Indigeneity, Ethnicity, and the State: Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand

Abstract

This article draws on the politics of indigeneity to distinguish the claims of first occupancy from simple ethnic identity politics, illustrating that relative political marginalization in Australasia is not so much a function of minority status but of indigeneity itself. The politics of indigeneity's aim is to create political space for self-determination and a particular indigenous share in the sovereign authority of the nation-state itself. The Australasian states are compared with Fiji to demonstrate that the significance of historical constraints on political authority transcend the withdrawal of a colonial power and the restoration of collective indigenous majority population status.

Notes

1. Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005); Dominic O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism (Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2007); Karena Shaw, Indigeneity and Political Theory: Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political (London: Routledge, 2008).

2. Audra Simpson, “Paths Toward a Mohawk Nation: Narratives of Citizenship and Nationhood in Kahnawake,” in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton, and Will Sanders, eds., Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

3. Virginia Horscroft, “The Politics of Ethnicity in the Fiji Islands: Competing Ideologies of Indigenous Paramountcy and Individual Equality in Political Dialogue” (MPhil: University of Oxford, 2002).

4. Augie Fleras, “Politicising Indigeneity: Ethno-Politics in White Settler Dominions,” in Paul Havemann, ed., Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1999).

5. Fleras, “Politicising Indigeneity,” 187.

6. D. Ivison, P. Patton, and W. Sanders, “Introduction,” in D. Ivison, P. Patton, and W. Sanders, eds., Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

7. Ibid.; Maaka and Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity; O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism; Shaw, Indigeneity and Political Theory; James Tully, “Aboriginal Peoples: Negotiating Reconciliation,” in James Bickerton and Alain Gagnon, eds., Canadian Politics (Peterborough, Ontario: Hadleigh, 1999).

8. Jodi A. Byrd and Katharina C. Heyer, “Introduction: International Discourses of Indigenous Rights and Responsibilities,” Alternatives 33: 1 (2008).

9. Tully, “Aboriginal Peoples,” 223.

10. Jennifer Clarke, “Desegregating the Indigenous Rights Agenda,” Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 31: 122 (2006).

11. Frederico Lenzerini, “Sovereignty Revisited: International Law and Parallel Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples” (Paper presented at the an International Symposium A Modern Concept of Sovereignty: Perspectives from the US and Europe, University of Siena, 2005).

12. United Nations, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (New York: United Nations, 2007).

13. Justin Kenrick, “The Concept of Indigeneity—Discussion of Alan Barnard's ‘Kalahari Revisionism, Vienna and the ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Debate,’” Social Anthropology 14(1): 19–21 (2006).

14. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3.

15. The Treaty of Waitangi (1840), http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-treaty/english-text (accessed 18 April 2013).

16. D. Short, “Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia,” International Political Science Review 24(4): 491 (2003).

17. Jeremy Waldron, “Indigeneity?: First Peoples and Last Occupancy” (Lecture, 2002 Quentin Baxter Memorial Lecture, Victoria University of Wellington, 5 Dec. 2002).

18. United Nations, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (New York: Author, 2007).

19. Education Act 1989 (Wellington: GP Print).

20. Gillard, Julia in Natasha Robinson, “Push for English Causes Aboriginal Backlash,” The Australian (2008), http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24678230-12149,00.html(accessed 5 Dec. 2012).

21. Fleras, “Politicising Indigeneity,” 188.

22. Kerryn Pholi, Dan Black, and Craig Richards, Is “Close the Gap” A Useful Approach to Improving the Health and Wellbeing of Indigenous Australians? (Sydney: University of Sydney, 2009), 1.

23. I. Kant, Kant's Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 91.

24. New Zealand Maori Council v. Attorney-General, 1 N.Z.L.R. 642 (1987).

25. Waldron, “Indigeneity.”

26. O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism, 22; BERL Economics, The Asset Base, Income, Expenditure and GDP of the 2010 Maori Economy (Wellington: Berl Economics and Te Puni Kokiri, 2011).

