworld; (6) other relevant factors8.

The Special Rapporteur also includes self-identifica-tion as indigenous as a fundamental element in hisworking definition: on an individual basis, an indig-enous person is one who belongs to these indigenouspeoples through self-identification as indigenous (groupconsciousness) and is recognized and accepted by thegroup as one of its members (acceptance by the group).This preserves for these communities the sovereignright and power to decide who belongs to them, withoutexternal interference.

ILO Convention No. 169 article 1.1 (b) describes indig-enous peoples as follows:

“... peoples in independent countries who are regarded asindigenous on account of their descent from the popula-tions which inhabited the country, or a geographicalregion to which the country belongs, at the time ofconquest or colonisation or the establishment of presentstate boundaries and who, irrespective of their legalstatus, retain some or all of their own social, economic,cultural and political institutions.”

Article 1.3 specifies that “the use of the term peoples inthis Convention shall not be construed as having any

Saami community is re-located due to dam construction. Photo: IWGIA archive


implications as regards the rights which may attach tothe term under international law”.

However, the qualification in article 1.3 does notplace any limitations on indigenous peoples’ right toself-determination under international law, due to thefact that it is only a statement of coverage for thisparticular convention. It merely reflects the fact that theILO’s mandate is social and economic rights and that itfalls outside of its competence to interpret the conceptof self-determination9.

Indigenous peoples satisfy the criteria generally ac-cepted for determining the existence of a people. Theplain meaning of the term “all peoples” thus includesindigenous peoples. There is no doubt that indigenouspeoples are “peoples” in all senses of the term, includ-ing for the purpose of the international law of self-determination of peoples.

The scope of the right of self-determination

The Declaration on Principles of International Lawconcerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation amongStates, in accordance with the Charter of the UnitedNations, recognizes the principle of the equal rights andself-determination of all peoples and provides that everyState has the duty to promote this principle10. It alsorecognizes that, in implementing the right to self-deter-mination, there are various modes of self-determinationwhich extend beyond the right of secession and which do

not conflict with territorial sovereignty or the politicalunity of a State. The Declaration provides that, inter alia:

“The establishment of a sovereign and independent State,the free association or integration with an independentState or emergence into any other political status freelydetermined by a people constitute modes of implementingthe right to self-determination by that peoples.... Nothingin the foregoing paragraphs shall be construed as author-izing or encouraging any action which would dismemberor impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity orpolitical unity of sovereign and independent States.”

External aspects of the rightof self-determination

A Non-Self-Governing Territory, listed under ChapterXI of the UN Charter, can exercise the right of self-determination through the creation of an independentstate, or through the establishment of an associationwith an independent state, or integration with an inde-pendent state11. Furthermore, the right of self-determi-nation must also be regarded as establishing the right toseparate from the existing state of which the groupconcerned is a part, and to set up a new independentstate, if the state concerned gravely violates its obliga-tions towards a distinct people12.

A State that gravely violates its obligations towardsa distinct people or community within its boundaries



loses the legitimacy to rule over that people. Thus, if theState and its successive governments have repeatedlyoppressed a people over a long period, violated theirhuman rights and fundamental freedoms, and if othermeans of achieving a sufficient degree of self-govern-ment have been tried and have failed, then the questionof secession can arise as a means for the restoration offundamental rights and freedoms and the promotion ofthe well-being of the people13.

Secession is seen by some as the ultimate realizationof the external aspects of the right to self-determination,as the ultimate implementation of a peoples’ right to“freely determine their political status”. However, se-cession is not an absolute right and it cannot be invokedunilaterally unless there exists continuing and graveoppression of the people concerned.

The upholding of the territorial integrity of states isone of the most fundamental principles under interna-tional law. Acknowledging a peoples’ right to self-determination can thus not be construed as authorizingor encouraging any action that would dismember orimpair, either totally or in part, the territorial integrityand political unity of sovereign and independent Statesconducting themselves in compliance with the princi-ple of equal rights and self-determination of peoples14.

Nobel Laureate José Ramos Horta is of the view thatmaintaining territorial integrity lies in the hands of thegovernment in power: “By accepting its obligations, in-cluding full respect for the right to self-determination with allits consequences, and engaging in dialogue with all sectors ofsociety, a government can maintain the territorial integrityof the state or ensure that peaceful change occurs in a mannerbeneficial to the state.”15

Finally, it should be noted that there are externalaspects of the right of self-determination that do notentail the creation of an independent state. For exam-ple, indigenous peoples’ participation in political proc-esses relating to issues that transcend state boundariescan be seen as a dimension of the external aspects oftheir right to self-determination.

Internal aspects of the right ofself-determination

The internal aspects of the right of self-determinationinclude the right of the people to freely pursue itseconomic, social and cultural development. It is oftentaken to mean participatory democracy. However, itcan also mean the right to exercise cultural, linguistic,religious, territorial or political autonomy within theboundaries of the existing state16.

Economic or natural resources dimensionThe economic or resource dimension of self-determina-tion, the right to freely dispose of its own natural wealth

and resources, is of crucial importance to indigenouspeoples. The issue of land and resource rights is themost important question for the majority of the world’sindigenous peoples. They regard their land and re-sources rights as being an integral part of their right ofself-determination.

It is clear that many governments often opposeinternational recognition of indigenous peoples’ rightto self-determination more through fear of losing con-trol over indigenous lands and natural resources thanfear of losing some of their overall political power.

The economic or resource dimension of the right ofself-determination is emphasized in common paragraph2 of Article 1 of the Covenants:

“All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose oftheir natural wealth and resources without prejudice toany obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefits,and international law. In no case may a people bedeprived of its own means of subsistence.”

The Human Rights Committee, which is mandated tomonitor the implementation of the Covenant on Civiland Political Rights, has now started to address theright of self-determination in the context of indigenouspeoples, with particular focus on the economic or re-source dimension of the right of self-determination. In1999, the Committee requested the governments ofCanada and Norway to report on the implementation ofindigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, includ-ing in relation to paragraph 2 of Article 117. Land andresource rights thus cannot be excluded from indig-enous peoples’ right to self-determination.

Cultural dimensionsThe cultural dimensions of a people’s right to self-deter-mination can be seen as its right to determine andestablish the cultural regime or system under which it isto live. This implies recognition of its right to regain,enjoy and enrich its cultural heritage, and affirm the rightof all its members to education and culture. The Declara-tion of the Principles of International Cultural Co-opera-tion, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO,recognizes that every people has the right and duty todevelop its culture, and mentions in its preamble themost important United Nations resolutions relating torecognition of the right of peoples to self-determination.

The cultural dimensions, in the broadest sense of theterm, of the right of self-determination are identified byindigenous peoples as fundamental to the survival ofindigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples attempt to pre-vent their heritage, values, cultural identity and way oflife from being destroyed by external forces.

Moreover, indigenous peoples’ relationships to theirlands, territories and natural resources are such that


they also cover important cultural aspects. It is notpossible to study indigenous peoples’ relationships totheir ancestral lands without taking into account thecultural aspects of this relationship.

Professor Erica-Irene Daes, in her capacity as Spe-cial-Rapporteur on indigenous peoples and their rela-tionship to land, expressed the view that there was anurgent need for developing an understanding, on thepart of non-indigenous societies, of the spiritual, social,cultural, economic and political significance of land andresources to the continued survival and vitality ofindigenous societies. She stated that, “indigenous peopleshave illustrated the need for a different conceptual frameworkand the need for recognition of the cultural differences thatexist because of the profound relationship that indigenouspeoples have to their lands, territories and resources.”18

Indigenous peoples often emphasise that it is essen-tial to the dialogue between governments and indig-enous peoples that the authorities understand that thedeeply spiritual and special relationship between indig-enous peoples and their lands is fundamental to theirexistence as such and to all their beliefs, customs,traditions and culture. These concerns are taken intoaccount in Article 25 of the draft United Nations Decla-ration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:19

“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain andstrengthen their distinctive spiritual and material rela-tionship with the lands, territories, waters and coastal seasand other resources which they have traditionally owned orotherwise occupied or used, and to uphold their responsi-bilities to future generations in this regard.”

Social dimensionsArticle 21 of the draft United Nations Declaration on theRights of Indigenous Peoples addresses the social andeconomic aspects of their right of self-determination:

“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and devel-op their political, economic and social systems, to be securein the enjoyment of their own means of subsistenceand development, and to engage freely in all their traditionaland other economicactivities. Indigenous peoples who havebeen deprived of their means of subsistence and developmentare entitled to just and fair compensation.”

The World Summit for Social Development, held inCopenhagen in 1995, expressed the view “that socialdevelopment and social justice are indispensable for theachievement and maintenance of peace and security withinand among our nations. In turn, social development andsocial justice cannot be attained in the absence of peace andsecurity or in the absence of respect for all human rights andfundamental freedoms.”20 The Social Summit also statedthat it “recognizes and supports indigenous people in theirpursuit of economic and social development, with full respect

for their identity, traditions, forms of social organization andcultural values.”21

Human security dimensionsThe aim of exercising the right to self-determination canalso be formulated in terms of human needs and secu-rity. Peoples and communities strive to gain controlover the means to satisfy their human needs. From thisperspective, security includes cultural integrity andrespect for human rights and freedoms – for example, interms of freedom of the people and its members fromphysical violence. It furthermore encompasses elementssuch as spiritual, health, religious, cultural, economic,environmental, social and political aspects.

A desirable human security situation exists whenthe people concerned and its individual members haveboth verifiable legal and political guarantees for theimplementation of their fundamental rights and freedoms,and also feel secure. The need for security is often theprime objective in the struggle for self-determination,when peoples have been facing oppression, deportations,forced assimilation, religious persecutions, etc.

The discourse on the right of self-determinationin the context of the Draft United Nations Decla-ration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Since 1984, the United Nations has been formulating aDraft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.The Draft Declaration was adopted by the WorkingGroup on Indigenous Populations in 1994 and endorsedby its parent body, the Sub-Commission on Prevention ofDiscrimination and Protection of Minorities the sameyear. Since 1995, a special Working Group of the Com-mission on Human Rights has been working on the draftdeclaration.

17 years on, the Member States of the United Nationsare still far from reaching a consensus with regard to thesubstantive content of the draft. As of August 2001,only two of 45 Draft articles had been adopted by theCommission on Human Rights’ Working Group on thedraft declaration: one on the right to nationality forindigenous peoples and the other on gender equality -principles which are already enshrined in internationalhuman rights treaties.

Although 17 years may not seem a very long timewhen dealing with such complex issues, one shouldbear in mind that the Universal Declaration of HumanRights, in comparison, was drafted and adopted withinthree years of establishment of the United Nations.

The Draft Declaration has already had considerableimpact on the lives of indigenous peoples world-wide,even though it is as yet only a draft. The widespreadresponse, including the reaction of indigenous peoplesthemselves, to the draft declaration is that the principles


12 Indigenous Affairs 3/0112 Indigenous Affairs 3/01

Tukak Theatre, Greenland. Photo: Claus Oreskov Buhid girl, the Philippines. Photo: Christian Erni

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 13Indigenous Affairs 3/01 13

Tukak Theatre, Greenland. Photo: Claus OreskovKuna man, Panama. Photo: Andrew Young


it embodies constitute minimum international stand-ards for the rights of indigenous peoples.

One may ask why it is taking so long to achieveconsensus on a declaration on the rights of indigenouspeoples. It is clear that it is the concept of collectiveindigenous rights, in particular the right of self-deter-mination, which is the biggest challenge to this process.

Article 3 of the Draft Declaration, without doubt themost controversial article, addresses the right of self-determination for indigenous peoples. The wording ofdraft Article 3 is almost identical to common Article 1,Paragraph 1 of the two International Covenants on (1)Civil and Political Rights and (2) Economic, Social andCultural Rights. The only difference can be found in thefirst sentence of draft Article 3, in which the group ofbeneficiaries “All peoples” - as stated in the two Cov-enants - has been replaced by the term “Indigenouspeoples” - an emphasis stating that indigenous peoplesare included in the term “all peoples.” Article 3 of thedraft declaration reads as follows:22

“Indigenous peoples have the right of self-determination.By virtue of that right they freely determine their politicalstatus and freely pursue their economic, social and cul-tural development.”

Many governments are of the opinion that Article 3should be redrafted in order to strictly qualify indig-enous self-determination as meaning arrangements suchas self-government and autonomy. The arguments pre-sented against the adoption of Article 3 are foundedmainly on the doctrine of sovereignty and the principleof the territorial integrity of States. It is often said thatan explicit recognition of the right of self-determinationof indigenous peoples could potentially threaten de-mocracy, stability, peace and the political and territorialunity of existing States.

However, a number of governments have expressedsupport for the underlying principles of this articlewhile some governments, such as Denmark and Fiji,have even publicly expressed their unqualified supportfor Article 3 as it stands, and urged the Working Groupto adopt it without any changes or amendments.

Indigenous peoples argue that their right of self-determination cannot be qualified. Under internationallaw the right of self-determination is a right of “allpeoples”, therefore indigenous peoples alone cannot bedenied this right. Indigenous peoples strongly believethat it would be a discriminatory application of thisfundamental principle of international law if it were to beapplicable to all peoples other than indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples consider the right of self-deter-mination to be a collective human right, and one whichis a fundamental condition for the enjoyment of all theindividual human rights of indigenous peoples, be theycivil, political, economic, social or cultural. As such, theright of self-determination is included in core interna-

tional human rights treaties, which have universal ap-plicability, a fact strongly favoring the position held byindigenous peoples.

A major reason for the impasse on the question of theright of self-determination for indigenous peoples ap-pears to be that many governments view the issuewithin the traditional de-colonization context, whilemost indigenous peoples approach this question froman angle that does not correspond to this traditionalapproach. Indigenous peoples view this matter from apolitical and philosophical angle founded on the princi-ple of equality and non-discrimination: calling for equal-ity with regard to the right of self-determination -without necessarily wishing to establish their own State.One should bear in mind that the western nation stateconcept is not the most natural way of implementing orexercising the right of self-determination for the vastmajority of indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples often emphasize that theirunderstanding of the right of self-determination isthat it gives them the right to be in control of theirlives and their own destiny. This enables them toremain who they are and to live the way they want tolive. The vast majority of indigenous peoples takingpart in the United Nations work on the draft declara-tion emphasise that their goal and motivation foradvocating their equal right to self-determination isto gain greater control over their lives and theirdestiny, not secession and independence through theestablishment of independent nation states. On theother hand, it would be misleading to suggest thatthere are no indigenous peoples seeking independ-ence through sovereign nation statehood, but thereare few who aim for this.

The right of self-determination should be regardedas a “process right” rather then a right to a pre-definedoutcome. In other words, the outcome of any exercise ofthe right of self-determination must be individuallydefined, through a process of dialogue in which thepeoples concerned are participating on equal terms.James Anaya approaches this issue by distinguishingthe substance of the norm from the remedial prescrip-tions that may follow a violation of the norm. Heexemplifies this by comparing the African de-coloniza-tion process with contemporary situations:

“In the de-colonization context, procedures that resultedin independent statehood were means of discarding alienrule that had been contrary to the enjoyment of self-determination. Remedial prescriptions in other contextswill vary according to the relevant circumstances andneed not inevitably result in the formation of new states.”23

It would be helpful for the future process at interna-tional level if some of the above-mentioned fundamen-tal miscommunications could be addressed with theaim of achieving a greater understanding of the aspira-


tions and fears of indigenous peoples and governmentsrespectively, in order to banish any unnecessary fears ormisunderstandings these questions may cause.

The relationship between autonomy andself-government and the concept ofself-determination

In the Declaration on Friendly Relations, the alterna-tives for the exercise of the right of self-determinationare expanded beyond secession to also include “anyother” political status freely determined by the people.It would thus be natural to include autonomy and self-government arrangements under the category of “anyother political status” determined by the people.

As mentioned earlier in this article, the right of self-determination is incorporated in Article 3 of the DraftUnited Nations Declaration on the Rights of IndigenousPeoples. However, the Draft Declaration also providesfor the right to autonomy or self-government in Article31, which states that:

“Indigenous peoples, as a specific form of exercising theirright to self-determination, have the right to autonomy orself-government in matters relating to their internal andlocal affairs, including culture, religion, education, in-formation, media, health, housing, employment, socialwelfare, economic activities, land and resource manage-ment, environment and entry by non-members, as well asways and means for financing these autonomous func-tions.”

The right of self-determination embodies inter alia, theright of all peoples to determine their own economic,social and cultural development. The International Courtof Justice in the Western Sahara case defined the princi-ple of self-determination as “the need to pay regard tothe freely expressed will of peoples”.24

Professors Hurst Hannum and Richard Lillich de-scribe governmental autonomy in the following way:

“Autonomy and self-government are determined prima-rily by the degree of actual as well as formal independenceenjoyed by the autonomous entity in its political deci-sion-making process. Generally, it is understood to referto independence of action on the internal or domesticlevel, as foreign affairs and defence normally are in thehands of the central or national government, but occa-sionally power to conclude international agreementsconcerning cultural or economic matters also may residewith the autonomous entity.”25

On the basis of the proceedings of the Meeting of Expertsin September 1991 at Nuuk, Greenland, a number ofgeneral requirements associated with indigenous self-government can be identified26. These include:

a. the exercise of adequate powers and self-govern-ment within the traditional territories of indigenouspeoples as a prerequisite for the development andmaintenance of traditional indigenous cultures andfor the survival of indigenous peoples;

b. a redefinition of the relationship between indig-enous peoples and the States in which they now live,in particular through the negotiation process;

c. self-government as a means of promoting betterknowledge about indigenous peoples vis-à-vis thewider society;

d. the assumption that the exercise of self-governmentpresupposes indigenous jurisdiction, that is, theright of indigenous peoples to establish their owninstitutions and determine their functions in fieldssuch as lands, resources, economic, cultural andspiritual affairs;

e. the possibility to establish relations with otherethnically similar peoples living in a different regionor State;

f. the establishment of mechanisms for joint control byan indigenous autonomous institution and thecentral government;

g. the necessity to delimit clearly areas of competencein order to avoid conflict; and

h. the establishment of conflict resolution mechanisms.

The question as to whether indigenous autonomy ar-rangements should be regarded as one way of imple-menting the right to self-determination is one of thedifficult issues in the debate pertaining to the relation-ship between autonomy and self-government and theconcept of self-determination. There is no internationalconsensus on this matter.

Professor Miguel Alfonso Martínez, UN Special-Rapporteur on treaties, agreements and other construc-tive arrangements between States and indigenouspopulations, elaborates on the relationship betweenindigenous autonomy and the right to self-determina-tion in a recent report27. He is of the opinion:

“that the type of ‘autonomy regime’ provided for underthe [Greenland] Home Rule does not amount to theexercise of the right to self-determination by the popula-tion of Greenland. In other countries, discussions arecurrently taking place with the view to establishing (orimplementing) autonomy regimes, or adopting measuresto recognize a distinct legal status for indigenous peo-ples... These autonomy regimes have brought (or maybring) certain advantages to indigenous peoples... TheSpecial-Rapporteur notes, however, that recognition of‘autonomy’ for indigenous peoples within the State (what-ever powers or restrictions thereto are established), mostprobably will not automatically end State aspirations toeventually exert the fullest authority possible (includingintegrating and assimilating those peoples), nor, in thatcase, nullify whatever inalienable rights these people may



have as such. Moreover, the mechanisms through which‘autonomy regimes’ for indigenous peoples are beingformulated and implemented must be assessed, on a case-by-case basis, for proof of free and informed consent of allparties concerned, especially indigenous peoples.”

However, the author of this article is of the opinion thatthe right to autonomy and the right to self-governmentmust be regarded as emerging principles of customaryinternational law and as falling within the wider frame-work of the right to self-determination.

Various forms of indigenous autonomy and self-gov-ernment have been recognized and adopted by differentgovernments, which indicates support for these rights.However, concepts and degrees of indigenous self-gov-ernment may vary considerably, depending on the actualcircumstances and specific aspirations of indigenous peo-ples. The State practice in these cases could therefore beseen as an expression of an emerging acknowledgement ofindigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and ac-ceptance of their obligation to secure this fundamentalright, as international customary law in the making.

In this context, one should also bear in mind that theUnited Nations Working Group on Indigenous Pop-ulations, and its parent body the Sub-Commission onPrevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minori-ties, have adopted the principle contained in Article 31of the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples. This states that “indigenous peo-ples, as a specific form of exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government...” Very few governments have expressedopposition with regard to the current wording of Arti-cle 31. Furthermore, indigenous peoples themselves,from around the world, have called for speedy adop-tion of the draft declaration without any changes oramendments, including Article 31.

Although autonomy and self-government may bethe principal means through which the right of self-determination may be exercised by indigenous peoples,these should not be interpreted as the only way in whichindigenous peoples can exercise their right of self-determination. However, in some cases, indigenouspeoples may not be able to accept anything short of fullindependence and, in these cases, autonomy and self-government will not be an option.

Observations of the UN Human RightsCommittee in relation to Indigenous Peoples’right of self-determination

The Human Rights Committee of the United Nations,which is mandated to monitor the implementation ofthe Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has recentlymade some very important observations with regard toindigenous peoples’ right of self-determination.

Photos to the right:No 1: Youth from the Cordillera, the Philippines. Photo: Christian ErniNo 2: Legislative Chamber in Nunavut. Photo: Claudette A. MoïseNo 3: Legislative Chamber in Nunavut. Photo: Claudette A. MoïseNo 4: Saami with reindeer herd. Photo: IWGIA archiveNo 5: Landscape around Clyde River, Nunavut. Photo: Sandra Inutiq

Buhid woman, the Philippines. Photo: Christian Erni


2

3 4

5

1


In April 1999, the Human Rights Committee consideredthe fourth periodic report of Canada on implementa-tion of the Covenant. In its concluding observations, theCommittee addresses the right of self-determination inthe indigenous context, with emphasis on the economicor resource dimension of self-determination (paragraph2 of Article 1). The Committees request to Canada toreport on the implementation of article 1 as far asindigenous peoples are concerned indicates that theCommittee is of the view that article 1 also applies toindigenous peoples.28

In October 1999, the Committee followed a similarapproach when considering the fourth periodic reportof Norway. The Committee stated that “it expects Nor-way to report on the Sami people’s right to self-determi-nation under article 1 of the Covenant, including para-graph 2 of that article [natural wealth and resources].”

