‘Cooperation is the story’ – best practices of transnational indigenous activism in the North

Abstract

Although separated by thousands of kilometres and possessing of distinct cultures, the terrain and climate, along with a similar history of colonialism and oppression, enable the Saami and Inuit to create a similar strategy of advocacy – cooperation without cooptation. This article outlines the strategic steps taken to cultivate this strategy by outlining the creation and exercise of formal institutions, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the Saami Council, as well as educational and cultural programmes. I argue that this process is shaping both customary and codified international law in innovative ways by providing a model of joint-advocacy while respecting and promoting the uniqueness of their respective political, economic and cultural contexts.

Keywords:

• Arctic
• indigenous
• Saami
• Inuit
• advocacy
• norms
• strategies

Acknowledgement

This article has been continuously shared with various Saami and Inuit educators, advocates, politicians and policy makers, and I hope this makes a contribution to their work. I would like to thank Professor Michael Byers and Professor Sheryl Lightfoot for their encouragement in this project, and the two anonymous reviewers from The International Journal for Human Rights; their suggestions were quite insightful. A previous version of this article was presented at the Graduate Anthropology Conference in March 2010 as well as the workshop on Minority and Indigenous Rights in November 2010 where I received rich and pointed feedback as well as support. I am also indebted to the people whom I spoke with, often multiple times on the phone and later in person, who were generous with their time, attention and encouragement in this work. Specifically I would like to thank Rune Fjellheim, director general of the Samediggi (Saami parliament) in Norway as well as multiple people at Sami allaskulva (Sami University College). Last, but not least, I am grateful for the financial support of the Liu Institute for Global Affairs Bottom Billion Fund for helping support me in my time in Sapmi.

Notes

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Clouter, public presentation at Climate 2050, 24–26 October 2007, Montreal, Canada, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlSh4XeoLBA; Full published proceedings http://www.institut.veolia.org/ive/ressources/documents/2/476,Climate-2050-Proceeding-Final-Total-.pdf.

For more information on transnational activism, boomerang pattern and the interaction between state, non- state and quasi state actors please see Keck and Sikkink's pivotal 1998 work Activists Beyond Borders: Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Charli Carpenter's ongoing work on ‘issue emergence’ and Joquim Jutta's 2003 piece ‘Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities’ both discuss the strategic use and strategies of framing whereas Baer and Brysk's work offers the additional perspective of ‘framing and framing back’ in their 2009 piece ‘New Rights for Private Wrongs’. R. Charli Carpenter, ‘Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Issue Emergence and Non-emergence in Transnational Advocacy Network’, International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2007): 99–120; Joachim Jutta, ‘Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities. The UN, NGOs, and Women's Rights’, International Studies Quarterly 47 (2003): 247–74; Madeline Baer and Alison Brysk, ‘New Rights for Private Wrongs: Female Genital Mutilation and Global Framing Dialogues’, in The International Struggle for New Human Rights, ed. Clifford Bob (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). For specific work focusing on the role that funding can play in creating, and corrupting, an international focus on an issue please see David Samuel's 1995 piece in Harpers Magazine (David Samuels, ‘At Play in the Fields of Oppression’, Harpers Magazine, (May 1995): 47–54). In addition, Clifford Bob's Marketing Rebellion and Barnett and Finnemore's Rules for the World both offer excellent examples of the role of funding and institutionalisation and how it creates and shapes both advocacy opportunities and blockages. Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations and Global Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). Lastly, when specifically addressing the ‘real politik’ of global indigenous politics, I have been influenced by Sheryl Lightfoot's 2009 PhD dissertation, ‘Indigenous Global Politics’, University of Minnesota, 2009, http://gradworks.umi.com/33/87/3387281.html.

I bring to this article a few important limitations. I am not from the Arctic and have only spent a limited (10 weeks) amount of time in the Arctic, nor do not speak any language of the Arctic except for English. This is important to note because I rely quite heavily on interviews and most of these interviews were conducted over the phone and in English. English is often the interviewee's second or third language. I also was only able to speak with higher levels of representation in the ICC and the Saami Council, all of whom were older and male. The two reporters I was able to speak with who cover indigenous issues in the North were not indigenous themselves. Lastly, although we speak of the Saami and the Inuit, it should be noted that most of the communication and laws focus on those people residing outside of Russia. Although Saami in Russia are members of the Saami Council and Inuit in Russia are members of the ICC (and both participate in meetings and decision-making) the socio-cultural and political realities faced under the Russian regime are very different than in other countries. Unfortunately, I am not able to adequately address those issues in this article. These limitations must be recognised and acknowledged as they certainly shaped the results of my research.

Tony Penikett (former premier of the Yukon), class presentation, Vancouver, BC, 26 October 2009; Rune Fjellheim (Director General of Saami parliament), personal communication, November 20, 2009.

