Indigenous Sovereignty and the Democratic Project

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property, belonging and exclusion are explored in relation to notions of
civilization and progress.
Overall, then, Brace offers a very interesting account of the complex nature
of the notion of property.
Ian Fraser
Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Indigenous Sovereignty and the Democratic Project
Steven Curry
Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, 2004, 194pp.
ISBN: 0 7546 2340 8.
Contemporary Political Theory (2006) 5, 108–110. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300221
Indigenous people at the national and international level strongly resist
classification as ‘minorities’, emphasizing their uniqueness both culturally and
via the issue of ‘consent’. While voluntary immigrant minorities have chosen to
become citizens of European diaspora nations such as those in the former
British Empire, many indigenous people have never willingly ceded their lands
or political autonomy. Yet, the distinct moral claims of indigenous peoples
are frequently trivialized by liberal ‘recognition’ theorists (see Taylor, 1995;
Kymlicka, 1991, 1995, 2000; Kukathas, 1992) when they combine discussion of
indigenous peoples with discussion of minorities. Recognition theorists like
Taylor and Kymlicka skip over the ‘first step in questioning the sovereignty of
the authoritative traditions and institutions they serve to legitimate’ (Tully,
1995, 53, Samson, 1999). By presuming the legitimacy of the liberal settler
state’s jurisdiction over indigenous nations, such an approach presupposes
exactly what is in question (see Tully, 2000, 55).
In contrast to such approaches, the focus of this important work of political
philosophy is a defence of indigenous sovereignty that inherently challenges the
sovereignty of the settler state. The author argues that ‘backward’ and ‘tribal’
societies have ‘far too much in common with a European model of nationhood
for one to be denied the state-building capacity and sovereign dignity imputed
to the other. Indigenous communities have proved to be just as adaptive,
just as ‘legal’ and ‘political’, just as territorial (and often as ruthless)
as any European monarchy’ (p. 79). In essence, the central argument of
the book is this: when non-indigenous people of settler states, who stand in
relation to indigenous people as an oppressive cultural and political ‘other’, fail
to recognize indigenous sovereignty, they are acting contrary to their own
ideals.
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The book begins by exploring the origins of ‘sovereignty’ in late medieval
and early modern Europe. The author shows how the dominant ‘Classical
View of Sovereignty’ (p. 29), which claimed for the settler state an absolute and
indivisible sovereignty, functioned to dispossess, subjugate and oppress
indigenous peoples right up to the present day. However, the idea of
sovereignty and its central nation building function was gradually taken up
in opposition to the Classical, absolutist expression in the context and service of
political movements, such as those of indigenous people, aimed at liberation.In
short, via fine theoretical reflection and analysis, the author persuasively
argues that when absolutist varieties of sovereignty are used to deny rights of
self-determination to indigenous peoples ‘our own aspiration to liberty is
compromised’ (p. 29). The traditions that underlie a liberal political system and
the structure of settler state civil society are discussed, in an admirably lucid
fashion, in order to show what obligations non-indigenous people living under
such systems are under if they are to consistently honour their own ideals.
Unlike the recognition theorists mentioned above, Curry suggests that
genuinely recognizing indigenous sovereignty involves more than granting
rights to self-government and in that sense will affect non-indigenous people.
For Curry (p. 149) non-indigenous citizens have too often acted as if the
exercise of their sovereignty precluded indigenous sovereignty and so insulated
them from any norms, duties and responsibilities encapsulated in indigenous
law. This has to change, he says, for if it does not we will return to the
strategies that cause us to deny the sovereign rights of indigenous people, and
to practice a culturally imperialist form of exclusivity, both of which continue
to radically undermine the normative force of our rights and freedoms that so
crucially underpin the practice of democracy in liberal states.
Curry’s theoretical orientation and general argument is similar to that of
James Tully, who, in my view, is the only other theorist in this field to
convincingly deal with the complex issues involved with recognizing indigenous
sovereignty. This original book is only slightly let down by the final chapter,
which paints a somewhat glorified view of Canadian negotiated settlements
between indigenous and non-indigenous people. In particular, regarding the
Nunavut agreement, Curry suggests that it is ‘almost an exemplar of
indigenous sovereignty’ (p. 166), yet as Samson (2003, p. 53) has shown, the
Nunavut Inuit signatories clearly agreed to surrender to Her Majesty The
Queen in Right of Canada all their aboriginal claims, rights, title, and interests,
if any, in and to lands and waters anywhere within Canada and adjacent
offshore areas anywhere within the sovereignty or jurisdiction of Canada. They
therefore, extinguished all rights based on their aboriginal title. To be sure,
comprehensive land claims, as a process, already assume that native peoples
are consenting parties to the sovereignty of the state, as if Canada were the
‘First Nation’.
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I would also have expected to see at least a brief discussion of the work of
Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred (1999) whose contribution to the debates
surrounding indigenous sovereignty should not be ignored. While there are
many commonalities in the work of both authors, Alfred suggests that
indigenous peoples should attempt to move beyond the very concept of
sovereignty, as it is an alien conception of the colonial powers. These points
aside, Curry’s interesting book fills a significant gap in theoretical under-
standing and should appeal to anyone interested in political theory and the
rights of indigenous people.
References
Alfred, T. (1999) Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, Ontario: Oxford
University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1991) Liberalism, Community and Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Kymlicka, W. (2000) ‘American Multiculturalism and the ‘Nations Within’’, in Ivison, Patton and
Sanders (eds) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kukathas, C. (1992) ‘Are there any Cultural Rights?’, Political Theory 20(1): 105–139.
Samson, C. (2003) A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu,
London: Verso.
Taylor, C. (1995) Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Tully, J. (1995) Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in the age of Diversity, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tully, J. (2000) ‘The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom’, in Iverson, Patton and
Sanders (eds). Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Damien Short
University of Essex, UK.
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