These observations are an acknowledgement of thefact that the right of self-determination, as stated inArticle 1 of the Covenant, also applies to indigenouspeoples. The Committee requests the governments con-cerned to report on the implementation of indigenouspeoples’ right of self-determination as part of theirinternational legal obligations. This sets a very impor-tant legal precedent, for in this way indigenous peoples’right of self-determination is clearly included withinthe framework of core international human rights law.

Case studies

The case studies aim to provide examples of indigenousautonomy and self-government arrangements in variousparts of the world. Four main ways of arranging indig-enous autonomy and self-government can be identified:(1) indigenous autonomy through contemporary indig-enous political institutions, such as the Sami Parliamentsin the Nordic countries; (2) indigenous autonomy basedon the concept of an indigenous territorial base, such asthe Comarca arrangement in Panama; (3) regional au-tonomy within the State, such as the Nunavut territory inCanada and the indigenous autonomous regions in thePhilippines; and (4) indigenous overseas autonomy, suchas the Greenland Home Rule arrangement.

Five case studies have been selected with the aim ofproviding an introduction to and examples of these fourmain ways of organizing indigenous autonomy and self-government. The author has not, however, examinedwhether these arrangements are founded on the free andinformed consent of the peoples concerned. The aim issimply to provide examples of existing arrangementswithout taking a position as to whether the criteria pertain-ing to free and informed consent are met. It should thusalso be noted that the author does not suggest that thesearrangements are adequate solutions, because such ajudgement can only be made by the peoples concerned.Case study 1: Indigenous autonomy in the Philippines

In 1997, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act wasadopted by the legislative authorities in the Philip-pines29. The provisions of the Act, and in particularits slow implementation, have been criticized by in-digenous representatives from the Philippines. How-ever, one has to recognize that this new Act repre-sents an important development with regard to in-digenous self-determination. In Section 13 of the Act,it is stated that:30

“The State recognizes the inherent right of IndigenousCultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples (ICCs/IPs)to self-governance and self-determination and respectsthe integrity of their values, practices and institutions.Consequently, the State shall guarantee the right ofICCs/IPs to freely pursue their economic, social andcultural development.”

There are many other important provisions of relevanceto self-determination, including indigenous peoples’“right to use their own commonly accepted justicesystem, conflict resolution institutions, peace-buildingprocesses or mechanisms and other customary lawsand practices within their respective communities”.

In Section 16, it is stated, inter alia, that indigenouspeoples “have the right to participate fully, if they sochoose, at all levels of decision-making in matters whichmay affect their rights, lives and destinies throughprocedures determined by them as well as maintain anddevelop their own indigenous political structures”.

Section 17 of the Act deals with indigenous peoples’right to determine and decide priorities for their owndevelopment. It is stated that indigenous peoples “shallhave the right to determine and decide their own priori-ties for development affecting their lives, beliefs, insti-tutions, spiritual well-being, and the lands they own,occupy or use.” Furthermore, that indigenous peoples“shall participate in the formulation, implementationand evaluation of policies, plans, and programs fornational, regional and local development which maydirectly affect them”.

The Act contains far-reaching provisions pertainingto indigenous land and natural resource rights. InSection 5, it is stated that the “indigenous concept ofownership sustains the view that ancestral domainsand all resources therein shall serve as the materialbases of their cultural integrity.” Section 8 states that“the right to ownership and possession of the indig-enous peoples to their ancestral lands shall be recog-nized and protected”.

Likewise, the Act contains well elaborated provisionson indigenous cultural rights, starting with Section 29, inwhich is stated that “the State shall respect, recognizeand protect the right of indigenous peoples to preserveand protect their culture, traditions and institutions.”


Case study 2: Cultural autonomy for the indigenousSami people in Finland

As a result of legal amendments that came into force on1 January 1996, the Finnish Constitution and the SamiAct establish the legal framework for the culturalautonomy of the indigenous Sami people within adefined Sami Homeland31. In Article 51 (a) of theConstitution, it is stated that the Sami as an indigenouspeople shall be guaranteed cultural autonomy in re-spect to their language and culture. Through the SamiAct, the publicly elected Sami Parliament (Sametinget)is recognized as being the representative Sami body,with a mandate to implement the above-mentionedautonomy.

In accordance with Article 9 of the Sami Act, theState authorities are obliged to negotiate with the SamiParliament on all far-reaching and important meas-ures that may directly affect the Sami people, or thatrelate to any of the following matters: (1) communityplanning; (2) the management, use, leasing and assign-ment of State land, conservation areas and wildernessareas; (3) applications for mining licences; (4) legisla-tive or administrative changes pertaining to tradi-tional Sami occupations and livelihoods; (5) the devel-opment and teaching of and in the Sami language inschools, and in the social and health service; and (6)any other matters affecting the Sami language or cul-ture.

The negotiation clause is an important element ofthe autonomy arrangement since it obliges the Stateauthorities to enter into negotiations aimed at findingsolutions to any issue that does not have the fullagreement of the Sami Parliament.

Another interesting and important element of thisautonomy arrangement is the role of the Sami Parlia-ment as the representative Sami body. In Article 6 ofthe Sami Act, it is stated that the Sami Parliament shallrepresent the Sami people, not only at national level butalso at international level. This is an arrangement thatincludes internal, as well as some of the external, as-pects of the right of self-determination32.

Case study 3: Greenland Home Rule

The case of Greenland Home Rule may be the bestexample of a progressive and far-reaching indigenousself-government arrangement, including both internal aswell as external aspects of the right of self-determination.

In the past, Denmark listed Greenland as a non-self-governing territory under Chapter XI of the Charter ofthe United Nations, and submitted annual reports to theTrusteeship Council as required under the Charter. In1954, Greenland was declared an integral part of theDanish Kingdom, and thereby removed from the UnitedNations list of non-self-governing territories. Today,full independence does not seem to be the desiredoption for most Greenlanders.

In 1979, the Greenland Home Rule Act entered intoforce. It establishes the political and legal frameworkfor self-government through the Greenland Home RuleAuthorities. The Greenland Home Rule Authorities arecomposed of a publicly elected Assembly (Landsting)and an Executive body (Landsstyre).

There has been a gradual transfer of power to theGreenland Home Rule Authorities, which gives theHome Rule Authorities extensive power and controlover domestic affairs. Although, the Greenland HomeRule Authorities do not have absolute control over landand natural resources, its veto power prevents theDanish Government from carrying out activities againstthe wish of the Home Rule Authorities. The mandate toconduct foreign affairs is a Constitutional Prerogativeof the Danish Government.

However, the Greenland Home Rule Governmenthas been able to reach an agreement with the DanishGovernment that gives the Home Rule Authorities aspecial position in relation to the European Union. In1972, Denmark joined the European Economic Com-munity (EEC), with the consequence that Greenlandhad to accept the overall Danish positive vote concern-ing Danish EEC Membership. In 1982, a new advisoryreferendum was held in Greenland, through which themajority of Greenlanders expressed their opposition toGreenland being part of the European Union (EU). The


Summer at the lake in Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Photo: Jack Hicks


Greenland Home Rule Authorities expressed their de-sire to carry out the wish of the people by seekingwithdrawal of Greenland from EU Membership. There-fore, although Greenland is part of the Danish Realm,both the Danish Government and the EU accepted aGreenlandic withdrawal from the EU. The withdrawaltook effect on 1 February 1985. Greenland was grantedthe status of “Overseas Countries and Territories”.

As a consequence, the Greenland Home Rule Au-thorities gained control over their main natural re-source - the fisheries. However, despite the with-drawal, the Greenland Home Rule Authorities wereable to negotiate free access to the EU market for theirsea products, which is crucial for the Greenlandiceconomy.

Case study 4: The Nunavut arrangement in Canada

In 1991, the Canadian Government signed a self-gov-ernment agreement with the Indigenous Inuit peopleof Nunavut. The agreement provides for self-govern-ment extending over a territory of around two millionsquare kilometres.

The agreement provides that the Nunavut Terri-tory and Authorities shall be established as of 1 April199933. The Federal Nunavut Act establishes the terri-tory and provides for its government34. The NunavutAuthorities are composed of a publicly elected Assem-bly, a Cabinet and a territorial court. Moreover, aNunavut civil service will form an important elementof the self-government arrangement.

The Legislative Assembly can make laws in relationto a number of subjects, inter alia, including: (1) theelection of members to the Assembly; (2) the establish-ment of territorial offices; (3) the administration ofjustice in Nunavut; (4) municipal and local institutionsin Nunavut; (5) hospitals; (6) the management of salesof lands; (7) taxation; (8) property and civil rights inNunavut; (9) education; (10) preservation, use andpromotion of the Inuktitut language; (11) agriculture;and (12) entering into inter-governmental agreements.

The Nunavut Act identifies the Supreme Court andthe Court of Appeal of Nunavut as the superior courts inNunavut. The judges are appointed by the NunavutAuthorities.

The Nunavut Act establishes the Nunavut Imple-mentation Commission, with a mandate to monitor andensure implementation of the agreement.

Case study 5: The Comarca: Kuna Yala in Panama

Some indigenous communities in Panama enjoy a degreeof self-government. The most prominent among these isthe Comarca of San Blas (Kuna Yala) arrangement, whichencompasses around forty small islands along the Carib-

bean coast as well as a part of the mainland, around 200km along the Caribbean coast of Panama.

In 1939, the Comarca of San Blas arrangement re-placed the indigenous reserve system, which had beencreated nine years earlier by the authorities in Panama35.In 1953, a legal amendment represented by Law No. 16of 19 February 1953 redefined the legal status of KunaYala. It provides for a form of political organizationbased on traditional Kuna ways of organizing society,including traditional Kuna jurisdiction.

The main indigenous political institution in KunaYala - the Kuna General Congress - is mandated toapprove or reject development projects in Kuna Yala.Article 12 of Law No. 16 states that lands within theindigenous area cannot be granted to persons who arenot part of the indigenous communities unless theapplication for the allocation has been approved bytwo different Kuna Congresses.

In Law No. 16, the Republic of Panama acknowl-edges the existence and the jurisdiction of the GeneralKuna Congress, other congresses of indigenous peo-ples and tribes, other traditional indigenous authori-ties, and the organic charter of the indigenous commu-nity of San Blas. Article 13 of the Law states that theState recognizes the existence of the Kuna GeneralCongress and other indigenous authorities as long asthey are compatible with the Constitution of the Re-public.

The traditional Kuna institutions are based on astructure of village communities and village leaders.The local Kuna assembly is in charge of the economicand administrative affairs of the community.

The Kuna communities are structured into twoinstitutions: (1) the General Congress of Kuna Culture,which has as its main objective the preservation andtransmission of the cultural and historical heritage ofthe Kuna people; and (2) the Kuna General Congress,which deals with economic, political, administrativeand judicial matters.

The Kuna General Congress, which is the centralgoverning institution, is presided over by three grandchiefs from different regions of the Kuna territory. TheCongress is made up of representatives of each localcommunity, including youth, workers’ organizationsand urban Kuna communities.

The national government is represented by an ap-pointed government official with the power to ap-prove or veto decisions made by the Kuna GeneralCongress. The government official is normally a Kuna.The government-appointed official is chosen from alist of three candidates nominated by the Kuna Gen-eral Congress.

At present, the Kuna authorities are seeking a revi-sion of Law No. 16, geared towards a strengthening ofKuna political autonomy in relation to the Constitutionof the Republic.


Conclusions

It is clear that the principle and fundamental right ofself-determination for all peoples is firmly establishedin international law, including human rights law, andthat it must therefore be applied equally and univer-sally. Indigenous peoples can thus not be denied thisfundamental right.

Although autonomy and self-government may bethe principal means through which the right of self-determination will be exercised by indigenous peoples,their right of self-determination cannot be qualified assomething less than that of other peoples’ right of self-determination. This would be tantamount to sayingthat there are different classes of “peoples”.

The right of self-determination can be implementedthrough various mechanisms and arrangements withinthe framework of a nation state. However, in caseswhere the right of self-determination of indigenouspeoples is exercised through autonomy and self-gov-ernment arrangements, it is crucial that adequate mecha-nisms are developed at national as well as internationallevel, in order to ensure that these arrangements fulfilthe criteria of the free and informed consent of thepeople concerned.

Notes

1 UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960.2 See the Namibia case (1971) ICJ 16 and the Western Sahara case (1975)

ICJ 12.3 General Comment No. 12 of the Human Rights Committee, made

at its twenty-first session, 1984. UN document: HRI/GEN/1/Rev.3.

4 UN document: CERD/C/49/CRP.2/Add.7 of 5 July 1996.5 Advisory Opinion, 1950 ICJ 4,8.6 The Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples, as agreed upon by the members of the Working Group onIndigenous Populations at its eleventh session in 1994, is con-tained in United Nations document: E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1 of 20 April 1994.

7 José Martínez Cobo, Study of the Problem of Discrimination AgainstIndigenous Populations, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add.4, para 379.

8 Ibid, para 380.9 International Labour Office (2000), “ILO Convention on Indig-

enous and Tribal Peoples, 1989 (No. 169) – A Manual”.10 UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970.11 See General Assembly Resolution No. 1541 (XV).12 UNESCO Division of Human Rights (1999), “Report of the Inter-

national Conference of Experts on the Implementation of the Rightto Self-determination as a Contribution to Conflict Prevention”.

13 Ibid.14 The Declaration on Friendly Relations (1970), UN GA resolution

2625 (XXV), 24.10.1970.15 Ibid.16 UNESCO Division of Human Rights (1999), “Report of the Inter-

national Conference of Experts on the Implementation of theRight to Self-determination as a Contribution to Conflict Preven-tion”.

17 UN Doc: CCPR/C/79/Add.105, April 1999 (Concluding observa-tions related to the Canadian periodic report) and UN Doc CCPR/C/79/Add.109, October 1999 (Concluding observations related tothe Norwegian periodic report).


18 Erica-Irene Daes, Preliminary Working paper on indigenous peoplesand their relationship to land, contained in UN document: E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/17.

19 UN document: E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1.20 The Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, from the

World Summit for Social Development, contained in UN docu-ment: A/CONF. 166/9.

21 See the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development, SectionB - Principles and goals, (m).

22 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as agreedupon by the members of the Working Group on Indigenous Po-pulations at its eleventh session, contained in UN document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1.

23 S. James Anaya (1996), Indigenous Peoples in International Law,Oxford University Press.

24 Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, (1975) ICJ Reports 12 at 33.25 Hurst Hannum & Richard B. Lillich, The Concept of Autonomy in

International Law, p. 218.26 UN Expert meeting on Indigenous Self-Government.27 Miguel Alfonso Martinez, Special-Rapporteur of the Sub-Commis-

sion on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minoritieson treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements be-tween States and indigenous peoples (1998) - unedited final report,distributed by the Special-Rapporteur at the sixteenth session ofthe Working Group on Indigenous Populations in July 1998.

28 UN Doc: CCPR/C/79/Add. 105, para. 7.29 Republic Act No. 8371. In Section 1 of the Act, it is stated that it

shall be known as “The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997.”30 Official Gazette of the Philippines, Vol. 94, No 13, March 30, 1998.31 The Sami Act of 17 July 1995 (Finnish Act No. 974).32 John B. Henriksen, “Betenkning om samisk parlamentarisk samarbeid”

- DIEDUT, No. 2, 1998, Nordisk Samisk Institutt.33 The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act. Bill C-133 of 4 June

1993 reaffirms the agreement between the indigenous Inuit of theNunavut Settlement Area and the Government of Canada.

34 Bill C-132, adopted by the House of Commons on 4 June 1993.35 Law No. 59 of 12 December 1930, of the Republic of Panama,

created the reserve system (reserva indigena). Law No. 2 of 16September 1939 created the Comarca de San Blas arrangement,which replaced the reserve system. Law No.16 of 19 February1953, which strengthened the legal status of Kuna Yala. Anotherrelevant law is Law No. 20 of 31 January 1957.

John B. Henriksen is an indigenous Saami fromGouvdageaidnu, which is situated in the Norwegian part ofthe traditional Saami territory. He is a lawyer by professionand has been working on indigenous issues for many years.He was formerly a member of the Legal Committee of theSaami Council, and was for many years the legal advisor andrepresentative of the Saami Council within the United Na-tions system. He later worked as an advisor to the indigenousSaami Parliament in Norway, with special emphasis on legaland international issues. In 1995, he undertook a study thatconstitutes the foundations for the establishment of the SaamiParliamentary Assembly - covering Finland, Norway, Rus-sia and Sweden. He later worked for three years as a staffmember with the United Nations Secretariat in Geneva, inthe Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,dealing with the rights of indigenous peoples. For the timebeing he works as Attorney at Law in Oslo. He also serves theSaami Council as its Human Rights Coordinator. ❑


From Sovereigntyto Freedom:Towards anIndigenous

PoliticalDiscourse

By Taiaiake Alfred



Sovereignty. The word, so commonly used, refersto supreme political authority, independent andunlimited by any other power. Discussion of the

term “sovereignty” in relation to indigenous peoples,however, must be framed differently, within an intellec-tual framework of internal colonisation. Internal coloni-sation is the historical process and political reality de-fined in the structures and techniques of governmentthat consolidate the domination of indigenous peoplesby a foreign yet sovereign settler state. While internalcolonisation describes the political reality of most indig-enous peoples, one should also note that the discourseof state sovereignty is and has been contested in real andtheoretical ways since its imposition. The inter/counterplay of state sovereignty doctrines - rooted innotions of dominion - with and against indigenousconcepts of political relations - rooted in notions offreedom, respect and autonomy - frames the discourseon indigenous “sovereignty” at its broadest level.

The practice of history cannot help but be implicatedin colonisation. Indeed, most discussions of indigenoussovereignty are founded on a particular and instrumen-tal reading of history that serves to undergird internalcolonisation. Fair and just instances of interaction be-tween indigenous and non-indigenous peoples are le-gion; yet mythic narratives and legal understandings ofstate sovereignty in North America have consciouslyobscured justice in the service of the colonial project.From the earliest times, relations between indigenouspeoples and European newcomers vacillated within thenormal parameters that characterise any relation be-tween autonomous political groups. Familiar relations -war, peace, cooperation, antagonism and shifting domi-nance and subservience - are all to be found in ourshared history. Yet the actual history of our pluralexistence has been erased by the narrow fictions of asingle sovereignty. Controlling, universalising and as-similating, these fictions have been imposed in the formof law on weakened but resistant and rememberingpeoples.

European sovereignties in North America first legiti-mated themselves through treaty relationships entered

into by Europeans and indigenous nations. North Ameri-can settler states (Canada and the United States, withtheir predecessor states Holland, Spain, France, andEngland) gained legitimacy as legal entities only by theexpressed consent through treaty of the original occupi-ers and governors of North America. The foundingdocuments of state sovereignty recognise this fact: allDutch and French treaties with indigenous peoples, theTreaty of Utrecht, the Articles of Capitulation and theRoyal Proclamation (made in a context of military inter-dependency between the British and indigenous na-tions) all contain explicit reference to the independentnationhood of indigenous peoples. As the era of Euro-pean exploration and discovery gave way to settlement,with its concomitant need for balanced peaceful rela-tions with indigenous nations, the states’ charter docu-ments made clear reference to the separate politicalexistence and territorial independence of indigenouspeoples.

None of this historical diversity is reflected in theofficial history and doctrinal bases of settler state sover-eignty today. Rather, Canada and the United Stateshave written self-serving histories of discovery, con-quest and settlement that wipe out any reference to theoriginal relations between indigenous peoples and Eu-ropeans. This post-facto claim of European “sovereignty”is limited by two main caveats. The first is factual: themere documentation of European assertions ofhegemonic sovereignty does not necessarily indicateproof of its achievement. European control over actualterritory was tenuous at best; and the political existenceof European settler states was a negotiated reality untilwell into the nineteenth century (and not completelyachieved, even in colonial mythology, until the end ofthe nineteenth century in the United States and to thisday in Canada).

The second limitation is theoretical: the discourse ofsovereignty upon which the current post facto justifica-tion rests is an exclusively European discourse. That is,European assertions in both a legal and political sensewere made strictly vis-à-vis other European powers,and did not impinge upon or necessarily even affect inlaw or politics the rights and status of indigenousnations. It is only from our distant historical vantagepoint, and standing upon a counterfactual rock, that weare able to see European usurpation of indigenoussovereignty as justified.

If sovereignty has been neither legitimized nor justi-fied, it has nevertheless limited the ways in which weare able to think, suggesting always a conceptual anddefinitional problem centred on the accommodation ofindigenous peoples within a “legitimate” framework ofsettler state governance. When we step outside thisdiscourse, we confront a different problematic, that ofthe state’s “sovereignty” itself, and its actual meaning incontrast to the facts and the potential that exists for anation-to-nation relationship.

“Living in two worlds”. Tom LaBlanc, Sisseton-Dakota from North Dakota,anti-uranium activist, traditional dancer and poet. Photo: Helena Nyberg

Typical home of a self-sufficient Lil’wat family denying to accept welfare money. Photo: Helena Nyberg


The critique from within

Indigenous scholars have focused on this problematic toprofound effect. Russel Barsh and James Henderson, forexample, explored the process of intellectual obscurant-ism in close detail in The Road: Indian Tribes and PoliticalLiberty. Barsh and Henderson concentrated on the UnitedStates and the creation of an historical narrative thatcompletely ignored basic principles of natural law andthe philosophical underpinnings of American notions ofliberty and equality. They trace the evolution of thedoctrine of tribal sovereignty in United States law throughjudicial decisions, and demonstrate the ways in which theprocess misrepresented the true potential of liberal prin-ciples - and even the United States Constitution - toaccommodate notions of indigenous nationhood.

The Road is a landmark work. It embarked on acritique from within, arguing for recognition of indig-enous peoples’ rights within the historic and legal frameof state sovereignty. Ultimately, Barsh and Hendersonsubjected the rationale for indigenous or “tribal” libertyto criteria defined by the framers of the United StatesConstitution. The problem, they argued, was the subjec-tion of principle to politics, and unprincipled decisionsby the state judiciaries. Barsh and Henderson designeda “theory of the tribe in the American nation” (205), and,in so doing, advanced the theoretical notion of a coexist-ence of indigenous and state sovereignty that was ham-strung as a conceptual tool by the weight of skewed legalprecedent and the reality of the political context. In thissense, The Road follows the trajectory - native sover-eignty within and in relation to state sovereignty - firstset forth in the 1830s in the Cherokee decisions, whichsuggested that tribes were “domestic dependent na-tions”.

