The biopolitics of resilient indigeneity and the radical gamble of resistance

* The title of this paper is inspired by Prozorov’s (2007, p. 76) description of resistance as a radical gamble.

Abstract

This paper probes the current empathetic common ground on indigeneity in international politics and views the care for indigeneity as the loving embrace of biopower. First, we argue that indigeneity is a target of particular biopolitical aspirations that resonate with the resilience discourse. By engaging in a critical discussion of resilience as a technique of neoliberal governance we identify adaptation, vulnerability and care as the building blocks of indigenous resilience. They entail a particular script on the proper indigenous subjectivity. Second, we discuss the ways in which resistance could be conceptualised in the context of this power that works through resilience. Resistance to biopower is a gamble that involves gains and losses that are impossible to assess beforehand. We ponder care, victimhood and hope as sites of resistance that could offer ways to view indigeneity in more political terms than those defined by resilience alone.

Keywords:

• Biopower
• indigeneity
• resilience
• resistance

Introduction

Our critical reflections on indigeneity have been prompted by something that has puzzled us: Why do certain understandings of indigenous peoples and indigeneity recur and why are there so few, if any, counter-representations? Our analyses from the contexts of the Arctic Council and the United Nations (UN) have revealed the shared and uncontentious conceptions. Indigenous peoples are active political agents, are protected by law, have gained global recognition and, for example, have special knowledge on the environment. Apparently, a great deal of improvement has taken place in the ways in which indigenous peoples and indigeneity are perceived in international politics. The victims of the colonial past are the agents of today’s world.

What the common ground on indigeneity seems to suggest is that these developments are and have been self-evidently desirable and straightforwardly empowering. We would claim, however, that there is nothing new where power over indigenous peoples is concerned, or no less power at work. In our view, the benign, empathetic common ground on indigeneity manifests the ‘loving embrace’ of biopower (Prozorov, 2007, p. 56). Power might have changed from being intimate to distant (Joseph, 2013) or from brutal to more subtle, but the aim – direct indigenous lives – persists. The shared understandings of indigeneity foster and steer indigenous life by signalling what the indigenous subject should be like.

The aim of the paper is twofold. First, we argue that indigenous peoples and indigeneity are targets of particular biopolitical measures designed to produce active, capable indigenous communities and individuals that seek to or are inclined to accommodate themselves and cope with forthcoming changes. These biopolitical aspirations resonate with the increasingly prominent ‘resilience’ discourse (Evans & Reid, 2014; Joseph, 2013; Welsh, 2013). Resilience has taken over indigeneity not only through institutions, such as the Arctic Council and the UN,¹ but in the common perceptions of indigeneity.

Our approach to examining the ways in which indigenous life, subjectivity and ‘being’ are governed today has been inspired by discussions of biopolitics. Historically, colonial practices have relied on biopolitical underpinnings that determined where the colonised lived, how they were to educate themselves and what practices they could retain. Whereas this earlier power over indigenous lives was manifested in its brutal bodily interventions (see e.g. Brigg, 2007; Scott, 2005), the current forms of biopower are more intricate and harder to detect. Critical analyses that probe and discuss the many facets of this subtler biopower trained on indigeneity are lacking. We view biopolitics as a force that seeks to administer, improve and eliminate life (e.g. Dillon, 2005; Foucault, 1981, 1988; Reid, 2006). While biopolitics pervades and governs all life, it affects indigenous lives in particular. What makes the indigenous case particular is, first, the continuation and renewal of measures that are directed at indigenous being and, second, the ways in which these measures are contradictory. The features that defined indigenous peoples as ‘savages’ before are the very features that are now evoked and celebrated. While the brutality of past measures lingers in indigenous lives, for example, in the form of lost languages and cultural legacies, new measures are being introduced that administer indigeneity and what it is perceived to be. Thus, the biopower trained over indigenous peoples has been, and continues to be, all-pervading.

In order to reveal some of the ways in which this biopower circumscribes indigeneity, we utilise contemporary critical accounts of resilience. We view resilience as a defining concept and condition that can help us understand the dimensions of this limitless power trained on indigenous peoples. We engage with a line of research that has viewed the concept of resilience as one way to govern lives and subjectivities (e.g. Evans & Reid, 2014; Joseph, 2013). Approaching biopower through the perspective of resilience enables us to gain insights into the subtle workings of that power.

