Pushing Normative Change from the Bottom Up. Indigenous Peoples Organizations and Recognition of Indigenous Peoples Rights in Russia

• Main Author: Peeters, Marina Goloviznina
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: UiT Norges arktiske universitet 2023
• Subjects: VDP::Social science: 200::Sociology: 220; VDP::Samfunnsvitenskap: 200::Sosiologi: 220; Arctic; Sakha; Arctic review on law and politics; Arktis*; Yakutia
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10037/31855

Indigenous peoples and their organizations (IPOs) in the Arctic region and worldwide use international norms to hold governments and extractive corporations accountable for violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights. However, IPOs in undemocratic states face greater obstacles in engaging with these norms, given the government’s limited responsiveness to arguments based on international laws on the rights of Indigenous peoples. In my thesis, I ask how the IPOs in Russia address the lamentable situation of Indigenous peoples and promote international Indigenous rights norms within the domestic context. Bringing into dialogue governance studies, norm contestation analysis, and social movement scholarship, I highlight the important role of institutions in shaping the trajectories and outcomes of IPOs advocacy and the IPOs’ capacity to recognize and seize opportunities to effect normative change at different levels of Russia’s governance. The thesis is designed as a comparative multiple-case study that delves into the interactions and institutional settings of national and local IPOs in two ethnic republics of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation – the Republics of Komi and Sakha (Yakutia). Drawing on the perspectives of IPOs and amplifying their voices, I argue that the steady activism of domestic IPOs has been the driving force behind the changes in the recognition politics towards Indigenous peoples and their rights in Russia over the last three decades. My findings challenge the popular perceptions of these IPOs as powerless, entirely co-opted, and lacking agency by presenting a more complex and patchy picture of their contestation practices at different levels of natural resource governance. As I showed, despite the constrained environment, these IPOs still utilize tiny but existing opportunities to advocate for increased recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights and effect some progressive, albeit modest, changes in policy and practice. Urfolk og deres organisasjoner (IPOer) i den arktiske regionen og over ...