The entanglement of indigenous peoples within theinstitutional frame of the colonial state of course wentbeyond legal doctrines. The practice of sovereignty inthe structures of government and the building of insti-tutional relationships between indigenous governmentsand state agencies offered another forum for the subor-dination of principle. In two volumes, American Indians,American Justice and The Nations Within, Vine Deloria Jr.and Clifford Lytle first outlined how the legal denial ofindigenous rights in the courts was mirrored in govern-ing structures that embedded the false notion of Euro-pean superiority in indigenous community life. The ex-ample of the United States’ usurpation of indigenousnationhood clarified how the state generally uses not onlypolitical and economic but also certain intellectual strat-egies to impose and maintain its dominance. Such linkingof the intellectual and structural forms of colonialismhave produced some of the deepest analyses of the issue.

In considering the question of the “sovereignty” ofindigenous peoples within its territorial borders, thestate takes various positions: the classic strategies in-clude outright denial of indigenous rights; a theoretical

acceptance of indigenous rights combined with an as-sertion that these have been extinguished historically;and legal doctrines that transform indigenous rightsfrom their autonomous nature to contingent rights,existing only within the framework of colonial law.Scholars have fully documented the manifestation ofthese strategies in the various policies implemented bysettler states in the modern era: domestication, termina-tion, assimilation.

With the minor concession that in both Canada andthe United States the federal government itself hasmaintained and defended its powers over indigenouspeoples vis-à-vis states and provinces, the potential forrecognition of indigenous nationhood has goneunrealized. There has been a total theoretical exclusionand extinguishment of indigenous nationhood, leadingto what a recent United Nations Human Rights Com-mission study labelled the unjust “domestication” ofindigenous nationhood.

Indigenous peoples nonetheless struggled to achievea degree of freedom and power within the intellectualand political environment created out of the colonialdomestication project and settler state sovereignty. Forgenerations, indigenous peoples fought to preserve theintegrity of their nations and the independent bases oftheir existence. They were successful in countering thecolonial project to the extent that they survived (amonumental human achievement given the intensiveefforts of two modern industrial states to eradicatethem). Yet by the late 1980s, the increasing erosion oftribal governing powers in the United States and failedattempts to enshrine a recognition of indigenous na-tionhood in the Canadian constitution made it clear thatthe governments of Canada and the United States wereincapable of liberalizing their relationships with “thenations within”.

The new approach: deconstructing the archi-tecture of colonial domination

As they regained their capacity to govern themselvesand began to re-assert the earlier principles of thenation-to-nation relationship between indigenous peo-ples and states, indigenous people began to questionseriously the viability of working within the system, ofconsidering themselves “nations within”. The ques-tioning often came out of models - tribal and bandcouncils dependent upon and administering federalfunds, for example - that recognized indigenous sover-eignty yet always subsumed it to that of the state. A newintellectual approach began to emerge in the critique ofthe fundamental pillars by which the United States andCanada claimed legal authority over indigenous peo-ples and lands. Reflecting critical trends in other aca-demic disciplines, legal scholarship began the project ofdeconstructing the architecture of colonial domination.

Lil’wat spiritual leader checking on the destruction of their sacred valley. Photo: Helena Nyberg


Perhaps the two most important strategies to re-achievea political plurality in the face of the dominance of statesovereignty have been woven together: On the onehand, the assertion of a prior and coexisting sovereigntyand, on the other, the assertion of a right of self-determi-nation for indigenous peoples in international law.

The most thorough and illuminating of the criticallegal studies of the indigenous-state relationship is RobertWilliams’ The American Indian in Western Legal Thought.Its description of how law - embodying all of the racistassumptions of medieval Europe - has served as theEuropean colonisers’ most effective instrument of geno-cide destroys the arguments of those who would defendthe justice of the colonial state. Williams shows how thedeep roots of European belief in their own cultural andracial superiority underlie all discussions of the interac-tion between whites and indigenous peoples on theissue of sovereignty. After Williams’ critique, any his-tory of the concept of sovereignty in North Americamust trace the manipulation of the concept as it evolvedto justify the elimination of indigenous peoples. Byexamining the deep history of European thought onindigenous peoples - what he calls the “discourse ofconquest” - Williams showed how the entire discussionof sovereignty in North America represents the calcu-lated triumph of illogic and interest over truth andjustice.

After the end of the imperial era and the foundation ofthe North American states, in no instance did principlesof law preclude the perpetration of injustice againstindigenous peoples. In Canada, the rights of indigenouspeoples were completely denied in the creation of thelegal framework for the relationship. And the UnitedStates Supreme Court’s definition of tribal sovereignty -made by Chief Justice John Marshall in a series of nine-teenth-century decisions centered on Johnson v. McIntosh- merely gave legal sanction to the unilateral abrogationof treaties by the United States and denial of the naturallaw rights of indigenous peoples. As Williams argues:

Johnson’s acceptance of the Doctrine of Discovery intoUnited States law preserved the legacy of 1000 years ofEuropean racism and colonialism directed against non-Western peoples (317).

Recent assertions of prior and persistent indigenouspower have come from two places: first, the intellectualand historical critiques of state legitimacy and, second,the revitalisation of indigenous communities. Using“remnant recognitions” in colonial law, Indian criticshave sought to deconstruct the skewed legal and insti-tutional frame and to focus directly on the relationshipbetween indigenous peoples and state sovereignty.



Core to this effort is the theoretical attention given to theentire notion of sovereignty as the guiding principle ofgovernment in states. What the Canadian philosopherJames Tully calls the “empire of uniformity” is a fact-obliterating mythology of European conquest and nor-mality. Tully recognises the ways in which injusticetoward indigenous peoples is deeply rooted in the basicinjustice of normalised power relations within the stateitself. In his Strange Multiplicity, Tully considers theintellectual bases of dominance inherent in state struc-tures, and he challenges us to reconceptualize the stateand its relation with indigenous people in order toaccommodate what he calls the three post-imperialvalues: consent, mutual recognition and cultural conti-nuity.

Taiaiake Alfred, in his Peace, Power, Righteousness,has engaged this challenge from within an indigenousintellectual framework. Alfred’s “manifesto” calls for aprofound reorientation of indigenous politics, and arecovery of indigenous political traditions in contempo-rary society. Attacking both the foundations of thestate’s claim to authority over indigenous peoples andthe process of cooptation that has drawn indigenousleaders into a position of dependency on and coopera-tion with unjust state structures, Alfred’s work reflectsa basic sentiment within many indigenous communi-ties: “sovereignty” is inappropriate as a political objec-tive for indigenous peoples.

David Wilkins’ American Indian Sovereignty and theUnited States Supreme Court amply illustrates the futilityand frustration of adopting sovereignty as a politicalobjective. Wilkins traces the history of the developmentof a doctrine of Indian tribal sovereignty in the UnitedStates Supreme Court, demonstrating its inherent con-tradictions for Indian nationhood. From the centralMarshall decisions in the mid-nineteenth century throughcontemporary jurisprudence, Wilkins reveals the fun-damental weakness of a tribal sovereignty “protected”within the colonizer’s legal system.

Wilkins’ exhaustive and convincing work draws onpost-modern and critical legal studies approaches to thelaw. Examining the negative findings of the Court, hedeconstructs the façade of judicial objectivity, demon-strating that in defining sovereignty, the “justices of theSupreme Court, both individually and collectively have en-gaged in the manufacturing, redefining, and burying of‘principles’, ‘doctrines’, and legal ‘truths’ to excuse andlegitimize constitutional, treaty, and civil rights violations oftribal nations” (297). In the United States, the commonlaw provides for recognition of the inherent sovereigntyof indigenous peoples but simultaneously allows for itslimitation by the United States Congress. The logic ofcolonisation is clearly evident in the creation of “domes-tic dependent nation” status, which supposedly accom-modates the historical fact of coexisting sovereigntiesbut does no more than slightly limit the hypocrisy. Itaccepts the premise of indigenous rights while at the

same time legalising their unjust limitation and poten-tial extinguishment by the state.

Rejecting sovereignty - regaining nationhood

Scholars and indigenous leaders, in confronting theignorance of the original principles in politics today andin the processes that have been established to negotiatea movement away from the colonial past, have usuallyaccepted the framework and goal of “sovereignty” ascore to the indigenous political movement. New institu-tions are constructed in communities to assert indig-enous rights within a “tribal sovereignty” framework.And many people have reconciled themselves to thebelief that we are making steady progress toward theresolution of injustices stemming from colonisation. Itmay take more energy, or more money than is currentlybeing devoted to the process of decolonisation but theissue is always framed within existing structural andlegal parameters.

But few people have questioned how a Europeanterm and idea - sovereignty is certainly not Sioux, Salishor Iroquoian in origin - came to be so embedded andimportant to cultures that had their own systems ofgovernment long before the term sovereignty was in-vented in Europe. Fewer still have questioned the impli-cations of adopting the European notion of power andgovernance and using it to structure the post-colonialsystems that are being negotiated and implementedwithin indigenous communities today.

These are exactly the questions that have becomecentral to current analyses of power within indigenouscommunities. Using the sovereignty paradigm, indig-enous people have made significant legal and politicalgains toward reconstructing the autonomous aspects oftheir individual, collective and social identities. Thepositive effect of the sovereignty movement in terms ofmental, physical, and emotional health cannot be de-nied or understated. Yet this does not seem to be enough:the seriousness of the social ills, which do continue,suggests that an externally focused assertion of sover-eign power vis-à-vis the state is neither complete nor inand of itself a solution. Indigenous leaders engagingthemselves and their communities in arguments framedwithin a liberal paradigm have not been able to protectthe integrity of their nations. “Aboriginal rights” and“tribal sovereignty” are in fact the benefits accrued byindigenous peoples who have agreed to abandon au-tonomy to enter the state’s legal and political framework.

Yet indigenous people have successfully engagedwestern society in the first stages of a movement torestore their autonomous power and cultural integrityin the area of governance. The movement - referred to interms of “aboriginal self-government”, “indigenous self-determination”, or “Native sovereignty” - is founded onan ideology of indigenous nationalism and a rejection of


the models of government rooted in European culturalvalues. It is an uneven process of re-instituting systemsthat promote the goals and reinforce the values ofindigenous cultures, against the constant effort of theCanadian and United States governments to maintainthe systems of dominance imposed on indigenous com-munities during the last century. Many communitieshave almost disentangled themselves from paternalisticstate controls in administering institutions within juris-dictions that are important to them. Many more arecurrently engaged in substantial negotiations over landand governance, hoped and believed to lead to signifi-cantly greater control over their own lives and futures.

The intellectuals’ rejection of the cooptation of indig-enous nationhood and the creation of assimilative defi-nitions of “sovereignty” in Canada and the UnitedStates followed years of activism among indigenouspeoples on the ground. That activism was the directresult of the retraditionalization of segments of thepopulation within indigenous communities - rejectionof the legitimacy of the state and recovery of the tradi-tional bases of indigenous political society. In Canada,the movement has taken the form of a struggle forrevision of the constitutional status of indigenous na-tions, focused on forcing the state to break from itsimperial position and recognize and accommodate thenotion of an inherent authority in indigenous nations. Inthe United States, where a theoretical, redefined andarbitrarily limited form of “sovereign” authority stillresides with Indian tribes, the movement has focused ondefending and expanding the political and economicimplications of that theoretical right. In comparison, thestruggles can be seen as philosophical vis-à-vis Canadaand material vis-à-vis the United States.

There has been a much more substantive and chal-lenging debate in Canada (linked to the struggles ofindigenous peoples confronting the Commonwealthlegal tradition in Australia and New Zealand) whereactual political and legal stature is being contested, asopposed to the United States where indigenous peoplestend to rely implicitly upon the existing legal frame-work. In Canada, more than any other country, indig-enous peoples have sought to transcend the colonialmyths and restore the original relationships. It is thiseffort to transcend the colonial mentality and move thesociety beyond the structures of dominance forming thecontemporary political reality that will drive futureactivism and scholarship on the question of indigenouspeoples’ political rights and status in relation to states.

In spite of this progress - or perhaps because of it -people in many Native communities are beginning tolook beyond the present, envisioning a post-colonialfuture negotiated at various levels. There are seriousproblems with that future in the minds of many peoplewho remain committed to systems of government thatcomplement and sustain indigenous cultures. The coreproblem for both activists and scholars revolves around

the fact that the colonial system itself has become em-bedded within indigenous societies. Indigenous com-munity life today may be seen as framed by two funda-mentally opposed value systems, one forming the un-dercurrent of social and cultural relations, the otherstructuring politics. This disunity is the fundamentalcondition of the alienation and political fatigue thatplagues indigenous communities. A perspective thatdoes not see the ongoing crisis fuelled by continuingefforts to keep indigenous people focused on a quest forpower within a paradigm bounded by the vocabulary,logic and institutions of “sovereignty” will be blind tothe reality of a persistent intent to maintain the colonialoppression of indigenous nations. The next phase ofscholarship and activism, then, will need to transcendthe mentality that supports the colonisation of indig-enous nations, beginning with the rejection of the termand notion of indigenous “sovereignty”.

A post-sovereign future?

Most of the attention and energy thus far has beendirected at the process of de-colonisation—the mechan-ics of escaping from direct state control and the legal andpolitical struggle to gain recognition of an indigenousgoverning authority. There has been a fundamentalignorance of the end values of the struggle. What will anindigenous government be like after self-government isachieved? Few people imagine that it will be an exactreplica of the pre-colonial system that governed com-munities in the past. Most acknowledge that all indig-enous structures will adapt to modern methods in termsof administrative technique and technology. There is apolitical universe of possibility when it comes to theembodiment of core values in the new systems.

The great hope is that the government systems beingset up to replace colonial control in indigenous commu-nities will embody the underlying cultural values ofthose communities. The great fear is that the post-colonial governments being designed today will besimple replicas of non-indigenous systems for smallerand racially-defined constituencies; oppression becom-ing self-inflicted and more intense for its localisation,thereby perpetuating the two value systems at the baseof the problem.

One of the main obstacles to achieving peacefulcoexistence is of course the uncritical acceptance of theclassic notion of “sovereignty” as the framework fordiscussions of political relations between peoples. Thediscourse of sovereignty has effectively stilled any po-tential resolution of the issue that respects indigenousvalues and perspectives. Even “traditional” indigenousnationhood is commonly defined relationally, in con-trast to the dominant formulation of the state: there is noabsolute authority, no coercive enforcement of deci-sions, no hierarchy, and no separate ruling entity.



In his work on indigenous sovereignty in the UnitedStates, Vine Deloria, Jr. has pointed out the distinctionbetween indigenous concepts of nationhood and thoseof state-based sovereignty. Deloria sees nationhood asdistinct from “self-government” (or the “domestic de-pendent nation” status accorded indigenous peoples bythe United States). The right of “self-determination,”unbounded by state law, is a concept appropriate tonations. Delegated forms of authority, like “self-govern-ment” within the context of state sovereignty, are con-cepts appropriate to what we may call “minority peo-ples” or other ethnically-defined groups within the polityas a whole. In response to the question of whether or notthe development of “self-government” and other state-delegated forms of authority as institutions in indigenouscommunities was wrong, Deloria answers that it is notwrong, but simply inadequate. Delegated forms do notaddress the spiritual basis of indigenous societies:

Self-government is not an Indian idea. It originates in theminds of non-Indians who have reduced the traditionalways to dust, or believe they have, and now wish to give,as a gift, a limited measure of local control and responsi-bility. Self-government is an exceedingly useful conceptfor Indians to use when dealing with the larger govern-ment because it provides a context within which negoti-ations can take place. Since it will never supplant theintangible, spiritual, and emotional aspirations of Amer-ican Indians, it cannot be regarded as the final solution toIndian problems. (Deloria, 1984: 15)

The challenge for indigenous peoples in building appro-priate post-colonial governing systems is to disconnectthe notion of sovereignty from its western, legal rootsand to transform it. It is all too often taken for grantedthat what indigenous peoples are seeking in recognitionof their nationhood is, at its core, the same as that whichcountries like Canada and the United States now pos-sess. In fact, most of the current generation of indig-enous politicians see politics as a zero-sum contest forpower in the same way that non-indigenous politiciansdo. Rather than a value rooted in a traditional indig-enous philosophy, indigenous politicians regard thenationhood discourse as a lever to gain bargainingposition. For the politician, there is a dichotomy be-tween philosophical principle and politics. The asser-tion of a sovereign right for indigenous peoples is notreally believed, and becomes a transparent bargainingploy and a lever for concessions within the establishedconstitutional framework. Until “sovereignty” as a con-cept shifts from the dominant “state sovereignty” con-struct and comes to reflect more of the sense embodiedin western notions, such as personal sovereignty orpopular sovereignty, it will remain problematic if inte-grated within indigenous political struggles.

One of the major problems in the indigenous sover-eignty movement is that its leaders must qualify and

rationalise their goals by modifying the sovereigntyconcept. Sovereignty itself implies a set of values andobjectives that put it in direct opposition to the valuesand objectives found in most traditional indigenousphilosophies. Non-indigenous politicians recognise theinherent weakness of a position that asserts a sover-eign right for peoples who do not have the culturalframe and institutional capacity to defend or sustain it.The problem for the indigenous sovereignty move-ment is that the initial act of asserting a sovereign rightfor indigenous peoples has structured the politics ofdecolonisation since, and the state has used the theo-retical inconsistencies in the position to its own advan-tage.

In this context, for example, the resolution of “landclaims” (addressing the legal inconsistency of Crown orstate title on indigenous lands) is generally seen as amark of progress by progressive non-indigenous peo-ple. But it seems that without a fundamental question-ing of the assumptions that underlie the state’s ap-proach to power, the bad assumptions of colonialismwill continue to structure the relationship. Progresstoward achieving justice from an indigenous perspec-tive made within this frame will be marginal and,indeed, it has become evident that it will be tolerated bythe state only to the extent that it serves, or at least doesnot oppose, the alter indigenously defined interests ofthe state itself.

In Canada - to note a second example - recognition ofthe concept of “aboriginal rights” by the high court isseen by many to be such a landmark of progress. Yetthose who think more deeply recognize the basic realitythat even with a legal recognition of collective rights tocertain subsistence activities within certain territories,indigenous people are still subject to the state’s control-ling mechanisms in the exercise of these inherentfreedoms and powers. They must conform to state-derived criteria and represent ascribed or negotiatedidentities in order to access these legal rights. Notthrowing indigenous people in jail for fishing is cer-tainly a mark of progress, given Canada’s shamefulhistory. But to what extent does that state-regulated“right” to fish represent justice when you consider thatindigenous people have been fishing on their rivers andseas since time began?

There are inherent constraints to the exercise ofindigenous governmental authority built into the no-tion of indigenous sovereignty, and these constraintsderive from the myth of conquest that is the foundationof mainstream perspectives on indigenous-white rela-tions in North America. The maintenance of state domi-nance over indigenous peoples rests on the preserva-tion of the myth of conquest, and the “noble but doomed”defeated nation status ascribed to indigenous peoplesin the state sovereignty discourse. Framing indigenouspeople in the past allows the state to maintain its ownlegitimacy by disallowing the fact of indigenous peo-

Pineridge reservation -South Dakota. Army surroundingWounded Knee during occupation by AIM, 1973. Photo: Michelle Vignes


ples’ nationhood to intrude upon its own mythology. Ithas become clear that indigenous people imperil them-selves by accepting formulations of nationhood thatprevent them from transcending the past. One of thefundamental injustices of the colonial state is that itrelegates indigenous peoples’ rights to the past, andconstrains the development of indigenous societies byonly allowing that activity which supports its ownnecessary illusion - that indigenous peoples do nottoday present a serious challenge to the legitimacy ofthe state.

Indigenous leaders have begun acting on their re-sponsibility to expose the imperial pretence that sup-ports the doctrine of state sovereignty and white soci-ety’s dominion over indigenous nations and their lands.State sovereignty can only exist in the fabrication of atruth that excludes the indigenous voice. It is in factanti-historic to claim that the state’s legitimacy is basedon the rule of law. From the indigenous perspective,there was no conquest and there is no moral justificationfor state sovereignty, only the gradual triumph of germsand numbers. The bare truth is that Canada and theUnited States “conquered” only because indigenouspeoples were overwhelmed by imported European dis-eases, and were unable to prevent the massive immigra-tion of European, African, and Asian populations. Onlyrecently, as indigenous people have learned to manipu-late state institutions and have gained support fromothers oppressed by the state, has the state been forcedto incorporate any inconsistencies.

Kili Radio in South Dakota is one of the first independent radios run by Lakota,transmitting in both Lakota and English. Photo: Helena Nyberg

Royal Canadian Mounted Police stopping Lil’wat spiritual leaderson their way to sacred lands. Photo: Helena Nyberg

Oglala Lakota College is the first self-ruled native college in the US. Photo: Helena Nyberg


Recognising the power of the indigenous challenge andunable to deny it a voice, the state’s response has beento attempt to draw indigenous people closer. It hasencouraged indigenous people to re-frame and moder-ate their nationhood demands, to accept the fait accompliof colonisation, to help create a marginal solution thatdoes not challenge the fundamental imperial premise.By allowing indigenous peoples a small measure of self-administration, and by forgoing a small portion of themoneys derived from the exploitation of indigenousnations’ lands, the state has created an incentive forintegration into its own sovereignty framework. Thoseindigenous communities that cooperate are the benefi-ciaries of a patronising faux altruism. They are viewedsympathetically as the anachronistic remnants of na-tions, the descendants of once independent peopleswho, by a combination of tenacity and luck, have man-aged to survive and must now be protected as minori-ties. By agreeing to live as artefacts, such co-optedcommunities guarantee themselves a mythological role,and thereby hope to secure a limited but perpetual setof rights.

An indigenous alternative

Is there a Native philosophical alternative? And whatmight one achieve by standing up against the furtherentrenchment of institutions modelled on the state?Many traditionalists hope to preserve a set of valuesthat challenges the destructive, homogenising force ofwestern liberalism and materialism: they wish to pre-serve a regime that honours the autonomy of individualconscience, non-coercive forms of authority, and a deeprespect and interconnection between human beings andthe other elements of creation. The contrast betweenindigenous conceptions and dominant western con-structions in this regard could not be more severe. Inmost traditional indigenous conceptions, nature andthe natural order are the basic referents when thinkingof power, justice, and social relations. Western concep-tions, with their own particular philosophical distancefrom the natural world, have more often reflected dif-ferent kinds of structures of coercion and social power.