Aqqualuk Lynge (president of the ICC – Greenland, former president of the international ICC and Arctic representative at the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Peoples), telephone interview with author, 27 October 2009.

For more information, please see information regarding the University of the Arctic and Riddu Riddu in addition to articles following Saami activities in the Nunatsiaq News http://www.nunatsiaq.com/.

Keck and Sikkink; Lightfoot, ‘Indigenous Global Politics’.

Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1999); Linda Alcoff, ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, Cultural Critique, 20 (1991): 5–32; Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash, Qualitative Methods in International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Patricia Hill Collins, ‘Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought’, in Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader, ed. Alison Jaggar, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Books, 1991/2008), 308–320; Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).

For more information on how law shapes norms and norms shape law, please refer to Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in Global Governance’, in Power in Global Governance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–32.

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart Publishers, 1971).

Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

As noted earlier, the Russian system and structure towards indigenous peoples is unique to that of North America and the Nordic countries, however both Inuit and Saami people have and continue to enjoy their cultural and linguistic rights if not economic self-determination. In addition there is increased pressure on Russia to recognise more political participation of the Saami and Inuit as well as Russia's responsibility to respect their rights as indigenous peoples http://www.galdu.org/web/index.php?odas=5010&giella1=eng.

Rune Fjellheim, telephone interview with author, November 20, 2009.

According to Eira, the Saami Council has conducted training sessions with indigenous peoples in Tanzania and Botswana and continues to work closely with Maori to reach other indigenous communities in the Global South (Olav Mathias Eira (vice president of the Saami Council, Norway), telephone, November 5, 2009).

Fjellheim, telephone interview, November 20, 2009.

Duane Smith, president of the ICC-Canada, personal communication, 3 November 2009.

Eira, personal communication, November 5, 2009. There is also information about the Baffin Island Reindeer experiment at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2008/04/03/saami-baffin.html.

For an interesting perspective on the role of language annihilation and its continued effect on the self-identity and self-esteem of Saami people in Norway, please see Henry Minde, ‘Assimilation of the Sami – Implementation and Consequences’, Galdu Cala: Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights, no. 3 (2005), http://www.galdu.org/english; as well as Ole Henrik Magga and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, ‘Life or Death for Languages and Human Beings – Experiences from Saamiland’, in Transcending Monolingualism: Linguistic Revitalisation in Education. Series Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity, ed. Leena Huss, Antoinette Camilleri Grima and Kendall King (Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 2003), 35–52.

For an in depth look at various historical governmental policies towards Saami please see Herald Gaski, ‘Saami Learning and Education and Saami Culture in Nordic Countries’, http://www.utexas.edu/courses/sami/dieda/history.htm. For a comprehensive look at policies facing Inuit in the Canadian context please see Frances Abele and Thierry Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era: The Strengths of Multilateral Internationalism’, Canadian Foreign Policy 13, no. 3 (2007): 45–63; or visit specific country pages on http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com.

Cache Collective, ‘Cache: Provisions and Productions in Contemporary Iglook Video’, in Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, ed. P. Wilson and M. Steward (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 74–88; and S. Pietikdainen, ‘To Breathe Two Airs: Empowering Indigenous Sami Media’, in Global Indigenous Media, ed., P. Wilson and M. Stewart (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 197–213, offer an excellent look into the socio-cultural and political worldviews of Inuit and Saami written by media makers of the respective communities themselves. If one is particularly interested in the familial/collective structure one may also wish to review the work of SLiCA at http://www.arcticlivingconditions.org. For more information on the educational – including lifelong education – component of Inuit culture please see http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/RedefiningSuccessInAboriginalLearning?Language=EN.

Personal communication with Lynge, telephone, 27 October 2009; and Eira, personal communication, 5 November 2009) in addition to the Inuit Circumpolar Declaration of Sovereignty, the Draft Nordic Saami Convention and the ICC and Saami Council's websites. For more information on the Canadian government's relationship with the Inuit and sovereignty, please see Michael Byers, Who Owns the Arctic? (Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre, 2009).

For in-depth information on the formalisation of interstate Saami activism please see John T. Solbakk, The Sami People – A Handbook (Karasjohka/Karasjok, Norway: Davvi Giri OS, 2006), 172–198; as well as Velo Pelka Lehota, The Sami People – Traditions in Translations, trans. Linna Weber Muller (Inari, Finland: Kustannus Puntsi Publisher, 2004). Velo L. Pelka's work, The Sami People – Traditions in Transition (2004).

