| Summary: | The sovereignty- and self-determination movements of indigenous peoples are a salient factor on the political agenda in many western world countries. Indigenous peoples in Hawai´i and elsewhere have become increasingly politicised in hope of changing their relationship with the states within which they are located. The discourse of indigenous peoples turn around the concept ”First Nations” whose collective and inherent rights to self-determination have never been extinguished but prevail in international and national law as a basis for constitutional concessions and affirmative action. This claim asserts that indigenous peoples have a special relationship with the state based on a unique set of entitlements. In western countries considerable energy has been spent in redefining indigenousness as a distinctive social and political category with a corresponding set of characteristics and delegated powers that derive from acknowledgement of their historically based status as ”nations within”. Confrontation between indigenous peoples and the state in the last two or three decades or so, has focused around issues such as land and political self-determination. These issues have been seen as essential in establishing control over matters of internal jurisdiction. Without land no self-determination. Without self-determination no control over the economic, social or cultural development and future. This is a study of the political change surrounding self-determination movements of indigenous peoples who are asserting a claim to inherent sovereignty and special political status. I show how these claims have forced western democratic nations to rethink basic asssumptions regarding individual and group rights and the basis of rights in political society. This task requires examining how it has been possible for indigenous peoples to be successful in extracting certain constitutional and legislative concessions leading to self-determination. Within this context I show how structuring political debate around these claims ...
|
|---|