Consider these different concepts of power as theyaffect one’s perspective on the relationship between thepeople and the land, one of the basic elements of apolitical philosophy, be it indigenous nationhood, orstate sovereignty. Indigenous philosophies are prem-ised on the belief that the human relationship to theearth is primarily one of partnership. The land wascreated by a power outside human beings, and a justrelationship to that power must respect the fact thathuman beings did not have a hand in making the earth,therefore they have no right to dispose of it as they seefit. Land is created by another power’s order, therefore


possession by man is unnatural and unjust. The partner-ship principle, reflecting a spiritual connection with theland established by the Creator, gives human beingsspecial responsibilities within the areas they occupy,linking them in a natural and sacred way to theirterritories.

The form of distributive or social justice promotedby the state through the current notion of economicdevelopment centres on the development of industryand enterprises to provide jobs for people and revenuefor government institutions. Most often (and especiallyon indigenous lands) the industry and enterprises cen-tre on natural resource extraction. Trees, rocks and fishbecome resources and commodities with a value calcu-lated solely in monetary terms. Conventional economicdevelopment clearly lacks appreciation for the qualita-tive and spiritual connections that indigenous peopleshave to what developers would call “resources”.

Traditional frames of mind would seek a balancedperspective on using land in ways that respect thespiritual and cultural connections indigenous peopleshave with their territories, combined with a commit-ment to managing the process respectfully, and toensuring a benefit for the natural and indigenous occu-pants of the land. The primary goals of an indigenouseconomy are the sustainability of the earth and ensuringthe health and well-being of the people. Any deviationfrom that principle—whether in qualitative terms orwith reference to the intensity of activity on the land—should be seen as upsetting the ideal of balance that isat the heart of so many indigenous societies.

Unlike the earth, social and political institutionswere created by men and women. In many indigenoustraditions, the fact that social and political institutionswere designed and chartered by human beings meansthat people have the power and responsibility to changethem. Where the human-earth relationship is struc-tured by the larger forces in nature outside of humanprerogative for change, the human-institution relation-ship entails an active responsibility for human beings touse their own powers of creation to achieve balance andharmony. Governance structures and social institutionsare designed to empower individuals and reinforcetradition to maintain the balance found in nature.

Sovereignty, then, is a social creation. It is not anobjective or natural phenomenon but the result of choicesmade by men and women, indicative of a mindsetlocated in, rather than a natural force creative of, a socialand political order. The reification of sovereignty inpolitics today is the result of a triumph of a particular setof ideas over others - no more natural to the world thanany other man-made object.

Indigenous perspectives offer alternatives, begin-ning with the restoration of a regime of respect. Thisideal contrasts with the statist solution, still rooted in aclassical notion of sovereignty that mandates a distribu-


tive re-arrangement but with a basic maintenance of thesuperior posture of the state. True indigenous formula-tions are non-intrusive and build frameworks of re-spectful coexistence by acknowledging the integrityand autonomy of the various constituent elements ofthe relationship. They go far beyond even the mostliberal western conceptions of justice in promoting theachievement of peace because they explicitly allow fordifference while mandating the construction of soundrelationships among autonomously powered elements.

For people committed to transcending the imperial-ism of state sovereignty, the challenge is to de-think theconcept of sovereignty and replace it with a notion ofpower that has at its root a more appropriate premise.And, as James Tully has pointed out, the imperialdemand for conformity to a single language and way ofknowing has, in any case, become obsolete andunachievable in the diverse (ethnic, linguistic, racial)social and political communities characteristic of mod-ern states. Maintaining a political community on thepremise of singularity is no more than intellectual impe-rialism. Justice demands a recognition (intellectual,legal, political) of the diversity of languages and knowl-edge that exists among people—indigenous peoples’ideas about relationships and power holding the samecredence as those formerly constituting the singularreality of the state. Creating a legitimate post-colonialrelationship involves abandoning notions of Europeancultural superiority and adopting a mutually respectfulposture. It is no longer possible to maintain the legiti-macy of the premise that there is only one right way tosee and do things.

Indigenous voices have been consistent over centu-ries in demanding such recognition and respect. Thespeaker of the Rotinohshonni Grand Council, Deskaheh,for example, led a movement in the 1920s to haveindigenous peoples respected by the members of theLeague of Nations. And more recently, indigenousleaders from around the world have had some successin undermining the intellectual supremacy of state sov-ereignty as the singular legitimate form of politicalorganisation. Scholars of international law are nowbeginning to see the vast potential for peace representedin indigenous political philosophies. Attention focusedon the principles of the Rotinohshonni Kaienerekowa(Great Law of Peace) in the international arena, forexample, suggests the growing recognition of indig-enous thought as a post-colonial alternative to the statesovereignty model. James Anaya, author of the mostcomprehensive and authoritative legal text on indig-enous peoples in international law, writes:

The Great Law of Peace promotes unity among individ-uals, families, clans, and nations while upholding theintegrity of diverse identities and spheres of autonomy.Similar ideals have been expressed by leaders of otherindigenous groups in contemporary appeals to interna-

tional bodies. Such conceptions outside the mold ofclassical Western liberalism would appear to provide amore appropriate foundation for understanding human-ity… (Anaya, 1996: 79)

But the state is not going to release its grip on power soeasily. The traditional values of indigenous peoplesconstitute knowledge that directly threatens the mo-nopoly on power currently enjoyed by the state. Strug-gle lies ahead. Yet there is real hope for moving beyondthe intellectual violence of the state in a concept of legalpluralism emerging out of the critiques, and reflected inthe limited recognition afforded indigenous concep-tions in recent legal argumentation. In a basic sense,these shifts reflect what many indigenous people havebeen saying all along: respect for others is a necessaryprecondition to peace and justice.

Indigenous conceptions, and the politics that flowfrom them, maintain in a real way the distinction be-tween various political communities and contain animperative of respect that precludes the need for ho-mogenisation. Most indigenous people respect othersto the degree that they demonstrate respect. There is noneed, as in the western tradition, to create a political orlegal hegemony to guarantee respect. There is no impe-rial, totalising, or assimilative impulse. And that is thekey difference: both philosophical systems can achievepeace; but for peace the European demands assimila-tion to a belief or a country, while the indigenousdemands nothing except respect.

Within a nation, one might even rethink the need forformal boundaries and precedents that protect indi-viduals from each other and from the group. A trulyindigenous political system relies instead on the domi-nant intellectual motif of balance, with little or notension in the relationship between the individual andthe collective. Indigenous thought is often based on thenotion that people, communities, and the other ele-ments of creation co-exist as equals—human beings aseither individuals or collectives do not have specialpriority in deciding the justice of a situation.

Consider the indigenous philosophical alternativeto sovereignty in light of the effect sovereignty-basedstates, structures, and politics have had on NorthAmerica since the coming of the Europeans. Within afew generations, Turtle Island has become a land dev-astated by environmental and social degradation. Theland has been shamefully exploited, indigenous peoplehave borne the worst of oppression in all its forms, andindigenous ideas have been denigrated. Recently, how-ever, indigenous peoples have come to realise that themain obstacle to recovery from this near total dispos-session – the restoration of peace and harmony in theircommunities and the creation of just relationships be-tween their peoples and the earth – is the dominance ofEuropean-derived ideas such as sovereignty. In the pasttwo or three generations, there has been movement for


Lubicon children. Photo: Helena Nyberg


Alcatraz during take over af indians. Photo: Michelle Vignes


the good in terms of rebuilding social cohesion, gainingeconomic self-sufficiency and empowering structuresof self-government within indigenous communities.

There has also been a return to seeking guidance intraditional teachings, and a revitalisation of the tradi-tions that sustained the great cultural achievement ofrespectful coexistence. People have begun to appreciatethat wisdom, and much of the discourse on what consti-tutes justice and a proper relationship within indig-enous communities today revolves around the struggleto promote the recovery of these values. Yet there hasbeen very little movement towards an understandingor even appreciation of the indigenous tradition amongnon-indigenous people.

It is, in fact, one of the strongest themes withinindigenous American cultures that the sickness mani-fest in the modern colonial state can be transformed intoa framework for coexistence by understanding andrespecting the traditional teachings. There is great wis-dom coded in the languages and cultures of all indig-enous peoples - this is knowledge that can provideanswers to compelling questions if respected and res-cued from its status as cultural artefact. There is also agreat potential for resolving many of our seeminglyintractable problems by bringing traditional ideas andvalues back to life. Before their near destruction byEuropeans, many indigenous societies achieved sover-eignty-free regimes of conscience and justice that al-lowed for the harmonious coexistence of humans andnature for hundreds of generations. As our worldemerges into a post-imperial age, the philosophical andgovernmental alternative to sovereignty, and the cen-tral values contained within their traditional cultures,are the North American Indian’s contribution to the re-construction of a just and harmonious world.

References

Alfred, T: 1999 - Peace, Power, Righteousness: an indigenous manifesto.Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Alfred, T: 1995 - Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mo-hawk Politics and the Rise of indigenous Nationalism. Toronto: Ox-ford University Press.

Anaya, S.J: 1996 - Indigenous Peoples in International Law. New York:Oxford University Press.

Asch, M., ed.: 1997 - Aboriginal Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law,Equality, and Respect for Difference. Vancouver: University of Brit-ish Columbia Press.

Barsh, R.L. & J.Y. Henderson: 1980 - The Road: Indian Tribes andPolitical Liberty. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bartelson, J. : 1995 - A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Biersteker, J. & C. Weber, eds.: 1996 - State Sovereignty as a SocialConstruct. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clark, B.: 1990 - Indigenous Liberty, Crown Sovereignty: The ExistingAboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Cornell, S.: 1988 - The Return of the Native: American Indian PoliticalResurgence. New York: Oxford University Press.

Deloria, V., Jr.: 1970 - We Talk, You Listen. New York: Macmillan.

Deloria, V. Jr.: 1988 - Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Deloria, V., Jr. & R.M. Lytle: 1983 - American Indians, American Justice.Austin: University of Texas Press.

Deloria, V., Jr. & R.M. Lytle: 1984 - The Nations Within: The Past andFuture of American Indian Sovereignty. Austin: University of TexasPress, 1984.

Fleras A. and J.L. Elliott: 1992 - The ‘Nations Within’: Aboriginal-StateRelations in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. Toronto:Oxford University Press, 1992.

Foucault, M.: 1980 - Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and OtherWritings, 1972-1977, C. Gordon, ed. & trans. New York: PantheonBooks.

Foucault, M: 1997 - The Politics of Truth. S. Lotringer, ed. New York:Semiotext(e).

Lyons, O. et. al.: 1992 - Exiled In the Land of the Free: Democracy, IndianNations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers.

Patton, P., ed.: 2000 - Political Theory and Indigenous Rights. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rotman, L.I.: 1996 - Parallel Paths: Fiduciary Doctrine and the Crown-indigenous Relationship in Canada. Toronto: University of TorontoPress.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Canada): 1996 - Report,5 Vols. Ottawa: Canada Communication Group.

Spinner, J.: 1994 - The Boundaries of Citizenship: Race, Ethnicity, andNationality in the Liberal State. Baltimore: John Hopkins UniversityPress.

Tully, J.: 1995 - Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age ofDiversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilkins, D.E.: 1997 - American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. SupremeCourt: The Masking of Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Wilkinson, C.F.: 1987 - American Indians, Time, and the Law: IndigenousSocieties in a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press.

Williams, R.A. Jr.: 1990 - The American Indian in Western Legal Thought:The Discourse of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dr. Taiaiake Alfred is a Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) fromKahnawake. He is the Director of the Indigenous GovernanceProgram of the University of Victoria in Canada. This paperwas delivered at the International Political Science Associa-tion Congress in Quebec City, Canada, August 2000. It hasbeen published as “Sovereignty”, in the Blackwell Compan-ion to Native American History, P. Deloria and N.Salisbury, eds. (Blackwell, 2000). ❑


T he Mayagna Indian Community of Awas Tingnihas won a major legal battle against the govern-

ment of Nicaragua.On Monday, September 17, 2001, the Inter-Ameri-

can Court of Human Rights released its decision declar-ing that Nicaragua violated the human rights of theAwas Tingni Community and ordered the governmentto recognize and protect the community’s legal rights toits traditional lands, natural resources, and environ-ment.

The Court’s decision has far-reaching implications.“It is precedent-setting internationally,” said James

Anaya, special counsel to the Indian Law ResourceCenter, which represents the Awas Tingni Communityand which has taken a leading role in assisting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in prosecut-ing the case before the court. “Members of the commu-nity have fought for decades to protect their land andresources and against government neglect and encroach-ment by loggers,” said Anaya. “This decision vindicatesthe rights they have struggled so long to protect.”

There are many similar land and resource disputesacross the Americas. This case is the first such disputeever to be addressed by the Inter-American Court.

Under international law, governments must respectindigenous peoples’ rights to their traditional land. Butif a government does not demarcate indigenous peo-ples’ land, their territorial rights remain uncertain.

The Nicaraguan government has “exploited thatconfusion in its own favor,” said Anaya, also a Professorof Law at the University of Arizona. The governmentgranted foreign companies licenses to log much of thetropical forest where the community resides. “But nowthe hemisphere’s highest human rights court says thatNicaragua and other countries must protect indigenousrights.”

Although the Nicaraguan Constitution nominallyrecognizes that indigenous communities have rights totheir lands, the Nicaraguan government has not re-spected those rights.

With the help of the U.S.-based Indian Law ResourceCenter, the Awas Tingni Community fought for years inNicaraguan courts to protect their lands and resources.But the Nicaraguan legal system failed to address thecommunity’s concerns. “We tried all the remedies

available in Nicaragua, including the Supreme Court,”said Armstrong Wiggins of the Indian Law ResourceCenter in Washington, DC. “Meanwhile, the indig-enous peoples’ lands and resources remained unpro-tected.”

Then, in 1995 the Indian Law Resource Center fileda petition before the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights against the government of Nicaragua onbehalf of the Community of Awas Tingni. The commis-sion is an independent body of the Organization ofAmerican States, which is located in Washington, DC.The petition denounced the Nicaraguan government’spractice of granting logging licenses to foreign compa-nies on indigenous communities’ ancestral lands with-out consulting the communities. The commission foundin favor of the community, but the government ignoredthe commission’s requests for remedial action. In Juneof 1998, the commission brought the case before theInter-American Court.

The Court applies and interprets human rights lawthat is binding on countries throughout the Americas.

In its decision, the Court stated that Nicaraguaviolated international human rights law by denying thecommunity its rights to property, adequate judicialprotection, and equal protection under the law. Thecourt ruled that Nicaragua’s legal protections for indig-enous lands were “illusory and ineffective”. It orderedthe government to demarcate the traditional lands ofthe Awas Tingni Community and to establish new legalmechanisms to demarcate the traditional lands of allindigenous communities in Nicaragua. The court alsoordered payment of $50,000 in compensation to theAwas Tingni Community and $30,000 for attorney feesand costs.

“With this decision, the struggle of a single indig-enous community along the Atlantic Coast of Nicara-gua has become a victory for all indigenous peoples ofthe Americas. This ruling requires every country in theAmericas to rethink the way it deals with indigenouspeoples within its borders,” said Armstrong Wiggins.

Press release of September 18, 2001 issued by the Indian LawResource Center. For further information see: www.indianlaw.org

❑

Landmark Victory for Indians in InternationalHuman Rights Case against Nicaragua


By the Indian Law Resource Center


Self-Government in Greenland

By J

ens

Da

hl



Matters of special concern are defence, security andforeign relations. In particular, the focus has been on thecontinued existence of a US military base at Thule innorthernmost Greenland. Closely associated with thepresence of the base are three issues. First of all, theforced relocation of the Inughuit people of norternmostGreenland when the base was established in the early1950s. This problem has been dealt with in several courtcases. Secondly, there was the misinformation of thepublic and of the Greenlandic authorities on the part ofDanish governments with regard to the presence ofnuclear weapons in Thule, which has given rise to muchanger in Greenland. Finally, the prospect of a possibleplacement of NMD (National Missile Defence) facilitiesby the US has created tension between the Greenlandicand the Danish governments.

These and other issues demonstrate that the HomeRule authorities must have a new role in foreign affairsif Greenland is to achieve its aspirations in economicand political matters3 . Although international relationsis a matter of national concern, the Home Rule govern-ment has been able to negotiate directly with foreignpartners on a number of occasions; but only with theprior authorisation of the Danish (national) Govern-ment. In other cases, Greenland has its own representa-tive within the Danish (national) delegation. Further-more, under cover of the Danish embassies, Greenlandhas its own representation in Brussels (EU) and inCanada. The nature of Greenland”s right of self-deter-mination and the nature of its autonomy becomes evenmore complex when one considers that Denmark has

I n late 1999, the Greenland Home Rule governmentannounced the appointment of a self-governmentcommission. The mere establishment of this com-

mission is a strong indication of Greenland”s wish to re-evaluate its relationship with Denmark in order tobecome more independent than the existing Home Rulestructure allows.

When Home Rule was introduced in 1979, few peo-ple anticipated that Greenland would, in many re-spects, develop a de facto self-governing system of gov-ernment in such a short time. However, responsibilitieswere swiftly assumed from the Danish authorities and,within a few years, Greenland had established its ownparliamentary system. This system has a functioningadministration which, in many respects, has the charac-ter of a mini-state. However, gradually, the establish-ment of this mini-state revealed the limitations of au-thority of the Greenland Parliament and government totake autonomous decisions without getting permissionfrom the Danish authorities. The existing Home Ruletype of autonomy is therefore seen by many as anobstacle to the further development of the presentsystem in accordance with their aspirations1 . ManyGreenlanders have reflected upon the desire for changesto the constitutional system. As expressed by one of themembers of the Greenland government: “The inten-tions in the Home Rule Act 20 years ago have, by andlarge, been fulfilled. It is from this understanding thatwe talk about a change or reform of Greenland”s provi-sional status [Home Rule] within the Kingdom of Den-mark ..”2

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 37Greenlanders consider whale hunting an integrated part of their culture. Photos Jens Dahl


accepted the fact that Greenland voted itself out of theEU in 1982 as an independent part of the Danish realmand also that Greenland has its own delegations inNordic cooperation. There is, indeed, a discrepancybetween Greenland”s political aspirations to enhanceits autonomy, on the one hand, and the actual toolsavailable in the Home Rule arrangement, on the other.This was the primary moving force behind the creationof the Self-Government Commission.

Some background information may aid an under-standing of the scope and the perspectives for the workof the Commission on Self-Government.

General

More than 3,000 km from Denmark, Greenland is con-sidered to be the largest island in the world. However,the whole of its interior is covered by a huge ice cap andonly the coastal zone is free of ice. The long winters andcold summers do not allow much vegetation and onlyin the southern part of the country do we find somepetty farming. Even the sea is frozen for some monthsof the year and the only practical way to enter the islandis by air. The life of the Greenlanders is oriented to-wards the sea, with industrialised fishing and huntingof sea mammals being the mainstay of the economy.

Greenland”s 56,000 inhabitants live in more than 80towns and settlements but 50% live in the three majortowns of Nuuk, Sisimiut and Ilulissat. About 12 percentof the total population are ethnic Danes while 88 percentare ethnic Greenlanders (Inuit)4 . An estimated 10-12,000Greenlanders live in Denmark, either permanently or asstudents in higher education.

History

The Danish-Norwegian missionary, Hans Egede, estab-lished the first lasting colonial settlement in Greenland in1721 and, during that century, a number of colonial settle-ments were established along the West Coast of Green-land. The Danish colonists were traders and missionariesand their number never became more than a small minor-ity. Heavy investment programmes in the fishing industryand housing during the 1950s and 1960s had the demo-graphic implication of causing the presence of Danes toreach about 20 per cent of the total population by the 1970s.Today the figure has fallen to about 12 per cent.

Greenland has a long tradition of political decolo-nisation. The first advisory councils were set up in themiddle of the 19th Century and a number of reformswere initiated that gradually increased the involvementof Greenlanders in local and regional bodies. The colo-nial authorities instigated most of these reforms but, inthe 1970s, the initiative was turned around and fromthen on the lead was in the hand of the Greenlanders.

This followed significant changes in the attitude of theGreenlanders towards the Danish presence in Green-land, and the relationship to Denmark was questionedby stressing cultural affiliation to other Inuit societies,specifically in today”s Canada. At the same time, theclose relationship to Denmark became more apparent.

Greenland achieved Home Rule within the realm ofDenmark in 1979, following four years of negotiations.Basically, Home Rule implies that all internal politicalmatters are decided upon by a Greenlandic parliamentand a government, elected by all permanent inhabit-ants irrespective of their ethnic affiliation. Greenlandis thus governed by a public government. The opera-tions of the parliament and the government are,however, restricted by a number of factors. One of themost important is the economy, where about 60 percent of all public expenditure comes from block grantsfrom Denmark and 40 per cent from locally-raisedtaxes. In practice, this implies a degree of depend-ency on the Danish government, a dependency that isconsidered by many to be a legacy of colonialism.However, more important is that all major sectors ofthe economy outside fishing and hunting proper relyupon the recruitment of personnel from Denmark.Many teachers are non-Greenlandic-speaking Danes,the administration is often dominated by Danishpeople and traditions, and most doctors, engineers,lawyers, etc. come from Denmark. For more than 20years, Greenland has tried to deal with the paradoxthat the more independent the country wants to be(taking over areas of responsibility from Danish au-thorities) the more dependent it becomes on expertsfrom Denmark and, subsequently, on Danish ways ofthinking.

Greenland is, in many respects, a modern welfaresociety based upon a European model that is withoutcultural or economic foundation in Greenlandic soci-ety. (The Greenlanders preferred a quick handoverinstead of slow development along the lines of thecolonial history. This is also an important break withearlier history). This has resulted in a number ofdilemmas that are now facing the Greenlandic politi-cians, and to which we will return when we look intotwo other matters of great significance to our under-standing of the scope of the work of the Self-Govern-ment Commission. One of these relates to areas thatwere never transferred to Home Rule authority, in-cluding defence and foreign relations. The other issubsurface resources, which are under common Dan-ish-Greenlandic decision-making; although potentiallyan explosive issue it has not developed into a conflictarea to the extent feared when Home Rule was estab-lished. Other areas that remain under Danish su-premacy seem not to have impacted upon the currentprocess to the extent that defence and foreign relationshave.



The Commission on Self-Government

The Commission was established by the GreenlandGovernment in 1999 and its members are all prominentGreenlandic politicians. The Commission”s task “is toprepare a report on the possibilities for expandingGreenland”s autonomy within the Danish Common-wealth based on the principle of conformity betweenrights and responsibilities”5 . The main responsibilitiesof the Commission are to “explore the possibilities forexpanding Greenland”s authority, role and ability toact in the foreign and security policy areas”, to “con-sider possibilities for the transfer to Greenland in wholeor part of the judicial system in Greenland”, to “considerthe need and feasibility of transferring other areas ofresponsibility to the Home Rule”, and the Commissionshall put forward proposals “for moving Greenlandfurther in the direction of economic self-sufficiency”6 .

