Becoming Visible - Indigenous Politics and Self-Government, The University of Tromso-Centre

for Sami Studies,1995

The Indigenous Challenge: Indigenous claims to rights and self-determination pose fundamental
challenges to national governments and majority populations. The indigenous perspective questions
the fundamental concepts, values and institutions of the nation-state by contesting not only nation
states sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also the meaning of equal rights, universal citizenship
and the very notion of democracy and justice. Thus, the growth of the indigenous movement not only
leads to a debate about indigenousness as such, but to issues of principle, as the very character of
national systems of government, administration and justice, their historical origins and legitimacy visa-vis indigenous peoples. However, the perspective that indigenous peoples advocate do not, however,
aim at a break-up of national borders and struggle against national sovereignty. Indigenous peoples
claims are first and foremost directed towards self-determination, or internal autonomy within their
respective nation states, as expressed in the calls for partnership, a motto of long standing in
indigenous politics. Thus, indigenous peoples are leading a campaign which is some cases, like in the
Canadian North, has led to a process of reconstruction and reinvention of nation states.
Not surprisingly, indigenous peoples like Inuit of Greenland and Canada, Sami in the Nordic
countries, and other indigenous peoples in North- and South America have provided examples and
inspiration for increasing number of minority peoples elsewhere. Such achievements have not come
easy - only as an outcome of determined and persistent indigenous efforts with long historical roots,
and where indigenous leaders have been able to overcome initial fears and hostility for what
governments and majority populations have seen as threats to basic national institutions and values.
Elsewhere, indigenous claims are still highly controversial as a consequence of governments
continued indifference and direct opposition to the indigenous perspective.
State and People - Law, Justice and Politics: The sovereignty of the modern nation state is based on a
mutual relationship between the state and the interests of the particular state's people. The state is to
represent and act on behalf of the collective interests of the people. Popular democracy ensures that
common interests are expressed and safeguarded; the balance between executive, legislative and
judiciary powers shall ensure the greatest possible correspondence between justice and current law.
This is a internal political-legal context where state and people are in a mutual and reciprocal
relationship. In an indigenous perspective, however, national institutions of popular democracy, the
universality of citizenship, equality and justice, cherished as the very basis and ideal of the nation
state, achieves a very different and contradictory significance.
What is seen as national interest may appear as something which has been achieved at the expense of
their collective interests by indigenous peoples. The indigenous perspective implies the notion that
justice in a nation state cannot be reduced to what is the state's rights. The relationship between a state
power and a majority people dominating and controlling the civic institutions of that state, is different
from the relation between a state and an indigenous people. Basically both concern a relationship
where two different populations claim fundamental rights in terms of being separate peoples. The
latter case, however, is not an internal legal-political context, but a context where different peoples
with separate cultures and legal traditions are competing and advocating their respective claims for the
rights to exist as a people. The common problem for all indigenous groups, however, is that these
claims are presented in situations were basically two categories of people - of indigenous and nonindigenous origin - are occupying and claiming the same territory.
The question of justice for indigenous peoples then becomes something more and different from state
law. It becomes an issue of the power relationship between indigenous minorities on one hand and
state authorities and majority populations on the other. This is an asymmetrical, non-reciprocal and
unequal relationship where majority populations have had the power, opportunities and responsibility
for developing the political, administrative and judicial systems of the nation states. The indigenous
perspective is based on a understanding that indigenous peoples have been subjected to these national
institutions, but have not had the power and means to participate in their development. Thus, the
struggle of indigenous leaders to make indigenous peoples visible, developing a basis for collective
claims, becomes something more than a struggle of a special category of people with separate and
limited interests within the nation state.

Indigenous issues tends to have a far-reaching significance; justice for indigenous claims involves a
questioning of the very constitution of the nation state and the legitimacy of state institutions and
measures. Are these institutions and measures - like current state law - to be seen as developed and
legitimised through the development of the sovereignty of the nation state? Or are they to be seen as
the outcome of a process where a state power has invaded and colonised indigenous peoples
homelands and undermined or abolished their original self-determination, their traditional systems of
law and socio-political systems? To what extent can colonisation give state powers certain rights vis-avis other rights indigenous people may claim?