The article discusses the ways in which resilience is brought to the fore in the context of indigeneity. We tease out three elements that are the building blocks of indigenous resilience: adaptation, vulnerability and care. All these elements – perceived as inherent in indigeneity – entail a particular script setting out what the proper and responsible indigenous being is like. At the same time, resilience, as a form of governance, draws a line between life that qualifies as authentically indigenous and life that does not (Evans & Reid, 2014).

The second aim of the article is to discuss the ways in which indigenous resistance could be conceptualised in the context of this loving embrace of biopower that works distinctively through resilience. The research probes the possibility of alternative and more nuanced indigenous subjectivities that would not be defined by resilience alone. In a Foucauldian understanding, there is no power without resistance. At the same time, it has been argued that political abilities are denied to resilient subjects of biopower, who only adapt (Evans & Reid, 2014, p. 36). Thus, for indigeneity to (re)gain its political capacities, resistance is imperative. However, if biopower is the care of all life ‘for the sake of all life’ (Prozorov, 2007, p. 56) how is resistance to be understood? How is it possible to engage in resistance against something that is perceived as being embodied within indigeneity itself?

Previous studies on indigenous peoples have focused on local events and have viewed resilience as a solution to the various challenges and situations that the peoples encounter (e.g. Forbes, 2013; Hovelsrud & Smit, 2010). In the case of climate change and its impacts, for example, resilience is portrayed as a strength of indigenous communities, a quality that enables them to cope with these impacts and to prosper. The aim of our article is, however to elaborate the concept of (bio)power and resistance in the context of indigeneity (on eco-indigenism, see Sissons, 2005, and on indigenous resurgence, see Corntassel, 2012, on vulnerability and resilience, see Sejersen, 2015). Here, we utilise the concept of resilience to unmask the exercise of power embedded in producing certain kinds of indigenous subjects. We offer a critical reflection on indigeneity, resilience and resistance with the aim of producing dissonance in the common ground, which we do by aligning ourselves with current critical discussions on resilience (e.g. Evans & Reid, 2013; Joseph, 2013; O’Malley, 2013; Schott, 2013; Walker & Cooper, 2011). A more critical view must be taken on global developments pertaining to indigeneity that laud themselves as being heartening, empowering and desirable. In line with this, we aim to open up space for those lacking counter-representations of indigeneity (Evans & Reid, 2014, p. 36). The power exercised in the indigenising of resilience can only be resisted by recognising it.

Empathetic biopolitics: the inexhaustible care for indigeneity

International politics has witnessed the rise of global awareness and concern for indigenous issues. There is a growing acknowledgement of indigenous rights (e.g. the UN Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples), encouragement of indigenous political participation (e.g. Smith, 2007) and praise for the environmental knowledge of indigenous peoples as the world grapples with a changing climate (e.g. Heinämäki, 2009). Both the UN and the Arctic Council have created particular structures of participation that enhance the involvement of indigenous peoples in their proceedings. The peoples’ role in these political arenas has been legitimised through the establishment of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in the UN and the status of Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. In addition, an inclusive parlance has emerged in the political statements delivered in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and in the science-policy documents published under the auspices of the Arctic Council. For example, the role of indigenous peoples is defined, by both the peoples themselves and the states involved, in terms such as ‘partnership’, ‘sitting at the same table’ and ‘working together’ with public authorities. In the context of environmental concerns, one sees statements emphasising that indigenous peoples are ‘custodians’ (Ki-Moon, 2008) of natural resources who have ‘a solemn stewardship duty’ (Davide, 2008) or, noting how indigenous peoples ‘are an invaluable resource and important partners in research’ and ‘demonstrate extensive knowledge about climate change in their daily lives’ (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment [ACIA], 2005, 77, 81).

