Soenke Zehle, Eco-Politics of Sovereignty

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
UN Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The 1990s are not only the "UN Decade of Indigenous Peoples" because of official pronouncements (U.N. Decade 1993-2004), but because international cooperation and organization among indigenous peoples confront observers of world politics with a demand that appears somewhat anachronistic: the demand for indigenous self-determination, issued decades after UN declarations inaugurated a process of decolonization. For indigenous activists, this process is not yet over, and their activism challenges fundamental assumptions at the core of the current international system. Ironically, eco-activists have been slow to connect the marginalization of native communities with their own critique of unsustainable forms of production and consumption.

Although indigenous peoples have been subject to similar treatment throughout the initial period of colonization (slavery, exploitation, genocide) as well as the second wave of the 19th century (civilization, assimilation), a distinction emerges in the early 20th century. Wherever colonial powers withdrew, the League of Nations assumed "wardship" over indigenous populations and determined their ability for self-determination. The mandate was later transferred to a UN trusteeship system and lead to eventual independence and sovereignty under the program of decolonization. In states created and dominated by colonial settlers, wardship and trusteeship became a matter of domestic jurisdiction, after a so-called "blue water thesis" exempted enclave territories from the process of decolonization.

The issue of indigenous sovereignty identifies a weak spot in orthodox theories of international relations, whose conceptual framework has taken the competitive existence of (homogeneous) states in an anarchic inter-state system as point of departure and paid little attention to the complex and often violent process of state formation, the contradictory internal heterogeneity of states, and the emergence of non-state actors like NGOs or indigenous peoples.

The conceptual analogy between sovereign states and sovereign individuals accompanied the emergence of the state system in the 17th century. As the nation-state becomes the natural and ideal form of association, associational alternatives disappear along with the peoples and communities so organized. One historical consequence has been the problematic identification of nations and states and the subsequent difficulty of conceptualizing (national) autonomy in terms other than secession and independent statehood (Basques, Kurds, Palestinians).

The international legal system shifted from its early naturalist universalism (which had at least acknowledged the rationality, autonomy, and territorial rights of indigenous peoples) to a crude positivism in which international law was determined by the actual conduct of sovereign states. The system or "law of nations" conveniently facilitated colonial expansion and exploitation of peoples no longer included in the "family of nations" until its demise and delegitimation after WWII, especially after the Holocaust which lead to the codification of crimes against humanity and of wars of aggression, and the emergence of a variety of human rights mechanisms.

Despite cold war support for the process of decolonization (limits: Vietnam), the structure of the process remained uneven and worked to keep native peoples (enclaves) outside the realm of international concern (maintenance of colonial territorial order/creation of artificial states which followed colonial rather than pre-colonial geographies, exclusion of colonial enclaves through "blue water thesis").

The international process of decolonization was accompanied by ethnic social movements, which in turn lead to increased international organization (IITC) after early indigenous attempts to lobby League of Nations and UN had failed. A landmark 1977 International NGO Conference established transnational communication and coordination, articulated a transnational indigenous identity, and resulted in the establishment of a UN Working Group on the Rights of Indigenous Populations charged with drafting a Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, completed in 1994. 1989 adoption of a revised ILO Convention 169, which abandons earlier concepts of assimilation and integration through economic development and supports collective rights, self-sufficiency and self-determination instead, similar developments occur in other intergovernmental institutions (OAS, EU, WB).

The affirmation of collective rights whose bearers are neither individuals nor states but ethno-cultural communities challenge the conceptual apparatus of the international legal system. Some see in this a reemergence of classical naturalist, suprasovereign elements which challenge a positivist/realist tradition that assumes the determination of international legal norms through state conduct.

For a long time, internal conflicts between states and autonomous minorities (even when those had legitimate claims to sovereign status) had virtually disappeared from the state-centered analysis of international relations and thus from the field of international politics. Since WWII, non-state actors have increasingly been the object of international attention and protection as well as become subjects of international law within the human rights system.

Some authors argue that the attainment of sovereign recognition by the UN is less important than the process of a gradual internationalization of indigenous organization, facilitated by involvement in UN processes, and the affirmation of various ecological, economic and cultural aspects of self-determination.

The legal codification of collective existence is not determined within juridical discourse alone but remains embedded in larger context of cultural assumptions about the existence and experience of autonomous ethnocultural communities (example: absence of indigenous concerns in critical literature on globalization, lament of loss of state sovereignty without memory of violence of state formation, global environmentalism/Kyoto).

But changes in international law are not merely a consequence of native activism. Norms of sovereignty are also shifting to cope with ecological destruction, and attention to the transnational character of ecological conflict has also brought other marginalized issues into theoretical focus (decolonization and eco-awareness). The connection between environmental critique and support for indigenous sovereignty is nonetheless rarely made, more problematic forms of eco-cultural appropriation and "support" (traditions of primitivism, new age, mythology of eco-spiritual integrity) continue to dominate the view of indigenous politics.

Because traditional prerogatives of sovereign states - control over territory and resources, rights to resource exploitation, and authority to establish environmental regulation - are often exercised at the expense of indigenous peoples, their de facto subordination to commercial and national security concerns (bioprospecting/biopiracy, resource extraction, waste disposal) will continue along with unsustainable forms of resource use without some international legal recognition of indigenous peoples. Ecological crises are linked to the marginalization of the communities in which they occur, and the simultaneous abuse of indigenous rights and exploitation of natural resources is common all over the world. Environmental crisis is, at bottom, often a process of massive human rights violations (environmental justice agenda).

This recognition can occur in the conceptualization of alternative scenarios of international relations as well as in the strategic elaboration of environmental activism (multiple sites). While many who rearticulate concepts of sovereignty to incorporate environmental concerns do not address the issue of indigenous rights, several scholars support alternative conceptions of sovereignty that incorporate indigenous self-determination and acknowledge the connection between ecological change and the expression of cultural rights. Issues of biodiversity and the codification of indigenous ethnoscientific knowledges have subsequently received much attention and lead many intergovernmental organizations to outline specific policies (WB, WTO, WIPO). Some suggest that the special relationship between cultural expression, biodiversity, and indigenous self-determination be acknowledged in support for "eco-cultural security."

Soenke Zehle, State University of New York

The Eco-Politics of Sovereignty: Indigenous (Trans) Nationalism & The Post-National Constellation