Please see Harald Gaski, ed., Sami in a New Era – the Norwegian Experience (Karasjohka, Norway: Davvi Girji OS, 2000), 172–198; Harald Minde, ‘Assimilation of the Sami – Implementation and Consequences’, Galdu Cala: Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights 3 (2005), http://www.galdu.org/english; and Scott Forrest, ‘Indigenous self-determination in Finland: a case study in normative change’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, 5 March 2005, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p69386_index.html.

For more information please see Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

It is interesting to note that the process of assimilation of Inuit in Canada took place much later than that of First Nations peoples. ‘In contrast to the policies followed with respect to Indians in other parts of Canada, Dominion authorities did not attempt to assimilate, expropriate or otherwise disturb the Inuit, adopting instead the view that they would be best left to their existing way of making a living.’ This policy did, of course, change but not until World War II. Abele and Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era’, 50.

Ibid., 50.

Ibid., 51–5; Lynge, Eira and Duane Smith, President of the ICC – Canada, personal communication.

Fjellheim, telephone interview, my emphasis.

For an in depth look at the Finnish policies towards human rights, indigenous rights and conflicting norms of equality and law as manifest in its refusal to ratify ILO 169 please see Scott Forrest, ‘Indigenous Self-determination in Finland: A Case Study in Normative Change’ (working paper for the International Studies Association, 2005), http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=459221.

Eira, telephone interview, 5 November 2009.

Lynge, Smith, Eira, Fjellheim, personal communications; Chester Reimer (Reimer Consulting), telephone, 26 October 2009.

For more information on the Paddar case specifically, please see http://www.saamicouncil.net/?newsid=2688&deptid=2192&languageid=4&NEWS=1.

Eira, telephone interview.

Lynge, personal communication.

For more information on the role of state boundaries, please see the Draft Nordic Saami Convention, The Inuit Circumpolar Convention, Solbakk, The Sami People – A Handbook.

One example of this adaptation was the ICC and Saami Council's treatment of Russian Inuit and Saami populations. Although the Cold War made it politically untenable to have their participation in the early years of the organisations, as soon as the wall fell, both actively sought out and incorporated their Russian co-nations.

Smith and Eira, telephone interviews.

The full text of section 2.4 of the Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty states, ‘International and other instruments increasingly recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and representation in intergovernmental matters, and are evolving beyond issues of internal governance to external relations’. (See, for example: ICCPR, Art. 1; UNDRIP, Art. 3; Draft Nordic Saami Convention, Art. 17, 19; Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Art. 5.9.)

Acknowledgement of this ‘modelling’ can be seen at the opening of the Saami Parliament in Norway by the Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, Ms Victoria Tauli-Corpuz publicly praised the Saami Council (and the Saami as a people) for modelling and sharing and cooperative forms of advocacy for indigenous peoples as a whole. Please see http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii for more information.

Fjellheim, telephone interview.

Abele and Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era’, 47–9.

Ibid., 46–7.

Eira, telephone interview.

Ibid.

Abele and Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era’, 48.

Jane George (reporter, Nunatsiaq News), telephone, 6 November 2009.

Smith, telephone interview. One may also wish to look at the two chapters by Inuit and Saami media makers in Wilson and Stewart, Global Indigenous Media. Both chapters, written in collective spirit, not only provide an overview of current Inuit and Saami media, but directly address and detail the cooperative model of existence in both content choice and production. According to the authors, the main focus of the media is to preserve and teach culture through cooperative techniques, management and distribution while being keenly aware of the need to adapt the medium and teaching methods.

Lynge, personal communication.

Fjellheim, telephone interview, 20 November, 2009.

Linda Pemik (Academic Director for Exchange Programmes, Nunavut Arctic College), telephone interview, 17 November 2009.

Fjellheim, telephone interview.

Ibid. Although not law, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has codified many of the terms, concepts and demands that indigenous peoples have been struggling for and with for centuries.

Lynge, telephone interview.

Smith, telephone interview.

Fjellheim, telephone interview.

Douglas Sanders, ‘Background Information on the World Council of Indigenous Peoples: The Formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples’, April 1980, republished by Center for World Indigenous Studies, http://www.cwis.org.

Rainer Grote, ‘On the Fringes of Europe: Europe's Largely Forgotten Indigenous Peoples’, American Indian Law Review 31, no. 2 (2007): 425–43.

Ibid., 436–7.

George, personal communication, November 6, 2009.