In light of these institutional developments and the political rhetoric, if international politics is to claim credibility, legitimacy, political correctness and good governance, it needs to embrace indigenous peoples and indigeneity. This is the case with not only the UN or the Arctic Council, but also individual states, which need to take a stand on the recognition and acknowledgement of the rights of indigenous peoples and the injustices they have endured (see e.g. Lightfoot, 2013 on state apologies; and Joona, 2012, on state recognition of indigenous rights).

Through our research on indigeneity, questions of political participation, environmental issues and governance, we have concluded that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and their agendas is bound to certain kinds of understandings of what indigeneity allegedly is. At the same time as the right to participate is accorded to the peoples, there are strings attached. As we have noted, the position of indigenous peoples as actors in environmental politics presumes that the peoples have an intimate connection to the land and possess knowledge that needs to be defined as special (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2013). Cameron (2012, 108) notes that where the use of natural resources and indigenous peoples’ participation are concerned, the agency accorded to ‘local communities’ is limited to having a say on the issues relating to livelihoods that are traditionally perceived as local, such as herding and gathering. Yet, indigenous views are not solicited on issues concerning non-renewable resources despite the fact that these resources have an equally strong footing in the daily life of indigenous communities.

We consider the inclusion of indigenous peoples and indigenous issues in international political arenas as one of the political measures aimed at indigeneity that foster capacities perceived as inherently indigenous. We argue that indigeneity is governed by these measures, however well-meaning they may seem. We view them as subtle forms of biopower that nurture and care for indigenous living and ‘being’. Power has morphed from an oppressive and limiting force to take on caring and loving forms, in which interventions in human lives are validated on empathetic grounds (Dillon, 2005; Ojakangas, 2005; Prozorov, 2007). Indigenous peoples, who have faced the brutal and violent actions of colonialism, now find themselves surrounded by recognition, acceptance and praise. There is a continuous pastoral power that deems it necessary to address indigenous issues and aims to protect indigenous life (see also Hale, 2002; Morgensen, 2011; Povinelli, 2011, 25–26; Scott, 2005). This paternal concern over indigeneity is a deeply historical phenomenon, as Morgensen (2011) notes, and the interventions made in the name of guiding indigenous peoples have varied. Whereas early colonial power took the form of a paternal educator demanding a certain kind of indigenous subjectivity and promising ‘salvation and civilization’ in return (Morgensen, 2011, 62), the paternal concern for indigeneity today not only celebrates but nurtures the exceptionality of indigenous peoples. As the rhetoric that we have analysed in the contexts of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Arctic Council illustrates, international politics draws heavily on the particularity of indigeneity. Indigenous peoples are seen as having an ‘intimate’ connection with, ‘particular’ knowledge on, and ‘harmonious’ relations with, nature and have preserved nature in ‘perfect balance’ (e.g. ACIA, 2005; Briceño, 2008; Ventura, 2008). This well-meaning fostering and valorisation of what are considered the salient features of indigeneity is an important means through which power is exercised over indigenous peoples today.

The extent to which this current inclusion of indigenous peoples works to govern indigeneity has, however, been a non-issue, that is, a topic or a question that has remained unproblematic and unquestioned (Lemke, 2008). In our view, indigenous peoples, being different and ‘others’, become specific targets of biopower. The peoples themselves also take part in reinforcing the perceptions of what they ought to be.

As the previous critical studies, which are rather few in number, have discussed, supporting indigenous life, maximising its potential and nurturing what indigeneity is perceived to be play out in multiple and recurring political, legal and local practices (on cultural politics, see Sissons, 2005; on representations of indigeneity in the context of climate change, see Cameron, 2012; Martello, 2008). There is a larger logic at work, whose component practices are difficult to pinpoint, and studies broaching the issues on this level are lacking. We have chosen to address these nurturing techniques through discussions of biopower. It is precisely the subtlety of these techniques – ones that work through myriad interventions reaching into the most mundane areas of life – that calls for a biopolitical approach (Prozorov, 2007, p. 59; on micro-practices, see Dillon, 2005, p. 42). Such an approach has yet to be applied to the issue of indigeneity in international politics.

