Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
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Book Reviews Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples D. Ivison, P. Patton & W. Sanders (eds.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, 323pp. Paperback, ISBN: 0-521-77-048-3/77937-5. Contemporary Political Theory (2002) 1, 239–241. DOI:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300036
This book sets out to explore through its contributors the following questions: How can we render justice to indigenous people, and ‘morally rehabilitate[ ]’ (p. 3) those state projects that began in colonial occupation. The solution, the contributors argue, involves a re-creative act, one that not only overhauls the institutions and power structures of the dominant state and society, but also requires us to revise the way in which we think about political life. The volume brings together authors of different backgrounds, theoretical interests, and regional knowledge, and the contributors include both established figures and newer voices in the field. The editors juxtapose the experience and insights garnered from different regions F primarily Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States F and put these contributions within an overall frame that reflects the main markers of political legitimacy in the contemporary era F those of sovereignty, identity, and democracy. For many of the contributors, one of the major obstacles in addressing indigenous claims is a lack of imagination on the part of political practitioners who have become attached to limited conceptions of sovereignty, unity, nationality, jurisdiction, etc. Once we learn to be more flexible in our expectations, they argue, it will be possible for indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to live alongside one another in a legitimate and mutually rewarding way F or at least to live alongside one another in pursuit of these objectives. One of the narrow concepts we need to dispense with, for example, is the idea that there is a once-and-for-all solution to the question of indigenous status and rights. Instead, authors such as J.G.A. Pocock and Jeremy Webber recommend that we adjust to the idea that the terms of coexistence should be born of mutual negotiation and that they should be subject to ongoing renegotiation. At one point in the book, Pocock recalls joking that the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of New Zealand could both consider themselves ‘peoples of the ship’. It seems that the direction envisioned by Pocock and others in the volume would involve multi-national or multicultural populations becoming ‘peoples of the table’ F committed to a life of perpetual negotiation concerning the relationship of the state and indigenous populations.
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The book’s approach, insofar as it seeks to draw on actual experience with the problems of legitimacy in the face of indigenous claims, strikes me as the right way to approach this question. And the editors have assembled an impressive range of voices on the subject. One of the most memorable contributions, for instance, involves a first-hand account of how membership issues arise and are experienced in a Que
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