The main focus of the Commission is exposed in theway it will reach to its conclusion. It will “considerGreenland’s role in security policy from the standpointof its geographical situation”, “consider the need andpotential for independent Greenlandic representationin international fora at which Greenlandic representa-tives currently form part of Danish government delega-tions” and “explore and assess possibilities forGreenlandic participation in assertion of sovereigntyand fisheries inspection”7.

It is important to note that the mandate given to theCommission by the Home Rule Government is that ofinvestigating Greenland”s autonomy within the DanishCommonwealth (realm). The Commission will not in-vestigate independence as an option. With regard to the150th anniversary of the Danish constitution, the chair-man of the Commission expressed his view on thisissue: “A country like Greenland, with its geographicallocation and with such a small population base, willalways be dependent on other countries. The questionshould rather be which dependency we wish to have”8 .And he continued “For my part, I believe that Green-land can preserve its greatest possible relative inde-pendence as long as the country is in a community of therealm with a small, militarily weak nation like Den-mark...”9 . Whatever independence means for a popula-tion of 56,000 persons, and although it might be thatthere is no general wish in Greenland to become inde-pendent of Denmark, this does not disguise the fact thatthe Greenlanders aim to achieve the highest possibledegree of self-determination. This is the really impor-tant point felt by all, whatever constitutional, financialor other arrangements are being negotiated by politi-cians and authorities in Greenland and Denmark.

It should not be forgotten that a vast number ofrelationships have developed that bind Denmark andGreenland together, ranging from family ties and per-sonal relationships to practical (i.e. economic, educa-tional, health and other matters) and political matters.

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 39Photo: Jens Dahl


“Even though Denmark and Greenland have two widelydiffering backgrounds, the fact cannot be avoided that the twocountries have shared a kind of destiny for more than 275years. Especially the social development in Greenland overthe last 40 years should be mentioned, where dealings betweenDenmark and Greenland have experienced a different inten-sity compared with conditions in the colonial period.”10

The Commission is expected to deliver its finalreport to the Greenland government in late 2002. Topromote its work, the Commission established fourworking groups. One group will look into foreign rela-tions and security; another group into economic andbusiness issues; one group focuses upon constitutionaland international laws; and finally human resources(labour market) is the responsibility of a separate group.Given that the educational system seems to be the mostdebated issue among the public and also that it is inwhat is often said to be a critical situation, it is surpris-ing that it is not in itself being considered by any of theworking groups. This can be seen as part of the abovementioned paradox, since the present system of self-government and the possible future political scenariosare highly dependent upon well-educated personnel.

In general, the work of the Commission as such hasperhaps not been subject to as much public debate asexpected or hoped by the commission members. Forexample, when the working group on foreign relationsand security held a public meeting in Greenland”ssecond largest town, Sisimiut, only one person showedup, even though the meeting was held in Greenlandic.However, some of the controversial issues that areindirectly linked to the public view on autonomy andself-determination are constantly being scrutinized anddissected in the media, most often under the cover ofuse of the Danish or Greenlandic language. It is maybecharacteristic that most public interest was shown whenthe Commission, at public meetings in Nuuk in Febru-ary 2001, initiated a discussion on the use of the twolanguages, Danish and Greenlandic11. At the level ofpolitical decision-making, two trends have been no-ticed. One group of people are of the opinion that HomeRule in its current form should be revised and broughtup-to-date, given the fact that no substantial changeshave been made since its establishment more than 20years ago, and another group advocate completelydiscarding the current model as outdated and discuss-ing a completely new structural arrangement.

The political reality

There is no simple answer to the question as to whetherHome Rule in Greenland has been a success or not andthere are – not surprisingly – various opinions aboutthis in the country. There seems, however, to be ageneral agreement that changes are needed due tosocial, cultural and economic developments and proc-

esses that would have taken place with or withoutHome Rule.

In the 1970s, the quest for home rule was driven by acraving for a ‘Greenland on Greenlandic conditions”, inother words terminating Danish colonial hegemony andDanish ways of thinking in Greenland. The Home RuleAgreement as negotiated between Greenland and Den-mark should be seen as a compromise between variouswishes and diverging interests between Denmark andGreenland but also internally in the two countries. Thelatter is important in order to understand the situationtoday. The major advantage of the Home Rule Agreementwas that it was endorsed by an overwhelming majority inboth countries when it was adopted by the Danish Parlia-ment and endorsed in a referendum held in Greenland.This should not be underestimated and when the HomeRule authorities acted swiftly to implement the agreementat a much quicker pace than anticipated, it was generallyendorsed in both countries. One possible conclusion isthat Home Rule has been an overwhelmingly successfulachievement, politically. The Home Rule governmenthas full responsibility for the educational system, eco-nomic policy is decided upon in Nuuk and so islanguage policy, social policy, wildlife management,cultural affairs, etc, and decisions are being taken inNuuk. Home Rule has been a political success un-matched anywhere else in the world, to the extent thatit sometimes seems as if it is drowning in its ownsuccess. The increase in political aspirations and thedevelopment of a modern welfare society have out-grown the possibilities embedded in the present politi-cal, administrative and economic system. This is im-portant background to the establishment of the Com-mission on Self-Government, and in order to under-stand its social and political setting in Greenland wemust look into some of the current issues.

Issues

Over the past two to three years, the media in Green-land (TV, newspapers, radio) have given much cover-age to two issues in particular: economic reform and theposition of the Greenlandic Inuit language.

The language question appears time and again. Itwas the cause of a ruthless debate when a member of theparliament suggested that Greenlandic should be theonly language spoken in that body. At that time, in early2000, there was only one Danish and non-Greenlandicspeaking member of the parliament (he has since left thecountry) but obviously the suggestion might have hada number of political ramifications and was not adopted.This question of the working language of the parliamenthas often merged with the much broader issue of theposition and use of Danish in all corners of the society andmany, primarily but not exclusively Danes, have takenthis as a frontal attack against the Danish minority.


However, in this as in many other cases, decisionscannot be taken without asking the Danish authorities –a point of natural irritation among Greenlanders.

The language of the administration is often Danishdue to the substantial number of people recruited inDenmark. It is often a focal point of criticism andfrustrations that a criterion for getting a job is fluency inDanish but it is never a demand of Danish personnelthat they get by in Greenlandic. It does not add to theintegration of the Danish personnel when we also con-sider the high turnover rate among this group. To thisshould be added the cultural dominance that followsthe preferential use of a certain language. To some, thishas become a symbol of Home Rule failure to terminateDanish dominance and to implement the promisedGreenlandisation.

The most heated and longstanding dispute, how-ever, concerns the integrated primary schools. The firstlanguage of instruction is Greenlandic, which is notusually mastered by Danish children, who often onlystay in Greenland for a limited number of years. Thelack of a proper language policy only adds to the feelingof being unwanted in Greenland and it makes living andworking difficult for some Danes. When administeredin an inflexible manner, of which some municipalitiesare criticised, it only adds to the high turnover rate ofDanish personnel.

The language debate reveals a number of dilemmasthat all small-numbered indigenous groups might faceduring a self-determination process. It has always beena prominent goal of Home Rule Greenland to promotethe indigenous Greenlandic language and, subsequently,way of thinking in all aspects of life. However, thiseasily collides with the need to increase the educationalstandard of all Greenlanders, a goal that can only beachieved through increased knowledge of foreign lan-guages, in this case Danish, and by allowing studentsaccess to specialised education outside Greenland. Thisdilemma becomes even more acute because there are,specifically among the group of well-educated Green-landers, a substantial number of persons that do not havea perfect grasp of Greenlandic. Although being a smallminority they are in possession of much needed skills andin a stressful situation they might feel marginalized due tolack of language abilities. Whatever the reason may be, thefact is that many Greenlanders do not return home afterhaving finished higher education in Denmark.

Another dilemma is structural as well as economic.In order to be able to govern society”s development, theHome Rule authorities took control of vast sectors in acomparatively short period. This did not leave muchtime or room for developing procedures, structures andtraditions alternative to those that had developed un-der Danish rule. The developmental level was based oneconomic transfers (block grants) from Denmark. Thiscreates not only economic but also structural depend-ency (manpower, procedures) and not least a feeling of

psychological inferiority. This situation is only exacer-bated by the need to abide by international standardsand the wish to develop local procedures instead ofrelying on Danish models.

It is important to note that changing the legal rela-tionship between Greenland and Denmark alone can-not solve such dilemmas. Changing the framework ofself-government should enhance the abilities of HomeRule to strengthen its external negotiating positions(trade, multinational agreements, setting of standards,etc) and a restructuring of Greenland”s national andinternational position is much needed and desired. Green-land is becoming increasingly dependent upon decisionstaken in international fora (such as the EU) and there isan obvious need for Greenland to be able to directlyparticipate in such settings as a negotiating partner. TheCommission on Self-Government was established inorder to improve the Greenland authorities” ability togovern their own country although dilemmas such asthose mentioned above are only indirectly the product ofsuch structural and legal arrangements.

The Commission on Self-Government will report onthe possibilities for increased Greenlandic autonomy.Based upon the political, economic and social realities oflife, the Commission is expected to draft a report that canbe used to find new political solutions, but they are notexpected to solve problems that are internal to everydaylife in Greenland. This might be one factor explaining thefairly limited interest in its work in Greenland. However,the Commission may focus upon some of the dilemmasmentioned and thus further a discussion with regard tothe interplay between political aims and means. In a way,this is not a specific Greenlandic discussion but some-thing of concern to all indigenous peoples claiming theright of self-determination.

Notes

1 The Indigenous World 1999-2000. IWGIA 2000.2 Joseph Motzfeldt in Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten no. 18, 5 May

2000 (jd-transl.).3 See The Indigenous World 1999-2000, 2000-2001.4 Statistisk Årbog: Grønland 2000 [Statistical Yearbook 2000]. Grøn-

lands Statistik [Statistics Greenland].5 From the “Terms of reference for the Commission on Self-Gov-

ernment.” www.selvstyre.dk6 Ibid.7 Ibid.8 Jacob Janussen “The Constitution 150 years: The Community of the

Realm viewed from a Greenland aspect”. 1999. www.selvstyre.dk9 Ibid.10 Ibid.11 The meetings are referred to in Atutagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten

no.12, 13 February 2001.

Jens Dahl is an anthropologist and the director of IWGIA.He has taught Inuit Studies at the University of Copenhagen,Denmark. ❑



The Still Small Voiceof Indigenous Governance

Nunavut:


By Peter Jull


The setting

Nunavut, ‘our land’ in the Inuit language, is2,000,000 sq. km. of treeless tundra, coasts andislands occupying one-fifth of all Canada’s land

area. Approximately 29,000 people, 85% of them Inuit,make up the population. Most of the non-Inuit areshort-term residents, e.g., teaching and technical staff.Caribou are important food in many areas, especiallythe south-west mainland where great herds migratefrom south to north and back annually from their winterrange. No less important is the land-fast sea ice onwhich Inuit hunt, travel and camp for much of the year,and the floe edge rich in food species. The seas ofNunavut include a large portion of Hudson Bay, to-gether with many straits, gulfs, channels, and part of thenorth-west Atlantic. The Northwest Passage createsproblems – the American navy abuses Canadian publicopinion regularly by insisting on rights of passage for itsships, notably submerged nuclear submarines.

Canada ‘discovered’ Nunavut and other far north-ern regions and their peoples in the early 1950s(Robertson 2000) but, through the Cold War, ‘two sepa-rate worlds’ existed. One was a Northern or Arcticpolicy centred on future technology (especially theextraction and transport of natural resources), econom-ics, international law, military systems and strategies,and Utopian fantasies. The other was the daily North ofinadequate housing, alcohol problems, social welfare,racial discrimination and, later, indigenous self-gov-ernment and land/sea rights movements – a North ofangry and semi-literate Inuit youths in torn T-shirts.The end of the Cold War was a spring thaw in virtuallyall aspects of Arctic life.

Other divisions and distinctions were the split be-tween ‘native’ and non-native in the Northwest Territo-ries (NWT). Whether Inuit in Nunavut, or Dene or Métisin the Western NWT (i.e., the Mackenzie Valley with itsgreat lakes and rivers), or the Inuvialuit Inuit of theArctic coasts west of Nunavut, non-whites were sec-ond-class citizens in every sense but one: they hadgeneral hunting rights that were denied to others. Ashunting peoples, this was no small item. Another splitwas world mining and hydrocarbon economics vs. sub-sistence hunting, gathering, and fishing. The furs tradedby all indigenous peoples and seal-skins hunted by Inuithave been prey to world markets, too. Under-estimateduntil recently was a third surging Northern economy:services, notably in the public sector. Finally, there wasthe division between those who wished to administer theNorth in someone or other’s best interests, and thosewho wished to practise politics to determine the North-ern future.

Nunavut since the 1960s has been a world of modernvillages, mostly of between a few hundred and 1500people, yet no villages connected by road with any-where else. They are supplied by sea in the brief weeks

Indigenous Affairs 3/01 43Sledge dogs, Clyde River, Nunavut. Photo: Sandra Inutiq

Skinning a seal, Clyde River. Photo: Sandra Inutiq


of late summer and rely on aircraft for urgent needs. Allvillages now have a small supermarket or two, and asnack bar or two. Modern suburban bungalows aresurrounded by snow most of the year, and mud or rockin summer. Houses have a busy clutter of scooters andskidoos around them but tell-tale cultural items areanimal skins stretched and drying, and the remains ofland and sea mammals. There are modern well-equippedschools and offices, and art and craft co-operatives, aswell as other co-operative work sites and governmentoffices. The ‘Mounties’, i.e., the federal police, arepresent. A substantial nursing station or small hospitalis where the real problems of the North become knownbut the nurses would be too discreet to speak, even ifthey were not working virtually 24 hours per day.

Before this recent modern Nunavut, there wereseasonal gatherings around Anglican or Catholic mis-sions, and the Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts.Housing and schooling brought permanence to a sea-sonal hunting camp society, and brought in the contem-porary world with a rush. There is a very long journeyfrom the Nunavut of the 1920s described by Rasmussen(1927) to the late 1960s of Brody (1975) and to that nowreflected weekly in Nunatsiaq News, surely the mostresponsible newspaper that any new self-governingjurisdiction could have.

Building Nunavut

The national annual Inuit Tapirisat assembly of local,regional, and organisational representatives from acrossInuit Canada, long the source and central clearinghouse of Inuit politics, approved and released a policypaper for Nunavut self-government at Igloolik in 1979.It called for an essentially familiar Canadian and North-ern territorial model with a few special features to meetInuit needs. The very small non-Inuit population inNunavut and the familiarity of Inuit with Canadianmeeting formats thanks to the co-operative movementand local councils allowed for such a conventionalmodel. This approach was also strategic. Inuit had seenhow Canadian governments and public whipped them-selves into a hostile and shameful frenzy in 1975 overthe newly named ‘Dene Nation’, formerly NWT IndianBrotherhood, and over Dene talk of ‘nationhood’, de-spite the Dene assembly’s discussion being fully re-ported in The Native Press. The whole modern indig-enous policy reform era in Canada has taken placeagainst a background of public and official anxietyabout the ‘separatism’ of ethno-cultural or regionalgroups, notably the Francophone province of Quebec,something which has made indigenous political achieve-ments all the more remarkable.

Inuit wanted to avoid unnecessary conflict. As longas their basic needs were met for Inuit-run governmentand maximum control of land and sea territory, they

could be flexible about the details. One weak indig-enous affairs minister attacked the Nunavut conceptvery publicly. However, Inuit generally presented theirdemands in a positive way and in non-threateninglanguage. They would gently tell fretful parliamentar-ians and sceptics, ‘We are trying to join Canada, notseparate.’ They were astute with national audiencesand élites in explaining themselves. Finally they wenton national television, sitting with Prime Minister andPremiers in televised multi-day national constitutionalconferences along with Indian and Métis leaders. Byturns articulate, witty, and charming, Inuit spokesper-sons like John Amagoalik (the recognised ‘father ofNunavut’), Mark R. Gordon, Rosemarie Kuptana andMary Simon made an impression. Prime MinisterTrudeau had told Inuit leaders it was unnecessary todiscuss Nunavut in such fora (because it was alreadybeing negotiated bilaterally by the Inuit and the Trudeaugovernment), but others raised it and soon Trudeauhimself was talking about it in such conferences. Pre-miers were as intrigued by positive and cooperative Inuitapproaches as they were afraid of some of the angryrhetoric of indigenous leaders closer to home. Of course,these others had much more to be angry about but, beinglesser-known, quieter, and second to national indig-enous peoples was unquestionably a political resourcefor Inuit (as for Torres Strait Islanders in Australia).

There was excitement in Canada about ‘patriation’of the Constitution in 1982, the televised committeehearings having encouraged public demands for rightsrecognition with indigenous peoples as prominent play-ers. In the early months of 1982, too, an NWT plebisciteon Nunavut was held. With a low turnout in the West-ern NWT, where Dene and Métis communities sup-ported Nunavut, and the massive 4-1 ‘yes’ vote andhigh turnout in Nunavut, Inuit won the day. The federalgovernments had not wanted to recognise the vote butsuch a clear result could not be ignored. Now thecreation of Nunavut became policy in Ottawa andYellowknife. A Nunavut Constitutional Forum (NCF)of elected leaders from both the Legislative Assemblyand the Inuit political organisations was set up. It hiredfull-time staff and was supported helpfully by the NWTgovernment, rather less so by Ottawa (who neverthe-less set up an office to keep an eye on it!). The operatingprinciples of NCF were to show responsible steward-ship of Arctic Canada; positive arguments only; osten-tatious openness in consensus-building; passionate com-mitment to Canadian unity; and modest pride in con-ducting the first truly popular (i.e., ‘of the people’)constitution-making in Canada’s European history. TheInuit and their friends showed that they were betterCanadians than most, and were showing national lead-ership in citizenship. Not only would this disarm manynon-indigenous fears but it would undermine the silentanxiety of many European-descended Canadians abouthanding over part of the country to an exotic or ‘primi-

Sunrise in Clyde River. Photo: Sandra Inutiq


tive’ people who might harbour dangerous or ‘savage’ways.

NCF and the broader Nunavut group were a mixedteam, both Inuit and non-Inuit. The Inuit were young,with at least some high school or higher education; non-Inuit were older and all had worked long with Inuitorganisations or communities. There were lawyers andother skills. Three elements were crucial to success: theteam was well-grounded in Inuit local opinion. It couldalso communicate effectively with both the Canadianpublic and government. And despite federal insistencethat Nunavut claims and Nunavut government proc-esses were separate, neither Inuit nor their white staffacknowledged such distinctions – the Nunavut teamwas one, even if dealing with two different tables.While Canadians were talking about a new constitu-tional culture, Inuit in Nunavut, then the least-educatedregional population in Canada, were using moderncommunications to devise their constitution-in-progress.There were studies and discussion documents pre-pared, leading to the most important, Building Nunavut.One was on human rights in order to reassure whites.Two dealt with fiscal mechanisms and the division ofconstitutional powers between Canadian governments.There was an elegant argument for Inuit official lan-guage rights. One small item was instructive. A pream-ble to a Nunavut constitution, despite the likelihoodthat Department of Justice lawyers would sniff at any-thing they had not devised, could be printed and dis-

tributed widely for public relations, to help focus atten-tion outside Nunavut and pride within it. The Inuk headof the Inuit language association was recruited. Sheconsulted Inuit elders, looked at preambles of varioustypes around the world, and presented a neat draftpreamble. There was uproar. Everyone around NCFseemed upset. Despite prior approval of the idea, therehad been no discussion of expectations. Everyone haddifferent ideas for a preamble’s style, purpose, andtone. The draft was set aside. On the other hand, a draft‘history’ of Nunavut red by NCF members as theirplane flew to Tuktoyaktuk in January 1983 resulted inno word of advice – although much political and diplo-matic energy of members went into deciding whichphotos should illustrate the book. Later, another messsaw a poster illustrating Nunavut history in the handsof a new printer. Eager to please, he filled in the multi-period historical scene with extra Vikings! And onlyintuition and a phone call from the airport preventedthe dreaded sea goddess, Takannaaluk, from beingportrayed as a long-haired blonde bombshell.

The critical point was tabling Building Nunavut: Aworking document with a proposal for an Arctic Constitutionin the NWT legislature on May 17, 1983. A fine 4-language printed version was taken around to all com-munities for discussion, eliciting many views. One hunterin Coral Harbour wanted a guaranteed right to hunt onebowhead whale as the price for supporting Nunavut,while another community wanted a constitutional right



to visit family in hospital. Hospital separations, likeresidential school experiences, are the most bitter ofInuit grievances with the white man’s rule. Many peo-ple in the communities wanted maximum Inuit controland protection of the marine environment and marinemammals, while the other overwhelming issue wasworry about lack of training of Inuit to run the newgovernment.

Crucial innovations

Inuit were not only negotiating land and sea claims, apolitical identity and self-government for their hugeregion but they were also negotiating national indig-enous policy, in effect, with the Government of Canada.Their persistence and frequent mulishness resulted inCanada adopting various new policies, as well as po-litico-administrative concepts and structures. There wasno adequate or relevant government policy in place, sogovernments had the uncomfortable experience of ‘learn-ing on the job’ and having many pompous assumptionschallenged and overturned. These various break-throughs now benefit all other indigenous groups whonegotiate claims and, in some cases, have much widerapplication. The master concept for an indigenous policyfor Canada contained in the report of the Royal Com-mission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) is essentially anextrapolation of the success stories of Nunavut andother Northern claims to proposals for locking an over-all constitutional framework in place.

Two critical battles won were the Inuit demand thatmarine areas be included in ‘land’ claims and fall underInuit management rights (yielded by Ottawa after afederal task force report on that and other issues in 1985)and Inuit insistence that management boards (see nextparagraph) have decision-making, and not merely advi-sory, power. The claims settlement, like other Northernagreements, provides for mostly local decision-makingand control of lands within the broader Nunavut-wideframework. The full agreement is on the Internet.