These recurring practices, in combination, rely on, expect and affirm a particular and distinguishable indigeneity. What we see globally is a predisposition to an indigeneity which is the object of ‘continual manipulation’ (Evans & Reid, 2014, p. 30) and interventions in the name of care. The power of biopolitics, however, lies not only in its overarching and tempting promise of care, but also, and ultimately, in its violent nature. As Dillon (2005, p. 44) insightfully notes, ‘the promotion, protection and investment of the life of individuals and populations – elides the issue of being cared to death’. The empathy of biopower perpetrates violence against indigeneity: it defines proper indigeneity and features/elements to be cast aside. Thus, the loving embrace of biopower might mean a slow suffocation for indigenous ‘beings’, who are disqualified as inauthentic (on unbearable and suffocating biopower, see Prozorov, 2007, p. 59).

As critical authors have noted, a specific feature of caring biopower is its distribution of life into that to be fostered and that to be contained (Dillon, 2005; Duffield, 2011a; Reid, 2006). The calculations as to what constitutes proper life and disposable/disqualified life are based on a neoliberal logic. In Duffield’s (2011a, p. 14) words: ‘Life is speciated according to the usefulness, irrelevance or threat it represents for the infrastructural and biospheric systems necessary for capitalism’s widening cycles of reproduction, consumption and accumulation’. Similarly, the global recognition of indigeneity is a neoliberal biopolitical technique that sustains and encourages indigeneity that is perceived worth ‘investing in’ (Dillon, 2005, p. 42). We claim that the indigenous subject seen as worth investing in is a resilient subject.

The never-ending care for indigeneity manifests itself in the desire for resilient subjects. The contemporary proper indigenous being is resilient; indigeneity has become circumscribed by the expectation that it be able to fit and adapt to its surroundings. This biopolitical expectation assumes and requires a neoliberal subject that nurtures its capacity to adapt in its attempt to survive in a world that is insecure by design (Evans & Reid, 2014; see also Joseph, 2013, p. 42).

The resilient indigenous

Indigeneity and resilience are inextricably linked in contemporary global perceptions. In our view, there is a politics underpinning this combination (Walters, 2012, p. 41). We argue that there are three simultaneous understandings of indigeneity and indigenous peoples that are tantamount to considering the peoples resilient: adaptation, vulnerability and care. These are understood as core features of indigeneity. By repeating and reproducing these understandings, power is exercised over indigeneity. Tellingly, indigenous peoples themselves appropriate and reinforce these understandings.

We engage in a critical discussion of resilience which views resilience as a technique of neoliberal governance that supports the idea of ‘subjects as autonomous and responsible’ (Evans & Reid, 2014; Furedi, 2008; Joseph, 2013, p. 40; Welsh, 2013). For us, the empathetic biopower over indigeneity becomes encapsulated in resilience that manifests itself in the political discourses portraying indigenous peoples as adaptive, vulnerable and caring. Resilience embraces the capacities of indigenous peoples as adaptive subjects while suggesting that the peoples are not agents of change, but subjects who will react and accommodate themselves – yet again – to existing or forthcoming events.

Resilience has been traditionally understood not as anything to do with politics, but as a condition that assumes the ability of subjects to ‘rebound or resume’ their original state ‘following exposure to a stressor’ (Welsh, 2013, p. 2). However, critical approaches argue that the seemingly neutral nature of resilience masks the neoliberal political dimension of the concept. In neoliberal terms, uncertainty is not a given natural condition or event that one reacts to, but a constructed constant condition on the basis of which certain interventions are justified. The politics of resilience relies on an insistence that we train our concern with the world on our own subjectivity (Joseph, 2013; Welsh, 2013).

Indeed, Evans and Reid (2014, p. 47) state how resilience ‘segregates life on account of its vulnerable qualities’. Indigenous peoples in particular, are relegated to the category of the vulnerable. The constant care of the ‘vulnerable’ has shaped and still continues to affirm the perceived ‘core values’ and features of indigeneity. While the well-meaning orientation of this care is designed to emancipate, it expects indigeneity to be reproduced as an object in need of care. The current discussions on global environmental issues provide a patent example of the tensions and contradictions of the role(s) of indigeneity. Indigenous peoples are simultaneously expected to retain their vulnerability in the face of environmental threats and to bear the responsibility of saving the planet on the basis of their environmental knowledge. As Evans and Reid (2014, p. 9) summarise: ‘Less is said about the ways in which catastrophic imaginaries author new forms of planetary stewardship which, ironically, tend to apply to native populations in resource-rich areas, who have contributed the least to environmental degradation’.

