Organized by Maria Ackrén (maac@samf.uni.gl) and Robert Chr. Thomsen (thomsen@cgs.aau.dk) on behalf of Aalborg University and University of Greenland. Please submit proposals to organizers.
Sovereignty as a concept is often used by states and according to the Westphalian tradition. In the minds of Indigenous people in the North, however, and according to the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), this concept has another meaning. ICC is recognizing that Inuit rights extend across the circumpolar regions, including marine areas and transcend the national boundaries of Arctic states. In this context, sovereignty can be seen as a synonym for the right to self-determination. This workshop seeks to discuss and enhance the understanding of Indigenous rights, the sometimes conflicting notions of pan-Inuit and national identities and rights within the Arctic, as well as perceptions of sovereignty among the region’s indigenous peoples.
FORMAT:
The session, which will be open to the public, will take the form of a one-day seminar.
PROGRAMME:
09:15-12:00 (including coffee 15 minutes)
13:15-15:30
ABSTRACTS:
A New Type of Arctic Power: Indigenous Sovereignty, Internationalism and International Law
Natalia Loukacheva, Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Governance and Law
University of Northern British Columbia
Natalia.Loukacheva@unbc.ca
The ongoing discourse on Indigenous sovereignty and governance forms an important part of current Arctic developments. It also shows a remarkable complexity characterizing the revival of Indigenous governance in the Arctic and the realization of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including self-determination and self-governance. On the one hand, we witness the growing strength of Indigenous participation in the global and Arctic fora that provide an international angle of their governance and sovereignty. On the other hand, there are political and legal frameworks that to a certain degree put a different perception on the notion of sovereignty and the role of Indigenous peoples in the exercise of their governmental practices. To shed further light on developing trends regarding Indigenous and Arctic sovereignty, this presentation will look at notions of sovereignty, developments in international law, and the role of Indigenous actors in the advancement of diplomacy and policies in the North.
The Politics of Sustainability and Postcolonial Sovereignty Games in the Arctic
Ulrik Pram Gad & Marc Jacobsen (on behalf of co-authors Nikoline Schriver & Jeppe Strandsbjerg)
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
marc.jacobsen@ifs.ku.dk; upg@ifs.ku.dk
While the Inuit Circumpolar Council has contested the state centric use of the concept of sovereignty, few question the widespread and often ambiguous use of the concept of sustainability. However, in the Arctic, claims of sustainability and sovereignty are becoming intimately related. As international power balances, climate changes, demand for raw materials and aspirations for self-determination set the stage for new political struggles – the concept of sustainability has become a buzzword and a focal point for clashes between fragility and demands for development in the region. In this context, the postcolonial political reality adds further complexity to the use of the concept as aspirations for increased autonomy are articulated with reference to both Inuit identity and economic development. The latter often connected to anticipated large-scale mining and further industrialisation that unsettles both the global climate, Arctic eco-systems, indigenous cultures, and local communities. Paying special attention to the case of Greenland, the paper discusses the diverse political consequences of sustainability becoming a buzzword in the Arctic. Links to both the global, regional and local scales will be made visible to show how the different political sustainability strategies relate to each other - and to claims about sovereignty - in complex ways.
Challenging Sovereignty: a study of the prospects of an independent Greenland in the Arctic region.
Benedikte Brincker, Dept. of Business and Politics
Copenhagen Business School
beb.dbp@cbs.dk
In recent years, the status of Greenland of once having been a Danish colony in the period 1721 until 1953 has been debated intensely in both Denmark and Greenland. The desire to revisit the colonial past and engage in anti-colonial struggle co-exists with the hope that Greenland may emerge as an independent nation-state by seceding from the Kingdom of Denmark of which it is an autonomous part. These dual processes of anti-colonial struggle and secessionist nationalism are intimately linked. Sometimes they are captured in the description of the people of Greenland as on the one hand an indigenous people engaging in ethnopolitics in opposition to its former colonial power, Denmark and on the other hand a modern nation with a hope to gain sovereignty and become a fully independent nation-state. Theoretically, this immediately begs the question of what is the relationship between anti-colonial struggles and secessionist nationalism. Is it anti-colonial struggles that condition the emergence of secessionist nationalism or should we instead consider secessionist nationalism as the cause of anti-colonial struggles? The present paper addresses this theoretical difficulty in the context of the case of Greenland in the context of the Arctic Region. In so doing, it offers a critical discussion of the dual notions of sovereignty and independence and engages with the argument that no nation state is independent. Instead, nation states need to strike a balance between multiple dependencies. In this perspective, Greenland is the case in extremis. The paper concludes that the prospects of Greenland becoming an independent sovereign nation state relies upon its ability to engage in a balance between multiple dependencies. It depends upon whether the country can embed itself in 'the international community of sovereign nation states' while constituting a challenge to the very notion of sovereignty.
Island Autonomies – Constitutional and Political Developments
Maria Ackrén, Dept. of Social Science
Ilisimatusarfik
maac@uni.gl
The territorial autonomies in the world have developed in different constitutional and political environments, but there are also several similarities when it comes to the institutional aspects of how the territorial autonomies function and act in their relationship towards their respective metropolitan states. This chapter will elucidate some of the island autonomies in a Nordic and a Portuguese context. The Nordic cousins are very much alike regarding the institutional design and in relationship with their respective metropolitan state, but their historical and political development have been of different character. The Portuguese islands of the Azores and Madeira have developed through another context. What are the similarities and differences between these islands? What is the connection to federalism and asymmetrical federalism regarding these islands?