27. Paul Reeves, Tomasi R. Vakatora, and Brij V. Lal, Towards A United Future: Report of the Fiji Constitution Review Commission, Parliament of Fiji, Parliamentary Paper No. 34 (1996).

28. Maaka and Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity; Tully, “Aboriginal Peoples.”

29. Maaka and Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity.

30. Waldron, “Indigeneity,” 1.

31. Kenrick, “The Concept of Indigeneity,” 19.

32. S. Ratuva, The Paradox of Multi-Culturalism: Managing Differences in Fiji's Syncretic State (Unpublished paper), 56.

33. Brij V. Lal, “Islands of Turmoil: Elections and Politics in Fiji,” in J. Fraenkel, S. Firth, and Brij V. Lal, eds., The 2006 Military Takeover in Fiji: a Coup to End All Coups? (Canberra: ANU e-Press and Asia Pacific Press, 2006), 239.

34. Ibid., 255.

35. F. Bainimarama, Fiji Times, 9 Jan. 2006.

36. R. Norton, “Understanding Fiji's Political Paradox,” in J. Fraenkel and S. Firth, eds., From Election to Coup in Fiji: The 2006 Campaign and Its Aftermath (Canberra: ANU e-Press, 2007), 417.

37. V. Naidu, “Draft Report Fiji Islands Country Profile on Excluded Groups” (Paper prepared for United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Suva, 2009).

38. Lal, “Islands of Turmoil,” 248.

39. F. Bainimarama, Draft Submission to Parliament on The Promotion of Reconciliation, Tolerance and Unity Bill 2005, Parliament of Fiji (2005).

40. Fleras, “Politicising Indigeneity,” 190.

41. Horscroft, “The Politics of Ethnicity,” 59.

42. Lenzerini, “Sovereignty Revisited,” 165.

43. See Statistics New Zealand, www.stats.govt.nz.

44. BERL Economics, The Asset Base, Income, Expenditure and GDP of the 2010 Maori Economy (Wellington: Berl Economics and Te Puni Kokiri, 2011).

45. Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and “Nation-Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 107.

46. Shaw, Indigeneity and Political Theory, 9.

47. O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism.

48. John Locke, Locke on Civil Government, ed. Henry Morley, 2nd ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1887).

49. See Akuilla Yabaki, “Indigenous Rights a Must,” Fiji Times, 23 Dec. 2008, http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=109646(accessed 14 Nov. 2009).

50. United Nations, Declaration on the Rights, Para. 46(1).

51. Robert Norton, “Reconciling Ethnicity and Nation: Contending Discourses in Fiji's Constitutional Reform,” The Contemporary Pacific 12(1): 83–122 (2000).

52. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, The Government of Canada's Approach to Implementation of the Inherent Right and the Negotiation of Aboriginal Self-Government (1995), http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/al/ldc/ccl/pubs/sg/sg-eng.asp (accessed 24 Dec. 2009).

53. Clarke, “Desgregating the Indigenous Rights Agenda,” 122.

54. See Mabo and Others v. Queensland (No. 2) (1992), http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/cases/cth/high_ct/175clr1.html?query=%7Emabo (accessed 10 April 2013).

55. Tully, “Aboriginal Peoples,” 223.

56. Richard Hill and Briggitte Bonisch-Brednich, “Politicizing the Past: Indigenous Scholarship and Crown-Maori Reparations Processes in New Zealand,” Social and Legal Studies 16(2): 163–81 (2007).

57. Erik Larson and Ronald Aminzade, “Nation-States Confront the Global: Discourses of Indigenous Rights in Fiji and Tanzania,” The Sociological Quarterly 48(4): 801–31 (2007).

58. Maaka and Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity.

59. The High Court of Australia, Mabo v. Queensland 29: 11.

60. The High Court of Australia, The Wik Peoples v. Queensland & Ors; the Thayorre People v. Queensland & Ors, available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth//hight_ct/1996/40.html

61. O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism, 6.