Multilevel Citizenship

Chapter 7 The International Indigenous Rights Discourse and Its Demands for Multilevel Citizenship

Chapter 7 The International Indigenous Rights Discourse and Its Demands for Multilevel Citizenship sheryl lightfoot As the construction of state sovereignty has become more complex and nuanced in recent years, the coordinating concept of citizenship has also undergone significant transformation: it has increasingly been constructed in plural ways and has departed from its exclusive tie to territorially bounded, sovereign nation-states. As the international system changes to accommodate different postcolonial and transnational realities, so the concept of citizenship adapts and becomes increasingly complex. Indigenous peoples1 represent one such complexity of citizenship and, in fact, have always presented a set of challenges to the dominant narrative of territorially bounded state citizenship. First, Indigenous peoples have a prior existence as sovereign nations in many territories that later became nationstates —a historical reality reflected in the hundreds of treaties signed between Indigenous nations and Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. A second complicating factor, often coupled with the first, is the transnational character of some Indigenous nations,2 such as the Ojibwe or the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy, which span the U.S.-Canadian border; the Tohono O’odham nation, which traverses the U.S.-Mexican border; and the Saami people, who are located in the Arctic region of four different Scandinavian countries . For these reasons, Indigenous peoples often do not fit comfortably within the dominant nation-state model. Many states and Indigenous peoples are struggling with these complex realities, with states often reverting to either a national citizenship model 128 Sheryl Lightfoot that excludes Indigenous peoples or applying a model of uniform national citizenship that does not recognize the inherent human right Indigenous peoples have to self-determination. In recent years, an international rights discourse has emerged that, although recognizing the fundamental rights of Indigenous peoples to land; resources; self-determination; and free, prior, and informed consent, also serves as a guiding framework for Indigenousstate relations and can thus help reconcile competing state responses to the question of Indigenous peoples’ citizenship. The multilevel citizenship arrangements of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States may be imperfect, ambiguous, and sometimes problematic, emanating from different histories and constitutional assumptions, but they do offer the world some exemplary frameworks for Indigenous plural or multilevel citizenship arrangements that can help deal with the complicated historical realities and transnational complexities of Indigenous peoples’ citizenship. This chapter explores what multilevel citizenship means in theory and in practice for Indigenous peoples in both the international sphere and in some specific national contexts. First, I will contextualize citizenship for Indigenous peoples, discussing what it has meant historically, and how the Indigenous rights discourse on multilevel citizenship has arisen to rectify harmful and unjust historical practices. Second, I will show how the international Indigenous rights discourse calls for forms of multilevel citizenship in order to accommodate the historical and contemporary realities of states and Indigenous nations within a global framework of justice and respect for human rights. Finally, I will demonstrate how Canada and the United States, in spite of their underlying resistance to the full battery of international Indigenous rights, are, in fact, recognizing, albeit imperfectly, ambiguously , and sometimes problematically, forms of Indigenous multilevel citizenship that can serve as a starting point for a global conversation on multilevel citizenship arrangements for Indigenous peoples. Citizenship and Indigenous Peoples Indigenous peoples around the world have experienced two dominant historical patterns related to citizenship. These patterns seem to be common whether or not (a) the colonizing state is a settler society;3 (b) the colonizing population intermarried with the Indigenous population, thus creating a ‘‘mestizo’’ dominant group;4 or (c) the tribal groups have lived alongside (2024-04-16 16:53 GMT) International Indigenous Rights 129 other dominant groups for centuries, as is the case in vast areas of Asia and Africa. First, Indigenous peoples experience a separation of themselves from ‘‘citizenship’’ in the state because they are deemed too primitive to handle the rights and duties of ordinary citizenship. Thus, a dichotomy is established between ‘‘Indigeneity’’ and ‘‘citizen.’’ Under this scenario, Indigenous peoples have been denied or considered ineligible for citizenship and participation in the national polity because of their status as ‘‘outsiders ’’ to the national polity; their dependency status, expressed as wardship or trustee status within a nation-state; or both. This model existed in the United States and Canada prior to 1924 and 1960, respectively, the years when each country unilaterally extended state citizenship rights to Indigenous peoples within their...