The agreement’s main feature is widely misunder-stood outside Nunavut. Although there are land selec-tions for exclusive permanent Inuit ownership – includ-ing many chosen for their mineral potential – it is thepower to manage the entire territory along with Otta-wa’s environmental experts and make the decisionswith only very narrow scope for federal cabinet inter-ference under very special circumstances that is the keyinnovation. Inuit saw that they could gain the de factopower to manage what went on in their vast territory byapparently yielding on some points in law. Unlike someother groups, Inuit have turned their backs on thelanguage of full ownership and sovereignty, and havegained the benefits of ownership and sovereign politicaljurisdiction.

Three contexts

Three background contexts were relevant. First, post-war anti-racism feeling in Canada and support forUnited Nations ideals – the sense of breaking with anold world of ultra-nationalism and racist or culturaltriumphalism. This was evident as Canadians watchedthe end of the British Empire when country after coun-try was handed over to its non-European population.This was followed by the American civil rights move-ment, and racial violence and social disparity in Ameri-can cities shocked Canadians. Canadians at home,having survived Depression and War, were humiliatedthat indigenous non-European peoples in Canada shouldlive segregated by race and poverty amid white afflu-ence. National intentions were assimilation – pumpingin funds and schools and clinics and housing to brown-skinned communities – until Northern peoples first andsouthern ones later showed that this was not the an-swer. The Alaska indigenous claims settlement of 1971,with its apparently huge compensation pay out, trans-fer of millions of acres of land, and creation of strongand funded regional corporations with governmentalpowers for Inuit, Dene, and Aleut, weakened Canadianresistance. Later, Greenland’s home rule providedmore inspiration for many.

A second less tangible context was a growing anxi-ety in Canadian society. Among Francophones this wasoften a desire to break up the Anglophone-dominatedfederation and set up a new country, together with arush to education, urbanisation and secularism fromchurch-dominated old Quebec. Among Anglophones,a breakdown of faith in post-war materialism, its dam-aging social and environmental effects, and the lack ofa clear or ‘Canadian’ alternative to failing Americanindustrial society, so long admired, demanded newanswers. The discovery of another kind of wisdom,culture, environmental know-how, humour, and inclu-sive social ethics among the abused and despised ‘na-tives’ all around us, not to mention distinctive art formsfrom Inuit carvings and graphics to Iroquois and Pacificcoast masks, made national indigenous rebirth a vicari-ous national awakening. Many people recognised thatCanada’s white-indigenous history was being relivedin the North – whites searching for saleable resources,settling, meeting opposition from tribal peoples, tryingto survive hostile climate and isolation, while establish-ing organised societies and towns. Now the whites hada chance to ‘do it right’ and negotiate fair outcomes withindigenous peoples. Canadians could re-write history,and in the early 1980s they re-wrote the Constitution toprominently include Inuit, Indians, and Métis.

Third was the national search for new hydro-electricpower (Canada’s main energy source), pulp logs, min-erals, and oil and gas across the country reaching northfrom the cities. This was confronted by new indigenousconfidence, resulting in great environmental conflict.


These conflicts were not between idealistic urban youthand their fathers in company offices but poor, oftendesperate, indigenous villagers trying to catch enoughfish and small game to live. Environmentalists joinedlater, but a wide gap opened in environmental politicsacross the mid-North and far North between indig-enous peoples and white businessmen, the latter backedby provincial and territory governments eager for ‘de-velopment’. The federal government was more com-plex – while resource industries usually won policybattles within officialdom, there was a strong ‘con-science’ faction concerned about indigenous well-beingand saving Northern Canada from the past ravages ofthe South. However hypocritical, romantic, foolish, ormisinformed they were, ordinary Canadians had alarge emotional stake in the North, its peoples and polarbears. Inuit and other Northern peoples were seen in-creasingly as ‘the good guys’.

Industry and politicians attempting to paint indig-enous peoples as trouble-makers or dreamers met agrowing public view that Inuit and other peoples stoodfor worthy things, the lost conscience of the country,brave in the face of tedious officials and greedy devel-opers. Canadians allow romanticism towards the North-ern territories which they deny the provincial northlands.Nonetheless, the Nunavut case was argued for decadesbefore it succeeded.

Implementation

From mid-1993 on, when the Nunavut land claims andnew territory laws were passed by Canada’s nationalgovernment, the details, processes and politics of im-plementing the Nunavut arrangements became a storyin themselves. Nunavut paid more attention to trainingand preparation than previous agreements. A majorreason for this concern was the experience of otherregions. In Northern Quebec, for example, Inuit hadspent many years and all their claims body’s annualincome fighting with governments to carry out obliga-tions agreed during the negotiations of the land claimsagreement.

NTI, or Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., is the novel featureof the Nunavut constitution. As the Inuit ‘birthrightcorporation’, to which all Nunavut Inuit present andfuture belong, it safeguards and manages the Nunavutclaims agreement, works with the Nunavut govern-ment to implement it, manages the huge compensationfund that was part of the settlement to generate employ-ment and economic development for Inuit, and attendsto the various Inuit-specific aspects of the claims settle-ment. This settlement went deep into political andadministrative matters normally left to governmentsalone such that Nunavut is a truly dual governmentmade up of the ‘public’ government of Nunavut open toall residents and the Inuit-only claims settlement. NTI

is the guarantor of the Inuit character of Nunavut butPremier Paul Okalik, a former claims negotiator him-self, feels no less an Inuk for running what almosteveryone regards as an Inuit government, and no lessInuk for working to reconcile the races and their crea-tive energies in the new Nunavut. Indeed, PremierOkalik’s speeches in August 2001 in Australia and hisquestion-and-answer sessions had the feel of the in-spired and expanded civility we have come to associatewith leaders like Mandela and Gusmao.

Most pressing of implementation issues was prepar-ing young Inuit to fill the jobs and take on the rolesrequired of Inuit self-government. There were two basicconcerns:

• that the severe under- and unemployment of theInuit young would be addressed, and

• that Nunavut should not become another case, likethe federal and NWT governments before it, ofwhite outsiders shaking up an already badlyshaken Inuit society.

Nunavut inherited the NWT government system, itselfa system created by the national government and laterby Inuit, Dene and Métis and white political leaderselected in the NWT to deal with indigenous communi-ties scattered across a huge and difficult terrain. Thatsystem was far advanced compared with any otherCanadian administration for indigenous peoples, andnow Nunavut Inuit have set up special bodies to studyits laws and practices in order to reform them to suitInuit culture and Nunavut needs even better. The NWTsystem, for all its good intentions, made too manycompromises with expediency, usually by copying someSouthern Canada model in order to write new laws orset up new programs quickly. Too often, NWT minis-ters wanted their programs to be accepted as equal andworthy by the governments of Southern Canada in-stead of recognising that their first priority was to suitNorthern cultures and conditions.

The NWT-Nunavut system differs in other waysfrom the usual Canadian provinces’ government. Itrelies much more on government intervention and lead-ership in economic, social, and cultural matters. WhileNWT heads of government and ministers mouth thetypical North American rugged enterprise talk, theyhave in fact run a total welfare state system with largesums of tax dollars generously provided by Canadiantaxpayers through the federal government. (With fed-eral cost-cutting, those days are now over such thatNunavut and the other Northern territories have real,urgent and deep needs which even some Right-wingSouthern premiers acknowledge.) It was not possible torely on private business to operate viably in the North,nor were indigenous peoples there familiar with theadministrative or political cultures of Canada. So pub-lic administration has always had a leading role, rather



than simply acquiring local roles incrementally as localpeople did elsewhere in Canada. Furthermore, in thepost-war era, governments had money and were pre-pared to spend it to overcome the more obvious North-ern blights of Depression-style poverty and the racialattitudes associated with defeated wartime fascism.Nothing was simple, however. Ottawa wanted Inuit tobe self-reliant, but also wanted to spend enough moneyand pay enough attention so that they would not sufferor starve like during the 1950s famines at Garry andEnnadai Lakes. Scattered hunting camps were roundedup and centralised into new villages at which typicalCanadian-style housing, social programs, citizenshiprituals and, eventually, community ice hockey weredirected. A doll’s house, indeed. It took rather longer– here, as in Greenland – for governments to see thatsuch ‘solutions’ were generating new problems on awide scale.

However, Inuit, like white officials, were convincedof the power of government, whether for good or ill.The Nunavut government has wide powers and pro-grams in virtually every area of life. Running schoolsand developing school courses, local government, smallbusiness regulation, hunting and fishing livelihoods(shared with NTI and Ottawa), health, social programs,justice and much else come under the new government.Nunavut Inuit long ago mastered the arts of meetingand deliberation, without need of the white man, and

will now face the challenges of executive power in amodern setting. The federal government has not final-ised the handover and revenue sharing of Northernlands and resources, long withheld to ensure that indig-enous claims were not pre-empted by development-minded white-controlled governments, but the princi-ples are clear enough and the timing right for thesereforms now. Nunavut now has the means and exper-tise under Inuit control to shape, with the Canadiangovernment, the big contextual issues of the future – seamanagement, resource extraction, and developmenttransport and infrastructure. The Nunavut governmentand NTI have tremendous potential in power and funds toconcert and coordinate their efforts to achieve almostanything. Alaska’s North Slope Borough and Greenland’sHome Rule government have already demonstrated thecapacity and verve of strong Inuit government.

What has been learned?

The Norwegian sailor, Leif Eriksen, concluded in AD1000 that Nunavut was ‘good for nothing’. AlthoughCanadian governments in the 20th century have tried tothink of some use, their ideas rarely went past extract-ing resources and an empty reference to ‘Canada, anArctic nation’ in speeches for foreign audiences. In thelast few decades of the millennium, however, Inuit have


that is, one must move beyond them in order to achieveserious political goals, or leave them as noisy back-ground on the street while leaders meet quietly indoorsto negotiate substance.

Nunavut was fought for on many levels at once,notably:

• international articles and lectures;• national constitutional and political reform proc-

esses (most obviously the First Ministers Confer-ences on the Constitution);

• national policy reform discussions (such as theRoyal Commission on Canada’s Future, Northernforeign policy discussions, the work of specialinquiries on, e.g., visible minorities);

• Northern constitutional reform (generally quiteseparate from the national process, althoughNunavut leaders brought both processes togetherat times);

• the work of the NWT legislature (where theNunavut caucus was the principal NWT ‘party’and used its power);

• regulatory board and environmental panel proc-esses dealing with proposed mega-projects, thisbeing the principal forum in which Inuit fought theirlong battle for land/sea rights and self-government(apart from direct high-level political negotiationson Nunavut itself);

• court cases (e.g., the Baker Lake land rights case);• the animal rights, sealing, and whaling debates in

Canada and internationally (remote indigenouslivelihood vs. urban non-indigenous sentiment);and

redefined Canada, the North, and the Arctic throughtheir political energies and renewed stewardship oftheir traditional homelands.

Inuit, like other peoples (e.g., Torres Strait Islandersand Aborigines in Australia’s north, centre, and west),view regional autonomy as both desirable in itself andnecessary for participating equally in national society.This is not separatism. Many non-indigenous Canadi-ans (and Australians) realise that their own nationhoodcannot be authentic or even legitimate without politicalaccommodation of – or reconciliation with– indigenouspeoples. This is a sign of national maturity. There is animplicit exchange. The majority European culture con-verts garrison sovereignty into domesticated and rec-ognised forms of organised society, while those recog-nised forms are based on the physical occupation, cus-tomary rights, and culture of ancient non-Europeaninhabitants. Major Nunavut advice to other indigenouspeoples may include:

• to make indigenous self-determination a ‘goodnews story’ for the general public, no less than aprivate indigenous project;

• to make the moral high ground of practical, evenhomely, concerns understandable and understand-ably fair to any outside observer;

• to have a clear and consistent storyline and presencefor informed publics, media, and élites, and

• to place priority on gaining tangible power aheadof grand appearances or distant hopes.

The corollary is that while angry assemblies and clenchedfist salutes are inevitable, they may be pre-political –

View of Iqaluit. Photo: Claudette A. Moïse

Girls with ice creams in Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Photo: Jack Hicks


• other opportunities suddenly available, such asAmerican maritime intrusions into CanadianArctic seas where Inuit could take a lead inoutraged Canadian feelings (and give governmentssome environmental substance to that outrage).

In other words, Nunavut activists were not only highlyvisible but visibly responsible for the health and futureof their Arctic region. Nunavut was a moral and politi-cal fact long before it was a practical jurisdictional one.

Now a new phase has opened. The old battles andlandmarks are gone. New and greater responsibilitieshave changed Inuit public standards and ideas aboutpersonal conduct and public accountability. Some ofthe long-time notables and activists have not survivedamong a younger generation for whom early Nunavutmovement ideals and heroes seem remote. Inuit arenow debating social issues very publicly, and solvingthings in their own way – surely the whole point ofcreating Nunavut! The Nunavut young are Canadiansin every sense and will demand the best that Canada canprovide, but Canada does not know how to ‘fix’ Nunavut– that, after all, is what the Inuit political movementfought for the right to do itself.

Reconciliation in practice

Nunavut exemplifies a form of racial and regionalreconciliation underway across Canada and in variousother countries:

1. Central political authority is rescuing deterioratinghinterland race relations and environment fromsettler bloody-mindedness to broker new politico-administrative arrangements.

2. Substantial indigenous-government co-manage-ment of environment, renewable resources, develop-ment planning, and territory being adoptedpragmatically to accommodate traditional liveli-hoods and lifestyles alongside industrial worldhunger for commodities and energy.

3. Formal recognition and support for indigenouscultural collectivities is being given in place of an‘equality’ that is usually understood as uniformity.

4. National capitals are recognising that largeterritories with few people can no longer be deemedtoo poor to justify decent public services while theirresources remain ‘too rich’ to benefit the locals.

5. The long-running failure of outsider-designedpublic services in areas like health, education,welfare, culture and community affairs is givingway to substantial indigenous operation andcontrol, producing more accepted and appropriateoutcomes.

6. Ways to compensate indigenous peoples for legaland physical dispossession are being found, e.g.,

transfer of some land and resource rights, resourcerevenue-sharing, capital funds, etc.

7. Regional agreements are being designed toaccommodate existing non-indigenous communi-ties and land ownership (although a feature littleneeded in Nunavut).

8. Hinterland settlers appealing to national majoritariantradition to maintain dominance over indigenouspeoples are being overruled and obliged to sharepower with them.

9. Government if not the general public is beingshamed into treating indigenous fellow citizens asthe political and socio-economic equals officialrhetoric says they are.

10. Governments are dithering about how to squarepublicly the obvious moral imperatives of marginalpeoples and regions with pretensions of nationalsovereign uniformity, but when they finally makeadjustments they are finding the experiencerefreshing and worth boasting about abroad.

In practice the main items are a package, not separateitems. Whether ethno-political mobilisation of contem-porary sorts begins with housing discrimination or oilspills, the other demands come quickly into play. Thepackage is finite and predictable, not whimsical, but ifmajor elements are withheld by governments the fightcontinues.

It is worth stating that indigenous self-governmentsuch as Nunavut or any number of other models con-tributes to social peace, economic benefit and regionalequity in any contemporary nation-state. This unexcep-tional realisation has been accepted by liberal, con-servative, ultra conservative, labour, and other politicalparties in government around the ‘first world’, withdebate having usually moved on to the practical detailsof implementing reform.

Nunavut – a still small voice

Nunavut is important to indigenous peoples every-where. Inuit hunter-gatherers living scattered over avast, isolated and politically undefined region havecreated a strong modern government there with all thelatest gadgets and fashions of contemporary ‘first world’countries as the means to strengthen their traditionalculture, solve recent social ills, protect the environmentand vital resources, and decide their own future in theirown language and in their own way. Despite the incre-dulity of many, including the world news media, sinceNunavut’s launch in April 1999, the reality of manyserious social problems at family and community lev-els, and the lack of a resource export or secondaryeconomy, were actually reasons for Inuit wanting toestablish their government as quickly as possible. Cana-da’s political principles of sharing financial resources


with ‘have-not’ regions and of rejecting ‘user pay’ no-tions for political rights meant that economic issueswere not a major obstacle. Nevertheless, Inuit onlysucceeded because of a generation-long determinationand patience in the face of changing governments andministers, and a few all too unchanging officials, foreverready to forget or defeat Nunavut.

Former Inuit negotiator and first Nunavut premier,Paul Okalik, visited Australia and spoke at public forain Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra during August 2001as a contribution from the Canadian government toAustralia’s Federation year celebrations. For twomonths, Australia had been whipped into a frenzy byaccusations and revelations of endemic violence againstAboriginal women so that even the usual unhelpfulindigenous policy rhetoric of the federal governmenthad been blown away by something unpredictable andwilder. Intelligent discussion and serious proposalsseemed impossible, while the media and audible publichad embarked on a shrill blaming of Aborigines for alltheir problems past and present. It was a rich demon-stration of how liberal democracy without moral lead-ership quickly descends to frightening depths. Okalik’squiet charisma surprised many Australians used todecibels as the measure of politicians, but those whoattended his talks were all the more impressed andinspired by his account of progress across a range ofdifficult social, cultural, and justice areas in the mere 28months since the Nunavut government took office. Thiswas particularly touching in Brisbane where he spoke ofhis own early problems and some bitter contacts with‘the law’ before these provided motivation to turn hislife around. He had become a lawyer and, now, asPremier and justice minister was implementing impor-tant justice reforms to reconcile Inuit and Europeansystems to avoid similar pain for others. His presenceand overall visit were truly ‘a still small voice’ amid theearthquake, wind and fire of public opinion gone mad.

The quiet hope, the negotiations between aggrievedindigenous people and reasonable governments, thelong-term commitment to achieving solutions ratherthan the mere bombastic advantages of the moment, thevision of indigenous and non-indigenous people work-ing harmoniously together now creating a new or re-newed ‘frontier’ society, the practical programs andreforms now being put in place, and practical benefitsbeginning to appear were what Australians needed tohear. They also needed to believe in the possibility ofsuch things amid the choreographed uproar of Austral-ian policy since 1996.

An earlier, longer, and somewhat different version of thispaper, exhaustively referenced, is available from IWGIA orthe author, Indigenous Autonomy in Nunavut, June 29,1998, 30 pages.

References

The best recent Nunavut source is Dahl J, Hicks J & Jull P (eds), 2000:Nunavut – Inuit regain control of their lands and their lives, InternationalWork Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen. See especially thatbook’s central chapter by Hicks and White.

For Nunavut and Inuit politics in national Canadian and historicalcontext see also Jull P, 2001: ‘”Nations with whom We are connected”:Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Political System’, Discussion Paper,School of Political Science and International Studies, University ofQueensland, Brisbane, March 31, 2001, 54 pages. (Revised and ex-panded version of paper with same title in Challenging Politics: Indig-enous Peoples’ Experiences with Political Parties and Elections, ed. KathrinWessendorf, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Co-penhagen, 2001, 192-244.)

The Nunavut government website also has news and documents,http://www.gov.nu.ca/gnmain.htm

Other materials include:

Brody H: 1975 - The People’s Land:Whites and the Eastern Arctic, Pen-guin, Harmondsworth.

Cameron K & White G: 1995 - Northern Governments in Transition:Political and Constitutional Development in the Yukon, Nunavut, andthe Western Northwest Territories, Institute for Research on PublicPolicy, Montreal.

CARC: 1984 - National and Regional Interests in the North: Third Na-tional Workshop on People, Resources, and the Environment North of60°, [ed. D Leamann], Canadian Arctic Resources Committee,Ottawa. [Includes Building Nunavut.]

Jull P: 1992 - An Aboriginal Northern Territory: Creating Canada’s Nu-navut, Discussion Paper No. 9, Australian National UniversityNorth Australia Research Unit, Darwin.

Jull P: 1999a. - ‘New Deal for Canada’s North’, North, 1/1999, Vol. 10(Stockholm), 5-10.

Jull P: 1999b. - ‘Reconciliation & Northern Territories, Canadian-Style: The Nunavut Process and Product’, Indigenous Law Bulle-tin, Vol. 4, No. 20, 4-7.

Jull P: 2000 - ‘Indigenous “Self-Government” in Canada: The Ba-thurst Mandate’, Indigenous Law Bulletin, Vol 4., No. 27, 14-18.

Purich D: 1992 - The Inuit and Their Land: The Story of Nunavut,Lorimer, Toronto.

Rasmussen K: 1927 - Across Arctic America, Putnam, New York.RCAP: 1996 - Restructuring the Relationship, Volume 2 (published in

two parts), Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peo-ples, Ottawa. [available online]

Robertson RG: 2000 - Chapters 6-9 [on Northern Canada], Memoirsof a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau, Univer-sity of Toronto Press, Toronto, 107-208.

Soublière M & Coleman G (eds): 1999 - Nunavut ’99: Changing theMap of Canada, Nortext Multimedia & Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.,Iqaluit.Online: http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/index.html

Tester FJ & Kulchyski P: 1994 - Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Reloca-tion in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63, University of British ColumbiaPress, Vancouver.

Peter Jull researches, teaches, writes, and advises on indig-enous politics in the School of Political Science & Interna-tional Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Q. 4072,Australia. He has worked for Inuit on the creation of Nunavutfor many years. ❑



A 5-year planto create a publicgovernmentin Nunavik


By Gérard Duhaime

Inuit children playing.Photo: Ludger Müller-Wille

Inuit elder recording place names,Kangirsualujjuaq, Nunavik.Photo: Ludger Müller-Wille


Aform of public government elected by the uni-versal suffrage of residents, the powers of which wouldextend over an extremely vast area and all its inhabit-

ants, indigenous or not; a government de facto run by the 90%Inuit majority in the region and endowed with far-reachinglegislative powers, in particular, exclusive powers in the areas ofInuit language and culture. Such are the key recommendations ofthe Nunavik Commission report, presented in April 2001 afteralmost one and a half years of work.

The Nunavik Commission was created in 1999 following aPolitical Accord between the governments of Canada and Quebecand the Inuit of Nunavik, represented by the Makivik Corpora-tion. Its mandate was to propose a form of government for theArctic region of Quebec province in Canada and, more specifi-cally, to “ make a comprehensive set of recommendations on thedesign, operation, and implementation of a form of governmentin Nunavik “, in particular with regard to the powers of such agovernment, the election process, the selection of leader andexecutive members, relationships with other governments, budg-ets, measures to promote and enhance Inuit culture (including theuse of Inuktitut in the Nunavik Government) and transitionalmeasures. The Commission comprised 3 members appointed bythe Quebec government, 3 appointed by the Inuit and 2 appointedby the Canadian federal government. It was chaired by two of itsco-presidents, one appointed by the Inuit representatives and theother by the Quebec representatives.

Nunavik is a huge region covering one third of the area of theCanadian province of Quebec. The population of approximately10,000 people, in the vast majority Inuit, is settled in 14 coastalvillages. The area has good potential for economic developmentas it possesses significant mineral, wildlife and hydroelectricresources.