Adaptive indigeneity

In our previous joint work, we have critically reflected on the requirement of adaptation imposed on indigenous peoples and indigeneity. This expectation manifests itself in various forms. After analysing research materials from the Arctic Council and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, we have identified three distinct technologies of adaptation: a call for agency, a sustaining of authenticity and a politics of placation. All these technologies of adaptation place expectations on indigeneity (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2014).

Indigenous peoples are required to be empowered and to govern themselves. This is emphasised in the call for agency that builds on the active role of the peoples by dint of their indigeneity. For example, the science-policy rhetoric of the Arctic Council describes participation by the indigenous peoples as a form of ‘co-management’. This has been proffered as ‘institutional experimentation’ and an ‘innovative approach’ in governing development (Arctic Human Development Report [AHDR], 2004, 237). In the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues the indigenous peoples have a legitimate and established position, yet they criticise the work of the Forum (Corntassel, 2007; Lindroth, 2011). They find themselves between a rock and a hard place there; they need to conform to political structures and cultures defined by others because they would be ill-advised to exclude themselves from the political forums in which their concerns are addressed. The peoples are made responsible for articulating their agendas. As the political parlance in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues sums up their contribution: the ‘involvement … of indigenous peoples is indispensable’ (MacDonald, 2008) and their ‘increasing participation’ (Caron, 2008) is of extreme importance.

Thus, in the context of indigenous peoples’ agency, adaptation means that the peoples need to sustain and reproduce their authenticity and distinctiveness in order to gain recognition and become entitled to certain rights and positions. Inspired by Butler (2004, p. 67), we have termed the peoples’ need to adapt to their own exceptionality their ‘indefinite detention’. At the same time, indigenous peoples need to adapt to changes in the environments in which they live and work. Here, one can see a politics of placation at work: while indigenous peoples are expected to adapt to changes, they receive various forms of compensation for doing so.

In our view, biopower operates in and through requirements of adaptation placed on indigenous peoples and indigeneity; in the vocabularies of international politics, indigeneity is seen through the prism of adaptation. Adaptation is portrayed as something that defines indigeneity and secures and saves indigenous lives as much as it saves others. Indigenous peoples ‘with their traditional knowledge, learned how to cope with changing conditions’ (MacDonald, 2008). They have the ‘skills’ to adapt (Caron, 2008), yet there continues to be ‘a growing need to respond effectively to fast changes in economic, legal and political systems’ (AHDR, 2004, 230). Thus, the logic of resilience is inscribed in the need for adaptation. Resilience, as heightened awareness, suggests that in a world of insecurity we can survive ‘through knowing how to adapt’ (Joseph, 2013, p. 43). Likewise, it is up to individuals and indigenous communities to take responsibility for their social and economic well-being. The world does not provide an alternative: indigenous peoples and indigeneity are in need of adaptation whether it is a question of accommodating their cultural features (e.g. language and traditional practices) or being relocated (e.g. as might occur when natural resources are extracted in their traditional living areas).

The paradox of indigenous peoples adapting, and thus performing their resilience, is that the adaptation is never-ending. In our previous analysis, we have identified different ways in which adaptation circumscribes indigeneity (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2014). Despite the fact that indigenous peoples now exercise rights of political participation, are able to adapt to changes taking place in their surroundings or have succeeded in preserving their cultural distinctiveness, their need to accommodate remains. As political agents, they have a separate slot reserved for them. In their surroundings, change is ever present and often brought on by outsiders. In the midst of these changes, indigeneity is expected to retain its recognisability as something different and authentic. The power of the requirement of adaptation thus lies in the indigenous peoples not being the ones to set the terms of adaptation. No matter how skilfully indigenous peoples adapt, a significant range of indigenous values, behaviours and practices are still dismissed or excluded: indigenous peoples always remain Others and excluded, in need of adjusting themselves (see also Brigg, 2007; Thisted, 2013).

