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. Contemporary Political Theory 2006 5
Book Reviews
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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 f
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