The Nunavik Commission was not the first stage in achievingself-government in Nunavik. In fact, the Inuit of Nunavik havebeen making known their desire to regain an appropriate form ofself-government for more than 30 years. The signing of the JamesBay and Northern Quebec Agreement granted them a form ofadministrative autonomy and, in certain specific fields such aseducation, fairly widespread powers. But discussions on this

CANADA


subject never truly came to an end; the Inuit have triedto create a consensus amongst themselves with regardto the type of government they desire. The NunavikCommission’s report forms one more stage in thishistorical process, since its recommendations shouldserve as a basis for the commencement of negotiationsbetween the three parties involved.

A new distribution of the proposed powers

In its trilingual report, the Nunavik Commission out-lines a complete transformation of the political land-scape. It recommends the creation of a legislative as-sembly elected by the universal suffrage of residents,with the power to adopt laws in the areas of Inuitlanguage and culture, education, health, environment,public security, land and resources, economic develop-ment, justice etc. The creation of other institutions isalso recommended, such as a consultative council ofelders, a Nunavik court, and tripartite commissions(Canada, Quebec, Nunavik) to deal with the issues ofwildlife and the environment.

The Commission made clear recommendations withregard to the area of public finances. It proposes that theNunavik government should receive a substantial reim-bursement of the taxes and royalties collected in the regionby the Canadian and Quebec governments, and that itshould be empowered to intervene in the income tax andsales tax rates in order to be able to support its ownpolicies. It suggests that all the multiple funding agree-ments currently underway, which have unanimously beendenounced as overly complex, should be replaced by twoblock funding agreements, one with the Quebec Govern-ment and the other with the Federal Government. Theseagreements would cover all the grants to be provided toNunavik, and would include provisions for upgradingservices in order to face up to the increasing needs and toexceptional situations. All this income would be madeavailable to the Nunavik Assembly, which would have thepower to adopt its own budget.

Finally, the report proposes a timetable for imple-mentation. It suggests that the results of the negotia-tions, which are soon to commence on the basis of thereport itself, should be submitted to a referendum bythe year 2003. It then provides for a transitional periodleading to the election of the Nunavik Assembly in2005.

A difficult mandate

The Nunavik Commission’s mandate was fraught withpitfalls. Given the complexity of the issues it had totackle, the Commission was given only a relativelyshort period of time in which to do so. It has had to faceup to several pockets of resistance.

In order to accomplish its mission, the Nunavik Com-mission undertook widespread consultations. All thecommunities in Nunavik were visited, where the Com-mission held public hearings, meetings with municipalcouncils, with secondary school students and with localand regional organisations. A number of the concernsraised during these meetings touched upon relatedissues, such as Quebec’s secession or the dispute relat-ing to the coastal islands under the jurisdiction ofNunavut. The Commission considered these issues indepth before concluding that they were beyond thescope of its mandate.

It also held consultations with the organisations ofneighbouring indigenous peoples and peoples withinterests in Nunavik, such as the Cree, the Naskapi andthe Innu. In general, the neighbouring indigenous peo-ples were sympathetic to the Inuit’s desires for self-government. Nonetheless, they were hostile to the ideathat a public government should be established over thearea in question. In fact, the Cree of James Bay, theNaskapi and the Innu have an interest in this territoryas they claim parts of it as their ancestral lands.

In addition, the Commission received reports fromorganisations involved in the administration of Nunavik,and consulted the relevant Canadian and Quebec min-istries. In some instances it became aware that there wasresistance to change, resistance that could resurfaceduring possible negotiations.

Finally, the Commission’s report bears only six sig-natures out of the anticipated eight. Two commission-ers refused to endorse the report’s content. One Inuitcommissioner, who had undertaken a press campaigndenouncing the report before it had even been madepublic, considered it unfavourable to Inuit interestsbecause it failed to recognise ethnic rights. Anothercommissioner appointed by Quebec arrived at dia-metrically opposing conclusions. Nonetheless, the re-port was accepted by all three parties involved. Thepresident of the Makivik Corporation, representing theInuit, along with the ministers responsible for indig-enous issues at both the level of the Quebec and thefederal governments, recognised that the report formedan acceptable basis for negotiation.

The historical process

Opposition to the report, both internal and external, isunderstandable. It is based, however, on complex de-bates that are intertwined with the issue of the self-government of Nunavik. Opposition to a public form ofgovernment, rather than the ethnically-based form ofgovernment the Inuit would otherwise have had theoption of, is fuelled by the territorial claims of theindigenous peoples of Canada. Amerindian groups aredemanding self-government within their ancestral lands.In other words, they are seeking to obtain political


control on the part of their members over the so-called« Crown » lands. In line with the mandate it was given,the Nunavik Commission recommends giving self-gov-ernment over the whole continental territory to thenorth of the 55th parallel of latitude to an eventual publicgovernment. But the demands of neighbouring indig-enous groups focus, at least partially, on the same lands.This situation fuels their dissatisfaction, all the more soas this type of government would be elected by thesuffrage of the residents, which clearly excludes indig-enous people living outside the territory, despite thefact that they claim some of it as their ancestral lands.Besides, the plan for Nunavik would scarcely be appli-cable to the situation of other indigenous groups. A non-ethnic public government, as controversial a pattern ofarrangements for Nunavik as it was for Nunavut, doesnot correspond to what other indigenous groups aredemanding: they are, first and foremost, seeking politi-cal autonomy for the members of their nation. Thisdifference in outlook has, moreover, been made quiteclear by opponents to the Nunavik project.

The refusal of one of the commissioner’s to ratify thereport was based partially on a reticence with regard tothis very type of government: this commissioner wouldhave preferred the Nunavik government to be a form ofethnic government, the control of which would havebeen guaranteed by law, rather than by the weight of theInuit’s demographic majority, as expressed throughdemocratic institutions.

This toing and froing between public or ethnic formsof government is not new in Nunavik, as it has beendiscussed for as long as the question of self-governmentitself. The Inuit representatives have been in favour of a

public form of government ever since the signing of theJames Bay Agreement in 1975 and they have since thenrepeated this preference on several occasions, includingat the signing of the Political Accord that created theNunavik Commission. Their decision is equally under-standable: whilst a public government effectively con-trolled by the Inuit majority will have jurisdiction overthe whole 500,000 square kilometre territory in question,an ethnic government would have had to content itselfwith extensive powers but over a far smaller area, an areaof only a few thousand square kilometres, in fact, and oflimited potential for development. Nevertheless, theopposition expresses a current of thought that does existwithin Inuit society, and which would be sympathetic tothe Amerindian perspective.

The Report of the Nunavik Commission is available throughthe website of the Makivik Corporation at www.makivik.org,or through the website of the Quebec Government atwww.mce.gouv.qc.ca. The illustrations in this article arefrom the report.

Gérard Duhaime is a sociologist and professor at LavalUniversity (Quebec, Canada) where he holds the Louis-Edmond-Hamelin Chair. He is in charge of multidisciplinaryresearch into development in indigenous regions and, inparticular, in the Circumpolar Arctic. The author of manyworks and articles, he has recently edited Le Nord. Habitantset mutations, an historical atlas written by some ten authorsfocussing on the changes experienced over the centuries by theInuit, the Cree, the Naskapi and the Innu, along with theinhabitants of the north coast of Saint Lawrence. ❑


IndigenousPeoples’Self-Determinationin NortheastIndia


By Christian Erni


India often calls itself the largest democracy in theworld. Certainly, with a population of just over onebillion people, India ranks right after China as the

second most populous country in the world. And sinceChina is neither generally considered, nor claims to be,a democracy while India, according to its Constitution,is a “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic”,this claim is legitimate. At least, there is no doubt thatthe founding fathers of independent India wanted tobuild the foundations of the new Nation on the principleof parliamentary democracy. However, and India doesnot stand alone in this, there is often a yawning gapbetween the noble principles of democracy and thepolitical reality. The contradiction between its commit-ment to democracy and the actual practice of govern-ance, the gap between existing legal provisions and theirimplementation, along with the central government’sunwillingness to devolve power, are probably nowheremore evident than in the way it deals with its indigenouspeoples. This is particularly pronounced with respect tothe demand for self-determination of the indigenouspeoples in India’s north-eastern region; in this regard,legislation is in place that, at first glance, appears to beamongst the most progressive in the world.

Reluctant federalism

Indian society is of a bewildering complexity and het-erogeneity. The heritage of thousands of years of move-ments of people, goods and ideas in and out of theSubcontinent is reflected in the presence of hundreds oflanguages and distinct cultures. To integrate such aculturally heterogeneous population of one billion peo-

ple undoubtedly poses a formidable challenge to theState. India’s way of tackling this is through a federalsystem of government. At present, it consists of 28states (three new states were created in 2000), six UnionTerritories and the National Capital Territory of Delhi.In spite of initial resistance from the centre, and againstthe recommendation of a commission set up to dealwith the issue shortly after independence, strong de-mands from several regions led to the reorganisation ofmany states along linguistic lines in the ensuing years.The result was the creation of “nation-provinces”1 ,“where particular nationalities - speakers of particularlanguages with established literatures and histories -constituted majorities capable of defining the publicidentity of the states”.2 This, as some authors argue, hasdecisively contributed to the preservation of nationalunity rather than to its disintegration, as many feared3 .However, as Baruah writes, “...India’s commitment tofederalism has also been rather tame. Indeed, India’sConstitution-makers even shied away from actuallydescribing the polity as federal and settled for a phrasethey found safer: the Union of India.”4 Compared toother federal republics, the central government of Indiaretains extensive power over the union states, and evenmore over the union territories. This is reflected in thevery fact that the Indian Constitution bestows on thenational parliament the power to form new states, tochange their boundaries or their names. Furthermore,the centre has the right (and regularly makes use of it,as could be seen recently in the case of Manipur) todismiss elected state governments “in certain situationsof instability”5 . It retains ownership of sub-surfaceresources, and controls almost all financial resources.Baruah further argues:

Modern urban center in the Northeast: Imphal, the capital of Manipur statePhoto: IWGIA Archive


In the area of control over fiscal resources, Indian feder-alism is probably at its weakest. If the concern for Indianunity made India’s constitution makers reluctant feder-alists, their enthusiasm for national development turnedthem into central planners keen on grabbing as muchcontrol over resources and powers of economic manage-ment as possible.6

India’s indigenous peoples

The government of India adamantly rejects the dis-criminative use of the term “indigenous” for any of thepeople living within its boundary. It is argued that thecomplex and age-old history of migration and exchangeand mixing of cultural and physical traits makes itimpossible to distinguish any group as “indigenous” inrelation to other groups; therefore everyone in India hasto be considered indigenous7 .

What indigenous activists in India, their local andoutside supporters, some Indian and foreign academicsas well as overseas development agencies like the WorldBank refer to when they speak of indigenous peoples inIndia roughly corresponds to what, in official parlance,are called “Scheduled Tribes”8 . Contrary to the govern-ment’s position, the so-called “Scheduled Tribes” pos-sess many characteristics which, according to interna-tionally accepted definitions (such as ILO Convention169, the Martínez-Cobo report or World Bank Opera-tional Directive, No. 4.20) sufficiently qualify them to becalled “indigenous peoples”. More important, and stillnot recognized by the Indian state, is what Karlsson hasstressed in a recent article: that “the concept ‘indig-enous peoples’ is clearly a political fact in India today.Tribal communities increasingly identify and mobilizeas indigenous peoples (or as adivasis) to claim rightsover land and resources. The global discourse onindigenousness apparently resonates with or capturescentral features of tribal predicaments and aspira-tions”9 .

According to the 1991 census, 8.08% of the totalpopulation, which today corresponds to more than 80million people, were classified as members of Sched-uled Tribes. The census lists 461 groups recognised astribes10 , while estimates of the number of tribes living inIndia are as high as 63511 . The population of the largestindigenous peoples, like the Gonds, Santals, Oraon,Bhils or Nagas, lie in the millions while others, like theOnge or the Great Andamanese are on the brink ofextinction. Only in the states and Union Territories ofHaryana, Punjab, Delhi and Pondichery have no Sched-uled Tribes been officially registered. And the percent-age of tribal people in the other states varies consider-ably. While in the north-eastern state of Mizoram, forexample, indigenous peoples form a strong majority ofalmost 95%, they account for only 0.21% in Uttar Pradeshand 0.03% in Goa.

Photos

1.- Treehouse in Jhum field built on tree because of elephants.Photo: Anup Samuel John Ingty

2.- Garo women at the Wangala festival. Garo Hills, Meghalaya.Photo: Anup Samuel John Ingty

3.- Garo village in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya.Photo: Anup Samuel John Ingty

4.- Rally of Naga students in support of the extension of the ceasefire coverage area. Photo: IWGIA Archive

5.- Militarization: Army in KohimaPhoto: IWGIA Archive

6.- The fertile plains of the Brahmaputra valley have attracted alarge number of migrants from Bangladesh and mainlandIndia. Photo: IWGIA Archive

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2 3

4 5

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The majority of indigenous people live in an almostcontiguous belt stretching from Gujarat in the West tothe seven states in the Northeast, with the highestconcentration in the central region, where more than50% of them live. The highest ethnic diversity amongthe indigenous population is in the north-eastern re-gion, where 220 distinct groups have been identified.They comprise approximately 12% of the total indig-enous population of India.

The Constitution of India provides for several spe-cific measures for the protection and promotion of thesocial and economic interests of the Scheduled Tribes.They include, among others, provisions for the reserva-tion of seats in legislature, educational institutions,services and posts, provisions for autonomy, and fordevelopment programs particularly targeting Sched-uled Tribes. Compared to other countries, especially inAsia, these legal safeguards are very progressive in-deed. However, as will be demonstrated below withrespect to Northeast India, due to inherent weaknessesand a lack of political will for proper implementation,they are unable to protect the rights of indigenouspeoples and to accommodate their demands for self-determination. Violent confrontations between indig-enous movements for autonomy and the state securityforces are still the order of the day in Northeast India.Ever since Independence, this has been one of India’smost troubled regions.

A troubled land

Northeast India is often considered the place whereSouth, Southeast and East Asian cultures meet. In spiteof considerable cultural influences, the indigenous peo-ples of the region had, until the onset of British colonialrule, by and large successfully resisted attempts atintegration into any of the dominant South Asian poli-ties, notably the Moghul empire. Today, physical fea-tures, linguistic affiliation, culture, and religion (nowa-days, in many cases, the prevalence of Christianity) setthem clearly apart from the mainland majority Hinduand Muslim population and the migrants who havesettled in large numbers in the region’s fertile plains.Many indigenous peoples have become divided asboundaries were drawn across their traditional home-lands when the British colonizers left, and post-colonialIndia, East Pakistan (later to become Bangladesh) andBurma were created. While modern India came to be amultinational state, some of the indigenous peoples ofNortheast India who have developed a distinct nationalidentity, like the Nagas and the Zo (Mizos/Zomis), atthe same time became nations12 divided by state bounda-ries, similar to the Mayas or the Kurds13 .

When the British expanded their control into thehills beyond the Brahmaputra Valley during the courseof the 19th century, they came to realize that they had to

deal with peoples that differed markedly from thoseliving on the plains and who were more strongly influ-enced by mainland Indian culture. Although they wereaware of the complex relationships between the ancientlowland kingdoms and the indigenous hill peoples, andat times made use of them to further their own interests,they soon took up a policy of segregating the hill andplains peoples14 . The regulations they introduced wentfar beyond merely putting the hill tracts of the provinceof Assam under a different administrative system. TheInner Line Regulation, passed in 1873, established avirtual boundary along the foothills and provided that,“any British subject or other person so prohibited whogoes beyond ‘the Inner Line’ … without a pass shall beliable, on conviction before the Magistrate, to a fine…”15 .Trade and possession of land by outsiders within theexcluded areas were severely restricted16 . Furthermore,the British had a policy of minimal interference in thehill areas beyond the Inner Line and, by the end ofBritish rule on the Sub-continent, large areas - all oftoday’s Arunachal Pradesh and part of present-dayNagaland state - were in fact still unadministered17 .

In both Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935,the tribal areas were again given separate status. Onrecommendation of the so-called Simon Commission of1930, tribal areas were classified as Excluded Areas andPartially Excluded Areas18 . Excluded Areas consisted ofthose exclusively inhabited by tribal people, while Par-tially Excluded Areas were those where tribal communi-ties lived together with non-tribal communities but werein large numbers and considered “undeveloped”19 . Bothareas were excluded from the competence of the provin-cial and federal legislature. The difference between thetwo was that while in the latter case the elected provincialgovernments had limited administrative jurisdiction,the excluded areas where administered solely by theprovincial governors appointed by the British20 .

In the process of handing over of power on the eveof independence, the Constituent Assembly set up acommittee with the task to make recommendations forthe administrative development of the tribal areas ofIndia. A sub-committee, known after its Chairman asthe Bardoloi Committee, was formed to take care of the“North-Eastern Frontier (Assam) Tribal and ExcludedAreas”21 . While visiting these areas, the Committeenoticed that “unlike other parts of India where tribalshad assimilated to a great extent the life and culture ofplainsman, the process of assimilation was minimal inthe interior of the Assam hills, particularly in the Nagaand Lushai hills; that the tribesmen in the north-eastwere very sensitive about their land, forests, systems ofjudiciary and that they should be left free from any fearof exploitation or domination by the advanced sectionof the people”22 . Like with the Simon Commissionbefore, indigenous leaders from all over the region hadsubmitted memoranda and petitions to the BardoloiCommittee in which they expressed their desire for


autonomy or, as in the case of the Nagas, independence.They also demanded the redrawing of boundaries and,since they were worried about the migration of theplains peoples into their territories, they demanded thecontinuation of the Inner Line Regulation of the British.Based on their impressions and discussions with theleaders, the Committee recommended that Autono-mous Districts and Regional Councils be established toprovide for the protection of land rights, the preserva-tion of language and culture and a certain degree of self-rule for the tribal people of the Northeast23 . The recom-mendations were almost entirely accepted by the Con-stitutional Assembly and were included as the SixthSchedule in the Constitution. In essence, the provisionsof the Sixth Schedule are a continuation of the Britishpolicy towards the indigenous peoples in Assam.

However, many indigenous peoples were not satis-fied with the degree of autonomy granted under theSixth Schedule. The Nagas immediately refused theinclusion of parts of their territory under the SixthSchedule and insisted on remaining independent. TheIndian state responded with heavy police repressionand the Nagas, after negotiations had failed, with armedresistance. In 1963, a separate state was carved out ofAssam, called Nagaland. Consisting only of parts of theNaga territory and against the explicit stand of theNagas for unification of their lands, it became obviousthat the creation of Nagaland was less intended toaccommodate the Nagas’ stand for self-determinationthan to serve as a tool in the divide-and-rule tacticsupplementing the heavy-handed carrot-and-stickpolicy by which the Indian government hoped to doaway with the Nagas’ armed resistance movement.

In 1966, the Mizo National Front began their armedstruggle for independence in the Lushai Hill District thatwas created under the Sixth Schedule. In response, thedistrict was turned into a Union Territory and, after signingof a peace agreement in 1986, into a state called Mizoram.

The degree of autonomy gained under the SixthSchedule did not satisfy the indigenous peoples of theGaro Hills or the United Khasi and Jaintiya Hills either.The campaign of the All Party Hill Leaders Conference(APHLC) for a separate state achieved its goal relativelyeasily and, above all, without bloodshed. In 1970, thenew state of Meghalaya was inaugurated.

Finally, the separation of the North East FrontierAgency from Assam came about because of strategicconsiderations on the part of the central government,following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949 and theborder conflict with China in 1962. It was renamedArunachal Pradesh when it became a Union Territory in1972, and was turned into a state in 1987.

Together with the kingdoms of Tripura and Manipurwhich, partly due to pressure from India24 , agreed tojoin the Union at independence, these four newly-created states and what remained of Assam make upIndia’s north-eastern region.

However, the solutions devised by the Indian state inmany cases fall considerably short of satisfying theindigenous peoples’ demand for self-determination andcontrol over land and resources. At present, severalarmed resistance movements are fighting against theIndian State in the Northeast. The disagreement of theseresistance movements with the arrangements made bythe Indian government is in some cases fundamental, asin the case of the Nagas who have stood for independ-ence ever since. For others, the degree of autonomygranted is not far-reaching enough. Often, it is the lackof proper implementation of existing provisions andagreements reached - like those with the Bodos, Karbis,or Dimasas - that causes profound dissatisfaction. TheBodos in Assam, for instance, demand a separate state,the Karbis more autonomy than that which is grantedunder the Sixth Schedule, a state within the state ofAssam. Another critical issue, that of immigrant set-tlers, is still awaiting a solution. Meghalaya state has alarge number of settlers, above all Bengalis and Nepalis,who control the state’s economy. In Tripura, the indig-enous peoples (who call themselves Borok) are strug-gling to regain control over what is left of their home-land after having been reduced to less than one third ofthe state’s population through the massive immigrationof Bengali settlers over the past fifty years. They nowdemand the creation of a separate state on the land stillunder their control.

In sum, although autonomy arrangements in North-east India include the establishment of non-territorialApex councils, union territories or autonomous stateswithin states25 , the Indian government has in most casesrelied on two political-administrative solutions in itsattempts to accommodate indigenous peoples’ demandsfor self-determination: the creation of AutonomousDistrict (and Regional) Councils provided for by theSixth Schedule of the Constitution, and the formation ofseparate states. These will be briefly discussed below.

The Sixth Schedule

The Sixth Schedule has currently been applied to KarbiAnglong and North Cachar districts in Assam; theKhasi Hills, Jaintia Hills and Garo Hills districts inMeghalaya; the Chakma, Lai and Mara districts inMizoram (for the respective minorities in the otherwiseMizo-dominated state); and the Tripura tribal areas inTripura state. It does not apply to Manipur state, forwhich a separate Act, the Manipur (Hill Areas) DistrictAct, was passed in 1971. Its provisions are, however,similar to those of the Sixth Schedule. In most Autono-mous Districts, there are other tribal peoples presentthan those in whose name they have been established.And in many, non-tribals live in significant numbers. InKarbi-Anglong, for example, the census of 1991 showedthat 47% were non-tribal people26 .



Each district covered by the Sixth Schedule has an Autono-mous District Council (ADC) consisting of not more than 30members. At least 26 are elected by adults living within itsjurisdiction, up to four are nominated by the Governor.These four members appointed by the Governor are ex-pected to be members of minorities who fail to be representedthrough elections27 . The council members hold office for aperiod of 5 years28 . If there are different Scheduled Tribes inan autonomous district, the Governor may, by public notifi-cation, divide the area or areas into so-called AutonomousRegions with their own councils.