Vulnerability – peoples under threat

The common way of presenting indigeneity is in terms of risks and threats. The image of victims is also appropriated by indigenous peoples themselves. In the case of climate change indigenous peoples are represented as ‘most affected’ (Olsson, 2008). Their survival is ‘at risk’ and their lives are considered ‘particularly and immediately’ threatened (Bastidas, 2008). As the UN rhetoric describes their situation, they are ‘the poorest and most marginalized groups in the world’ (Magga, 2002). The role assigned to the peoples is that of (local) vulnerable populations:

It is always said that indigenous peoples are among the poorest of the poor and that they belong to the most vulnerable sectors of society. And yet it is also known that the indigenous peoples live in territories that are very rich with natural resources. (Indigenous Caucus, 2002)

According to Fineman (2013), vulnerability is a universal condition of human beings, whereas resilience is particular. Her view stems from the fields of law and society: resilience is descriptive of the institutions, such as the UN, that we build in response to vulnerability. In this perception, resilience is the counter point to vulnerability and societal institutions are ‘assets’. However, in our view, the mere existence of institutions that welcome indigenous agendas, such as the UN and the Arctic Council, has not reduced the vulnerability of the peoples. The formal structures of international political forums, for example, have not been built on the basis of the peoples’ needs or vulnerabilities. Accordingly, the governing that claims to improve the conditions of the peoples has, in fact, sustained their vulnerability. Evans and Reid (2014, p. 21) also note that vulnerability is not a universally shared experience. It is a condition that is only presumed and assigned to some.

From a biopolitical perspective, the introduction of the concept of vulnerability is an act of power. The concept, originating with the study of natural hazards and poverty (Adger, 2006; Winograd, 2007), has been adopted widely in social scientific research and politics (Furedi, 2008). It is used to bring into being and ‘foretell’ (Reid, 2012) resilient indigenous subjectivity. Indigenous peoples are addressed as ‘a particular target group’ – helpless and in need of ‘support’ (Furedi, 2008, p. 655). Instead of empowering indigenous peoples, the emphasis on vulnerability portrays them as objects of events and processes that are already taking place or about to happen. The peoples are deemed to be subjects who will react and accommodate themselves, once again, to inevitable future changes.

The vulnerability discourse is integral to resilience; it is a presupposed state. In the world of insecurity, vulnerability is a ‘defining condition of existence’ and the making of helpless victims at the mercy of their surroundings is ‘strategically embraced’ (Evans & Reid, 2014, p. 21; Furedi, 2008, pp. 652, 658). Vulnerability is used biopolitically not to solve or eliminate risks, but to draw on, enhance and exploit a person’s subjectivity:

To be at risk assigns to the person a passive and dependent role. To be at risk is no longer about what you do – it is about who you are. It is an acknowledgement of powerlessness – at least in relation to that risk. Increasingly, someone defined as being at risk is seen to exist in a permanent condition of vulnerability. (Furedi, 2008, p. 656; see also Drichel, 2013)

The irony of the predisposition of indigenous subjects to vulnerability also lies in the brutality of the past. The vulnerability discourse, while claiming to emancipate the peoples and to redeem the wrongdoings of the past, draws on measures that were carried out in the name of civilising ‘savages’. Colonialism has produced vulnerable indigenous subjects not only in words, but in flesh and blood as well. The ultimate violence of caring biopower, masked in the vulnerability it embraces, is that it now assumes and requires resilience on the part of those deemed vulnerable.