Key Words: Island autonomies, constitutional aspects, political development, asymmetrical federalism
Language policy in Arctic North America
Keith Battarbee, University of Turku, Finland
keith.battarbee@gmail.com
Both demographically and linguistically, the Arctic zone of North America displays a striking cline from the dominantly mainstream-American society and culture of Alaska in the west to the indigenous-majority societies in the east, especially in the Inuit region. Over the past 30 years, all five current jurisdictions in the Arctic zone of North America – Alaska, Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)– have introduced language policy legislation. Like any other field of public policy, language can be the focus of widely divergent agendas: there is no international or crossjurisdictional consensus as to what the aims, or scope, or focus of such policy should be. This paper examines the demolinguistics and statutory language policies across Arctic North America, with particular reference to the standing of indigenous languages, in terms of five parameters which contribute to shaping how and why language policy has been formalized, not as either/or dichotomies, but rather as continua. The five parameters examined here are: 1) Jurisdictional – all five jurisdictions are subnational, not sovereign: how has language policy been shaped by national vs local factors? 2) Quantitative – is the focus on one language, or several, or many? How can these languages be classified? 3) Purpose – is the goal to reinforce existing hegemony, or to promote inclusive diversity? 4) Implications – what statutory rights and obligations are created, for whom (individuals, or collectives?), and when or where? 5) Feasibility – how far are the stated goals, and various interest-groups’ often contradictory expectations, realistic in terms of factual outcomes?
Indigenous Rights to Self-Determination in the Russian North: Twenty-first Century Developments
Gail Fondahl
University of Northern British Columbia
gail.fondahl@unbc.ca
During the first decade of post-Soviet reforms in the Russian Federation, new legislation articulated the rights of Northern indigenous peoples to self-determination. In practice, improvements to self-determination followed, if unevenly. However, since the turn of the millennium we have seen the erosion of such rights, both in law and in practice. This paper will discuss Russian legal understandings of and provisions for indigenous self-determination, and how these have evolved during the post-Soviet period. It will consider the varied attempts of indigenous peoples to use the laws to improve their self-determination. As well, it will consider indigenous representations of what self-determination should entail, including that beyond what is currently provided in the law.
Canada as a responsible sovereign in regards to its Northern/Indigenous population
Suzanne Lalonde, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
suzanne.lalonde@umontreal.ca
The very first line of Canada’s “Northern Strategy” (2009) claims the North as a fundamental part of Canada, a part of its heritage, its future and its very identity as a country. In the next paragraph, the Strategy is presented as the means to realize the Canadian Government’s vision of a “new North”, for the benefit of “all Canadians”. Inevitably, the Strategy and “Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy” (2010) identify the exercise of sovereignty as the first and most important priority area for action. “Arctic sovereignty” has been, for many decades, a touchstone in Canadian political debate, understood as the need to safeguard and even defend what Canada claims as its own. But as Max Huber famously declared in his 1928 arbitral award in the Island of Palmas case, while sovereignty is synonymous with independence, conferring on the territorial sovereign exclusive rights and prerogatives, it has as corollary a duty: the obligation to govern responsibly. This paper will focus on the need for Canada to exercise its Arctic sovereignty in a way that is both respectful and responsive to the needs and aspirations of its Northern population, particularly the region’s indigenous peoples. By actively promoting safe, healthy and prosperous communities, Canada would send a powerful message that it can be trusted to act as a responsible steward of its Arctic waters and land.
Self-determination, Inuit Sovereignty and Nation-State Building in the Arctic: Making Greenland understandable
Uffe Jakobsen, Dept. of Political Science
University of Copenhagen
uj@ifs.ku.dk
Sovereignty includes the right to self-determination. But does inuit sovereignty include national identity formation or does it transcend nationality? This paper will argue that there is not a once and for all answer to this question, since it depends on place (context) and time (past and future). Self-determination in Nunavut did not entail a separation from Canada and the establishment of an independent state (Hicks and White 2000), while self-determination in Greenland does include the perspective of an independent and sovereign state according to the constituent Greenland Self-Government Act (2009). Earlier, however, Inuit Ataqatigiit and other political parties would see an inuit state as a circumpolar organisation based on a circumpolar Inuit identity. Has Greenland since then in the views of the political parties as well as the indigenous majority population developed into a ‘nation’ and is it to be understood as, so far, a nation without a ‘state’, a stateless nation?
Inuit Autonomist Movements: National and Indigenous Identities in Greenland and NunavutRobert C. Thomsen, Dept. of Culture and Global Studies/CIRCLA
Aalborg University
thomsen@cgs.aau.dk
The 1987 ‘Brundtland Report’ (WCED) constitutes an early attempt to venture outside a narrow understanding of sustainability as a synonym for ‘environmentally sound’. This paper will argue that, indeed, in order to properly address the challenges and opportunities that Arctic states and societies experience, a broader framework of comprehensive sustainable development is needed. This would incorporate economic, social, cultural and political sustainability. Analysis of the latter must include investigations into workable constitutional set-ups and efficient, representative political institutions. A basic premise for such endeavors is understanding the nature of collective, social and cultural identities -- and the perceptions of inherent rights that different Arctic peoples hold. Inspired by Will Kymlicka’s ‘liberal theory of minority rights’ (1995), the paper explores discrepancies between autonomist movements by way of three case studies: the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the Nunavummiut of Nunavut and the Greenlanders of Kalaallit Nunaat. Although an indigenous ethnic core is characteristic of all these Inuit autonomisms, the perception of ‘peoplehood’ – of who belongs to the collectivity – differ and, consequently, so do the political-constitutional visions/demands. In fact, manifestations of ‘indigeneity’ and nationalism can be argued to constitute opposing positions, and thus could be harbingers of potential conflict between Inuit.
Reference:
Kymlicka, Will (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: OUP.
WCED (1987). ‘Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future’. United Nations.