As of now, only Norway is a party to ILO 169. Canada argues that the self-governing rights granted to Inuit via land-agreements are actually more beneficial to indigenous peoples than those granted by ILO 169. (Penikett, personal communication; Lynge, personal communication.) A similar argument has also been laid forth by the Saami in the negotiations for the Draft Nordic Saami Convention (Grote, ‘On the Fringes of Europe’). However, the lack of ratification has also been taken as a symbolic affront to indigenous rights (Eira personal communication; Forrest, Indigenous Self-determination'; Scott Forrest, ‘Territory and State–Sámi Relations’, 1997, http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/HistoryCulture/Sami/samisf.html (accessed 10 October 2009)); Finnish Sami Parliament, ‘Land Rights, Linguistic Rights and Cultural Autonomy for the Finnish Sami People’, Indigenous Affairs, no. 33/4 (July–December, 1997), http://www.arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/sami.html. Most recently the issue was publicly discussed again at the February 2008 conference on Saami Self Determination organised by the Resource Centre for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Saami University College, Galdu Cala – ‘Part I: Introduction’, Galdu Cala, No. 2.

Eira, telephone interview, 5 November 2009.

For a step-by-step approach to using international legal mechanisms for indigenous (primarily US Indian) rights claims please see Robert T. Coulter, ‘Using International Human Rights Mechanisms to Promote and Protect Rights of Indian Nations and Tribes in the United States: An Overview’, American Indian Law Review (2006/2007): 573–591.

Smith, telephone interview.

Lynge, telephone interview.

Ibid.

Abele and Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era’, 48.

The Saami Council and the ICC found a strange friend and advocate for the consensus model in America's historical reluctance to join formal, contentious driven, political bodies. For more information please see Evan T. Bloom, ‘Establishment of the Arctic Council’, The American Journal of International Law 93, no. 3 (1999): 712–22.

Ibid.; Eira, personal communication.

Fjellheim, telephone interview.

Sanders, ‘Background Information on the World Council of Indigenous Peoples’.

Lynge, telephone interview.

Ibid.

Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (New York: Cambridge Press, 2009); Lightfoot, ‘Indigenous Global Politics’; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

The importance and space to do such networking is further institutionalised at the highest international level: the UN meeting structures for convention-based committees, the Human Rights Council and the working group on indigenous peoples all build in strategic space for formal and informal lobbying. For more information please see R. Jones, ‘Legal Strategies for Cultural Survival and Human Rights’, Cultural Survival (Spring 1986), http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/legal-strategies-cultural-survival-and-human-rights; E. Lutz and N. Ledema, ‘Addressing Indigenous rights at the United Nations’, Cultural Survival (Fall 2004), http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/addressing-indigenous-rights-united-nations; and Maivan Clech Lam, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Self-determination and Territoriality', (chapter 2) in Human Rights in the World Community: Issue and Action, ed. R.P. Claude and B.H. Weston (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

Lynge, telephone interview.

Sanders, ‘World Information on the World Council of Indigenous Peoples’.

Ibid. It is also interesting to note that both Lynge and Eira mentioned the Port Alberni conference and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples as turning points. Eira however alluded to difficulties in the 1990s leading to it disbanding – these difficulties namely coming from the different political realities of some of the countries. This was hinted at by Sanders as well, namely the ongoing civil wars in Latin America and the difficulty for African representatives to attend.

Sanders, ‘World Information on the World Council of Indigenous Peoples’. This is confirmed based on the telephone interviews with both Lynge and Eira and Smith as well as personal communication (via telephone interviews) with Chester Reimer of Reimer Consulting (26 October 2009).

Abele and Rodon, ‘Inuit Diplomacy in the Global Era’.

Ibid.

Thomas Anderson, Jack Kruse and Birger Poppel, ‘Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic: Inuit, Saami and the Indigenous Peoples of Chukotka’, (SLICA), Arctic 55, no. 3 (September 2002): 310–17.

For more information on SLiCA please see http://www.arcticlivingconditions.org.

Promotional and informational website for the University of the Arctic http://www.uarctic.org/compactArticles.aspx?m=73.

Promotional and informational website for the University of the Arctic http://www.uarctic.org/singleArticle.aspx?m=75&amid=80.

Promotional and informational website for the University of the Arctic http://www.uarctic.org/compactArticles.aspx?m=73.

Governing Council of the University of the Arctic http://www.uarctic.org/orgs2full.aspx?group=GOvCouncil&title=Council&m=79.

Linda Pemik, personal communication, 20 November 2009.

Ibid.

Lena Susanne Gaup (former executive officer Saami University College), telephone, 17 November 2009.

Web article specifically introducing and explaining the North2North program http://www.uarctic.org/singleNewsArticle.aspx?m=40&amid=55.

Pemik, personal communication.

Gaup, personal communication.

Fjellheim, personal communication.

Gaup, personal communication.

Ibid.

‘About the Festival’ section of the Riddu Riddu website (English version), http://www.riddu.no/about-riddu-riu.21025.en.html.

Fjellheim, personal communication.

http://www.riddu.no/letter-from-the-governor-general-of-canada.4608266-21023.html.

Fjellheim, personal communication.

http://www.riddu.no/.

Eira, personal communication.

Fjellheim, personal communication.

Pemik, personal communication.