Both the District and Regional Councils have legislative,executive and judicial powers. The Councils are empoweredto make laws in the areas of:

1. allotment, occupation and use of land other thanreserved forest;

2. management of non-reserved forests;3. use of canals or other water courses for agricultural

purposes;4. regulation of shifting cultivation;5. village or town administration, including village or

town police, public health and sanitation;6. establishment and definition of powers of village or

town committees or councils;7. appointment or succession of chiefs;8. inheritance of property;9. marriage and divorce;10. social customs29 .

Furthermore, the Councils have the right to:

1. regulate and control money lending and trading by non-officials;

2. constitute courts for the trial of certain cases and suitswhere both the parties are Scheduled Tribes subject to thepowers and procedures of the Code of Civil Procedure1908, and the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898;

3. establish and manage primary schools, and to determinethe language used and the way primary education isconducted;

4. establish and manage dispensaries, markets, cattleponds;

5. maintain roads, water-ways etc.30 .

Both Councils have the right to collect land revenues andcertain other taxes and fees within their respective jurisdic-tion. They are furthermore entitled to a share of the centralgovernment and state revenues for carrying out services.This means that they are heavily dependent on state andcentral government subsidies.

The Sixth Schedule has been hailed by the Indian State,policy makers and experts, as a most progressive provisiongranting far-reaching autonomy to India’s indigenous peo-ples. A closer look, however, reveals that it possesses severalin-built limitations. First of all, the laws and regulations, aswell as decisions on taxes and fees made by the Councils,


Meitei women at the market in Imphal, Manipur.Photo: IWGIA Archive


have to be submitted to the Governor for approval. Untilrecently, the Deputy Commissioners of the concerned dis-trict undertook preliminary processing of legislation31 . Theyalso co-ordinate most development programmes in theirrespective district. They thus hold considerable power overthe Autonomous District Councils32 . The fact that legislationenacted by the District Councils requires the consent of theGovernor means that the state government severely con-strains the exercise of autonomy.

In the case of the Autonomous District Councils of thepredominantly indigenous states of Meghalaya and Mizoram,the so-called law of repugnance (paras 12 A and 12 B of theSixth Schedule) provides that any law enacted by the statelegislature prevails over those legislated by the AutonomousDistrict Councils33 . As Burman writes: “Thus an almost com-plete subversion of autonomy provision in respect to lawmaking powers of the Councils in Meghalaya and Mizoramhas been implanted in the Schedule, through amendment ofthe Schedule… Besides, insertion of paras 12 A and 12 B in theSixth Schedule makes the concerned Councils vulnerable tothe aspersion of being political toys of the States, even thoughthe concerned states may be predominantly tribal states.”34 InMeghalaya State, which is entirely covered by the Sixth Sched-ule, para 12 A makes the Sixth Schedule de-facto inoperative35 .

State governments can also dismiss the AutonomousDistrict and Regional Councils. The Karbi Autonomous Dis-trict Council was dissolved on four occasions during the1990s. Allegedly, the Karbi District Council has not beenallowed to discuss any subject without the prior permissionof the District Magistrate and in all matters of appointmentand expenditure, the Governor has the ultimate decision-making power. It has been reported that the AutonomousDistrict Councils in Mizoram have had similar experiences36 .

Furthermore, Article 31 [A] of the Constitution gives theIndian government the power to acquire any land, whetheroccupied or not37 . All reserved forests are also exempt fromthe jurisdiction of the Councils.

Lastly, the autonomy and performance of the Autono-mous District Councils is further constricted by their finan-cial dependence on the state government. Many Autono-mous District Councils complain that they have not receivedwhat the states owe them, and with the subsidies withheldthey are virtually paralysed. As a result, in many states,resource allocation has become a major bone of contentionbetween the Autonomous District Councils and the stategovernments. On the other hand, internal factors have re-portedly contributed to the malfunctioning of the Autono-mous District Councils. They have apparently not used theirtaxation powers properly and relied too much on govern-ment grants38 ; misuse of funds, and corrupt and bad leader-ship have also severely weakened the Councils.

In sum, the autonomy granted under the Sixth Scheduleis very limited indeed, with the central and state govern-ments retaining almost full control over them. As Burmansummarizes, the provisions in the Sixth Schedule suggestthat the Autonomous District Councils “are not subsidiary


Tangkhul Naga women. Photo: IWGIA Archive


organs of the State, but supplementary institutions rootedin Communitarian self regulatory norms. But on a closerlook, this is found to veer towards an illusion”39 .

The states, the centre andthe question of democracy

In four of the seven states of the Northeast, Nagaland,Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, indig-enous peoples form the majority population. As shownabove, the former three were explicitly created to ac-commodate the indigenous peoples’ demand for self-determination. These states enjoy the same status andpowers as other states of the Indian Union, which alsomeans that they have no greater autonomy. Only forNagaland have special provisions been included in theConstitution. Article 371 of the Constitution states:

Notwithstanding anything in this constitution (a) noAct of Parliament in respect of (i) religious or socialpractices of the Nagas (ii) Naga customary law andprocedures (iii) administration of civil and criminaljustice involving decisions according to Naga customarylaw (iv) ownership and transfer of land and its resources,shall apply to the State of Nagaland unless the LegislativeAssembly of Nagaland by a resolution so decides.40

The somewhat wider degree of autonomy as comparedto other states is, however, offset by the subsequentparagraph, which reads:

(b) The Governor of Nagaland shall have special respon-sibility with respect to law and order in the State ofNagaland for so long as in his opinion internal distur-bances occurring in the Naga Hills – Tuensang Area [thetwo administrative units which were made into Naga-land State, c.e.] immediately before the formation of theState continue therein or in any part thereof and in thedischarge of his functions in relation thereto the Gover-nor shall, after consulting the Council of Ministers,exercise his individual judgement as to the action tobe taken.41 (emphasis added)

In fact, in all north-eastern states, the relationship be-tween central government and the states is inseparablefrom the ongoing conflicts and counterinsurgency op-erations. India has treated the indigenous peoples’ de-mands for greater autonomy, civil and democratic rightslargely as a “law and order” problem. Both the centraland state governments have resorted to extensivemilitarization and repressive legislation such as theArmed Forces (Special Powers) Act at national level, orthe Tripura Security Act, the Nagaland Security Act,and the Meghalaya Preventive Detention Act at statelevel to deal with the matter. Human rights violationson the part of security forces are rampant.

In its “carrot-and-stick” approach, the central gov-ernment is at the same time trying to “buy peace” 42 “bypouring in money and hoping this will over time breakthe back of insurgency by creating a class of personshaving a vested interest in peace and ‘development’”43 .However, the result seems to be rather the opposite:

Nagaland and Manipur ... have the highest per capitadevelopment expenditure allocated to them… With suchoutlays and little to show by way of development, it is clearthat more of the funds have been going into the pockets ofpoliticians and administrative leadership of these States.In fact it will not be an exaggeration to say the severalpolitical leaders of Manipur and Nagaland have a vestedinterest in perpetuating ethnic strife in this region.44

The main beneficiaries of the central government devel-opment programs appear to be contractors and licenseholders from outside the region who work in collusionwith local politicians. As a result, the governments ofnorth-eastern states like Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalayaor Assam are said to be increasingly corrupt45 . Thereported lack of financial accountability on the part ofstate governments has been directly related to the cen-tralized fiscal system in India. What has been identifiedas a major problem in Autonomous District Councilsappears to apply as much to states, who have beenreluctant to raise financial resources on their own, and“have looked at the central government as a cash cowthat can be milked in order to bring the state’s incomein line with its expenditures”46 .

One of the core sources of indigenous peoples’ dis-content and the reason for militancy, especially in As-sam and Tripura, is the unabated influx of migrantsfrom mainland India and, above all, from Bangladesh.For Assam, it is feared that if this continues at thepresent rate it is only a question of time before theAssamese will become a minority in their own state –which is exactly what has already happened in Tripura.Ultimately, it is the central government’s unwillingnessto act while withholding the right from state govern-ments to devise their own immigration policy that isresponsible for the crisis. As Baruah correctly con-cludes: “if particular territories in a federation aredefined as autonomous political entities, and the peopleliving in them are assumed to have the power to deter-mine their own affairs, ‘such communities must beexclusionary or else they cease to be communities’...Autonomy of a community cannot be meaningfulunless it includes some notion of closure.”47

India’s half-hearted commitment to true federalismhas its roots in an omnipresent fear of disintegration. Inthe Northeast, it is apparently ready to sacrifice democ-racy in the ill-fated attempts to retain control by au-thoritarian means. In a recent paper, Sanjib Baruahwrites:


In the insurgency-hardened Northeast, democratic Indiahas developed a de facto political system, somewhatautonomous of the formal democratically-elected govern-mental structure. This parallel system is an intricate,multi-tiered reticulate, with crucial decision-making,facilitating and operational nodes that span the regionand connects New Delhi with the theatre of action.

The apex decision-making node is the Home Ministry inDelhi ... The operational node which implements thedecisions consists of the Indian Army, and other mili-tary, police and intelligence units controlled by thecentral and state governments, and involves complexcoordination. This apparatus also involves the limitedparticipation of the political functionaries of insurgency-affected states ... Since the insurgencies have some pop-ular sympathy - albeit not stable and stubborn - theperception that the operations have the tacit support ofelected state governments is useful for their legitimacy.48

The centrally-appointed Governors, who are vestedwith considerable power, are what he calls the “crucialnodes in the counter-insurgency network”.49 As Baruahshows, all the governors presently in office in the sevenstates in the Northeast “have either occupied high andsensitive positions in India’s security establishment orhave had close ties to it”, and he concludes that this“cannot be mere coincidence.”50

In response to the rise of the Naga independencemovement, the Indian Parliament very early on, in 1958,passed an Act that has been criticized as breaking withall democratic norms. The notorious Armed ForcesSpecial Powers Act empowers the central governmentto declare any area as “disturbed” and to apply the Acteven against the will of the state. It gives the armedforces, among others, the right to shoot to kill if deemednecessary “in order to maintain the public order”, toenter, search and arrest without warrant anyone who issuspected of having “committed or is about to commita cognizable offence” 51 . The Act gives the armed forcesalmost complete immunity. “It establishes that no pros-ecution, suit or other legal proceeding can be broughtagainst any personnel acting under the Act withoutcentral government’s permission.”52

The de-facto military rule of the Northeast has,however, achieved nothing. On the contrary, armedresistance groups are more active than ever, now oper-ating in five of the seven states. High ranking officers ofthe Indian army themselves have expressed that otherways have to be sought to solve the conflicts in North-east India. In 1995, the present Governor of Tripura,retired General K.M. Seth, issued a statement on theIndo-Naga conflict that was widely discussed in theIndian media and has allegedly contributed to thedecision of the NSCN leaders to enter into negotiationswith the Indian government. At that time, General Sethhad been made Commander of the 3rd Core Command

based in Rangabhar. In response to a question raised ata press conference, he said that the role of the army wasto control violence not to crush the Naga movement,since he considered this a political issue that needed apolitical solution.The Indian government would be well advised, pre-cisely for the sake of national stability, for the securityof all people living within its boundaries, and not leastfor the restoration of democracy in the Northeast, tofollow this recommendation and change its approach.This would, first of all, imply recognizing the demandsof the indigenous peoples as legitimate, and then forg-ing an agreement that grants genuine self-determina-tion. In fact, rather than a threat to democracy, India’sindigenous movements can and should be seen as con-tributing towards its strengthening. Dasgupta believesthat there is no connection between ethnicity in North-east India and the endangerment of Indian democracy.On the contrary, the “successful processing of ethnicdemands can encourage demands from those who werenot able to speak out before”, and thereby draw newand previously excluded segments of society into thewider democratic process 53 .

Notes

1 Baruah 1999: 982 Ibid.3 Schwartzberg, in Baruah 1999: 97f4 Baruah 1999: 2005 Baruah 2001: 36 Baruah 1999: 2067 Bhengra et.al. 1998: 48 Some peoples that would, according to the government’s own

criteria, qualify for the status of “Scheduled Tribes” are stillexcluded from this category. The identification of ScheduledTribes is a highly politicised issue.

9 Karlsson 2001: 3010 India’s indigenous peoples do not have a problem with the term

“tribe” and often use it themselves when speaking or writing inEnglish. The indigenous peoples on the mainland, but less sothose in the Northeast, are often referred to as Adivasi, meaning“original people”.

11 Bhengra et.al. 1998: 512 Unlike its popular understanding and its use in many documents

of international law, which sees “nations” and “peoples” asidentical with “states”-undoubtedly the legacy of the emergenceof the nation-state as the dominant form of political organisationin the modern world-many social scientists consider it a rather“elusive” concept (Keating 1999: 166) and define it less rigidly.Keating suggests that it is “best seen as a set of claims” (ibid.:167), consisting of: 1. a reference group, to which the nationalityclaim is attached; 2. the claim to self-determination, “which mayor may not mean the right to establish their own state”; 3. aterritorial definition, “since nationalisms are essentially claimsabout the control of territory, and this is a factor that distin-guishes them from ethnic or cultural claims”; 4. the claim “thatthe reference group constitutes or aspires to be a global society,that is a complete society, containing within itself the full rangeof social institutions and mechanisms for social regulation, asopposed to a mere fragment of larger society, making specificclaims for cultural recognition, or for special policy measures”.(ibid.)



13 Galtung 199914 Baruah 1999: 29; 30ff15 In Kumar 1996: 8416 Baruah 1999: 2917 There are diverging views on the motives behind the Inner Line

Regulation. Officially, it was in recognition of the fundamentaldifferences between these peoples and in order to protect the“hill tribes” from exploitation by the plains people that the Brit-ish colonizers took up a policy of exclusion. According to Baruah(1999: 29) it, “originally came about as a response to the recklessexpansion of British entrepreneurs into new lands which threat-ened British political relations with the hill tribes.” Kumar me-rely states that the true aim was “to isolate the people of the Hillsand to prevent interaction between hills and plains” (1996: 9; inwhat way this would have served their interest is, however, notmade clear). And Barpujari is of the opinion: “A perusal of thearchival material will reveal that the Regulations did not aim atsegregating the people of the hills from those of the plains, but to‘check the overzealous military officer’s advance to dangerousand exposed positions’ which had been the source of complica-tions with the frontier tribes” (1998: 5).

18 The Excluded Areas comprised: the Naga Hills, Lushai Hills,North Cachar Hills and North-East Frontier (Saduya, Baliparaand Lakhimpur) Tracts; the Partially Excluded Areas included:the Garo Hills, Mikir Hills and the British portion of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills. (Barpujari 1998: 6).

19 Baruah 1999: 3620 Ibid.21 Ibid.: 1022 Barpujari 1998: 10f23 Burman 1999: 324 The Maharaja of Manipur signed the agreement to merge with

India after having been kept in his residence, surrounded bysoldiers, in Shillong, for days. He was isolated from his advisers,council of ministers and the public at home, put under pressureand intimidated. (Baruah 2001: 1)

25 Karlsson 2001: 1026 Burman 2000: 927 Burman 2000: 928 Constitution of India, Articles 244 (2) and 275 (1)29 Bhengra et.al. 1998: 1230 Kumar 1996: 19; Bhengra et.al. 1998: 1231 In Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura, the Council’s agenda is no

longer processed by the Deputy Commissioner. According to thememorandum of understanding between the Government of As-sam and ADCs, the Deputy Commissioner should be under thedisciplinary control of the Autonomous Council. However, thishas not yet been put into effect, allegedly for technical reasons.(B.K. Roy Burman, personal communication)

32 Burman 1993:1333 Burman 2000: 1134 Ibid.35 Ibid: 1236 Bhengra et.al, 1998:2937 Bhengra et.al. 1998: 1238 Kumar 1996: 2039 Burman 1999: 340 Burman 2001: 4441 Ibid.42 Baruah 1999: 11143 Prabhakara 1989, in Baruah 1999: 11144 Gam, A., Shimray et. al., in Barpujari 1998: 10945 Baruah 1999: 20746 Ibid.: 20847 Ibid.: 20448 Baruah 2001: 349 Ibid: 550 Ibid.51 Bhengra et. al. 1998: 3052 Ibid.53 Dasgupta 1997: 367, cited in Karlsson 2001: 14

References

Barpujari, H.K.: 1998 - India’s North-East: Problems, Policies and Pros-pects. Guwahati: Spectrum Publications

Baruah, Sanjib: 1999 - India Against Itself. Assam and the Politics ofNationality. New Delhi: Oxford University Press

Baruah, Sanjib: 2001 - Generals as Governors. The Parallel PoliticalSystems of Northeast India. Himal South Asia, June 2001.www.himalmag.com/june2001/essay/html

Bhengra, R., C.R. Bijoy, S. Luithui: 1998 - The Adivasis of India.Minority Rights Group International Report 98/1. London: Mi-nority Rights Group

Burman, B.K. Roy: 1993 - Workshop on Tribal Development, Intentions,Realities, Challenges and Tasks Ahead. New Delhi: Akhil BharatiyaAdivasi Vikas Parishad

Burman, B.K. Roy: 1999 - Issues on the Extension of 73rd and 74th

Amendments of the Constitution in the Sixth Schedule Areas ofNorth East India. Outline of a keynote address in the Seminar onthe theme organized by PRIA. Mimeo

Burman, B.K. Roy: 2000 - Systems of Self-Governance in Tribal Areasof North-East India and Futuristic Perspectives. Keynote addressin the seminar on the theme, jointly organized by SOFCAR andII Con. Mimeo

Burman, B.K. Roy: 2001 - Patterns of Self-rule among the Tribal andIndigenous Peoples of India and Horizon of Self-determination.Mimeo

Dasgupta, Jyotirindra: 1997 - “Community, Authenticity, and Au-tonomy: Insurgency and Institutional Development in India’sNortheast.” The Journal of Asian Studies 56(2)

Erni, Christian/Shimreichon Luithui: 2001 - Indigenous and TribalPeoples in India. Desk Review. Project to Promote ILO Policy onIndigenous and Tribal Peoples. Geneva: International LabourOffice

Galtung, Johan: 1999 - “The Right to Self-Determination and ConflictTransformation”; in: Michael C. van Walt van Praag, with OnnoSeroo (eds.): The Implementation of the Right to Self-Determinationas a Contribution to Conflict Prevention. Barcelona: UNESCO Divi-sion of Human Rights, Democracy and Peace/UNESCO centre ofCatalonia.

International Labour Office: 1989 - ILO Convention No. 169, June 27,1989, 28 ILM 1382, 1384-85 (1989). Geneva: International LabourOffice

José Martínez Cobo: 1986 - Study of the Problem of DiscriminationAgainst Indigenous Populations. UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add.4, paras 379-80

Karlsson. B.G.: 2001 - “Indigenous Politics: Community Formationand Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle for Self-Determination in North-east India”. Identity Vol. 8(1)

Keating, Michael: 1999 - “Self-Determination, Multinational Statesand the Transnational Order”; in: Michael C. van Walt van Praag,with Onno Seroo (eds.): The Implementation of the Right to Self-Determination as a Contribution to Conflict Prevention. Barcelona:UNESCO Division of Human Rights, Democracy and Peace/UNESCO centre of Catalonia.

Kumar, B.B.: 1996 - Re-organization of North-East India. Facts andDocuments. New Delhi: Omsons Publications

National Campaign Committee Against Militarisation and Repealof Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act: 1997 - Where ‘peacekeepers’have declared war. Report on violations of democratic rights bysecurity forces and the impact of the Armed Forces (SpecialPowers) Act on civilian life in the seven states of the North-East.New Delhi.

World Bank: 1991 - Operational Directive 4.20, reprinted in IWGIA,Newsletter Nov./Dec. 1991. Copenhagen

Christian Erni holds a PhD in Social Anthropology andworks as Asia Program Coordinator at IWGIA. ❑


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IWGIA co-operates with indigenous peoples allover the world and supports their struggle for humanrights and self-determination, their right to control ofland and resources, their cultural integrity, and theirright to development. The aim of IWGIA is to defendand endorse the rights of indigenous peoples in concur-rence with their own efforts and desires. An importantgoal is to give indigenous peoples the possibility oforganising themselves and to open up channels forindigenous peoples’ own organisations to claim theirrights.

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INTERNATIONAL WORK GROUPFOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

PUB

LICA

TION

S FRO

M IW

GIA NUNAVUT

INDIGENOUS AUTONOMY IN MEXICO

SAAMI PARLIAMENTARY CO-OPERATION - AN ANALYSIS

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINSTINDIGENOUS PEOPLES WORLDWIDE

By John B. HenriksenIWGIA - 1999ISBN: 87-90730-11-9, ISSN: 0105-4503

Aracely Burguete Cal y Mayor(Ed.)

INUIT REGAIN CONTROL OF THEIR LANDS AND THEIR LIVES

Stressing the political dynamics at the beginning of Nunavut’s autonomous life, theauthors provide a clear and accurate account of a remarkable political process. “Theanalytical integrity is remarkable in this collection of solid and clearly written articles byauthors from four continents.” Frances Abele, in the Journal Arctic.

IWGIA - 2000ISBN 87-90730-34-8, ISSN 0105-4503

This volume is an important collection of essays and may be seen as compulsory readingfor those who wish to have a better understanding of the dynamic processes of change inMexico and its indigenous peoples at the end of the millennium. With an introduction byRodolfo Stavenhagen the book relates different experiences and proposals relative to theissue of indigenous autonomy. International and constitutional aspects of autonomy areanalysed. A feminine view is provided. Significant cases of local autonomy and thestruggle of indigenous peoples for their resources and environment in the face of amistaken, badly planned government policy for infra-structural development are pre-sented. With analyses, cases and proposals, Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico makes aworthy contribution to anyone interested in the Mexican debate on indigenous au-tonomy.

IWGIA - 2000ISBN 87-90730-11-9, ISSN 0105-4503

NUNAVUT

SAAMIPARLIAMENTARY

CO-OPERATION

Jens Dahl, Jack Hicks andPeter Jull (eds.)

The aim of the book is to create a basis for initial concrete evaluations of the question ofestablishing a joint political body for the Saami Parliaments in the three Nordic countries.The first part of the book consists of background material which, by shedding light on thehistoric conditions, aims to present possible future solutions. Part two and three focus onthe future co-operation between the Saami Parliaments.

INDIGENOUSAUTONOMYIN MEXICO

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