The caretakers

Care and compassion are qualities that resonate with the common ground of how indigeneity is perceived. ‘Care for future generations’, ‘sustainable lifestyles’, ‘harmony with nature’, preserving the environment ‘in balance’ and a ‘stewardship duty’ all feature in descriptions of indigeneity. We do not doubt the genuine care and worry that indigenous peoples have for their living environments. From a critical perspective, and arguing that the common perception of indigeneity is that of a caring culture, we view assigning indigenous peoples the role of caretakers as one of the ways in which biopower imposes resilience. The ideals of indigenous peoples as caretakers embodies the same logic as adaptation and vulnerability: the peoples have to ‘go with the flow’, to accept the conditions given and ‘options’ available. It is in the face of environmental degradation that caretaking indigeneity is evoked. It is here that indigeneity is valued because ‘indigenous observations and perspectives offer great insights’ (ACIA, 2005, p. 62). It is noted that the peoples can ‘certainly guide us to making informed decisions on mitigation and adaptation’ and that it is ‘of importance to not only view the indigenous and local communities as victims but more so as valuable agents of change’ (MacDonald, 2008). Once again, power is embedded in the ways in which certain features of indigeneity become valorised at a given time. For example, traditional indigenous knowledge lacked recognition for a long time, especially in the case of traditional ecological knowledge, and even now when that knowledge is praised, it is not fully included due to its supposedly irrational nature (Irwin, 1995, p. 131).

The peoples’ special relationship to nature and their environmental knowledge bind their destiny to resilience. The logic that obtains here places the peoples in/close to nature and thus assumes that they are able to observe it and adjust their way of life accordingly. The violence of empathetic biopower is entailed in this in two ways. First, the nature of indigeneity as caretaking affirms an understanding of indigeneity as inherently traditional. Indigenous peoples are assumed to be living in non-urban settings, engaging in certain nature-based livelihoods and possessing knowledge than is handed down through the generations. For many indigenous peoples, this is not the reality. They have resettled, willingly or by force, or the continuity of generations has been cut, for example, due to the loss of language, imposition of non-indigenous education (e.g. boarding schools) or other negative developments. Thus, the image of indigenous peoples as caretakers relies on very essentialist notions of indigeneity. Second, by allowing and encouraging, in a loving manner, indigenous peoples to embrace their role as caretakers, the focus turns from the world outside to indigeneity as subjectivity. The rhetoric of caretaking does not raise the question of where the environmental degradation or the threatening changes originate which indigenous peoples’ care must successfully address. The caretakers role that the peoples are assigned cements indigenous life as ‘endlessly extendable, fit and adaptable’, (Dillon, 2005, p. 42) and therefore resilient.

Resistance: sites of gambling

The enticement that adaptation, vulnerability and care offer for indigenous peoples is the position of a subject that is ‘aware’ (Joseph, 2013). All these three concepts draw on common perceptions of the essence of indigeneity. It seems that the biopower over indigeneity that manifests itself in resilience is all-encompassing and devours everything. It operates by placing on indigeneity the continuous demand of being tenacious. While doing so, it has also enticed the peoples to drawn on and utilise their alleged subjectivity as vulnerable, adaptive and caring beings. As a result, it is very difficult to escape or not to become defined by the empathetic care of biopower. One is ‘cared to death’, as Dillon poignantly notes (Dillon, 2005).

What has puzzled us is the strange simultaneous co-existence of these exponents of resilience – vulnerability, adaptation and care – as positive features that indigenous peoples identify with and as a complex of power that governs indigeneity. As such, the self-identification of the peoples as resilient subjects is a logical result of the neoliberal endeavour to govern the peoples. But, where are the cracks and contradictions in this power that suggest it is a suspiciously neat and simplistic image of indigeneity? If power always entails resistance, how are we to perceive resistance when power operates through something that is embodied within indigeneity itself?

We do not aim or claim to identify specific moments or events when biopower is resisted, nor do we seek to offer advice on how to mount such resistance. Rather, we undertake to discuss and reflect on resistance on a conceptual level. In our view, there are several considerations for indigeneity – as a complex of histories, traditions, expectations and self-identifications that is used and (re)claimed politically – in resisting empathetic biopower. First, as we have argued above, the never-ending adaptation that takes place on others’ terms leads to death. This might mean a part of a culture, a traditional custom or, in the end, an entire culture. Second, as discussed above, the ideal of resilient indigenous subjects sustains a particular kind of indigeneity, indigeneity that fits expectations of it being vulnerable, adaptive and caretaking. It does not take into account or recognise those ways of being that do not exhibit the expected essentialised features of indigeneity. Third, a resilient subject is a drifting subject, not an agent of change. As long as indigenous peoples are reduced to resilient beings, they will not be political. Indigeneity cannot harness its political potential if it is only perceived as something that merely fits in, adapts and extends itself (Duffield, 2011a, p. 14; Reid, 2012).

Thus, if we are to see indigeneity as something more nuanced, we need to acknowledge and become aware that there is ‘something extra’ (Grove, 2014, p. 625) in it and something that exceeds the frame of resilient indigeneity. Identifying this something extra would indicate a crack in the loving care of indigeneity and signal resistance. It is an instance of engaging in a ‘radical gamble’, as Prozorov notes, in which ‘refusal exposes living beings to dangers that they were spared by virtue of the biopolitical embrace’ (Prozorov, 2007, p. 76). This gamble involves gains and losses that are impossible to assess beforehand. For indigeneity this radical gamble means the refusal to entertain the loving concern that biopower occasions. Our reflections have led us to ponder care, victimhood and hope as ‘sites’ in which this gamble takes place.

In terms of care, vulnerability exposes one simultaneously to being wounded and cared for (Drichel, 2013). Indigeneity, inseparable as it is from vulnerability, calls for care and concern. Prozorov argues that in the world of loving biopower an attitude of indifference to biopower and the refusal of its care is resistance (Prozorov, 2007, pp. 62–63). Would the refusal to be cared for equal resistance for indigeneity and, if so, what is the care that indigeneity would be refusing? In international politics, for example, in the UN and the Arctic Council, one of the prime ways in which the care for indigeneity manifests itself is the call for active indigenous agency. To be indifferent to this call, and thus reject the demand for resilient indigeneity, could be perceived as indigenous peoples ‘moving away’ from state affirmation and the structures of their colonisers towards practices of their own communities (Alfred, 2005; Corntassel, 2012; Coulthard, 2008). The stakes in this gamble are, on one hand, access to certain political arenas and, on the other, an opportunity to set one’s own agendas.

In addition, from the perspective of care the role of global caretakers assigned to indigenous peoples marks the peoples as responsible for the future, especially with regard to nature. As resilient subjects, the peoples are expected to engage in and report to different efforts to come to terms with local and regional climate processes. Their traditional knowledge is rhetorically embraced, yet to date still often excluded. In the end, is indigeneity then required to move away from the one-sided perception of it as caring for nature in order to resist the biopower that seeks to cast it as such? If resilient indigeneity is perceived as something that cares for the future and environments, could an attempt to refuse the embrace of biopower lead to an apparent refusal on the part of indigenous peoples to care?

Victimhood is another site that could open up avenues for resistance. As Prozorov states ‘biopolitical resistance is a permanent and possibly never-ending process of confrontation rather than a momentary emancipatory event’ (Prozorov, 2007, p. 77). At the same time, Schott critically notes how the discourses of resilience make vulnerability a quality of a subject. This quality signals ‘an abstract lack’, a lack in the subject that is removed from specific events and interactions; ‘it assumes either that there is no unfinished business from the past or that such business puts no claims on the present’ (Schott, 2013, pp. 213–214). To recognise the possibility of political action in vulnerability, she suggests ‘retaining the concept of victim and mining it for its critical resources’ (Schott, 2013, p. 218).

For indigenous peoples, victimhood has been and continues to be a permanent state of existence. An indigenous subject is a victim of the past as well as the present. The indigenous peoples’ political and legal claims and actions derive legitimacy from their status as victims. Recently, however, it has become more and more common to talk about indigenous peoples in positive terms. This means that the term ‘victim’ is either not used or, if used, is toned down. The victims of the past are today’s active agents that are recognised as vulnerable, yet as possessing an enormous capability to adapt and survive.

Would recasting and reclaiming victimhood – as a quality inscribed in indigeneity – offer the peoples opportunities for resistance? The critical concept of victim could expose, and thus require a response to, the unevenly distributed and encountered violence that is embedded in neoliberal discourses of resilience. For indigenous peoples, who have more ‘unfinished business’ from the past than most, overlooking their victimhood and proffering adaptability and empowerment are already forms of violence. Could it constitute resistance merely to declare oneself a victim and what would be at stake in such a declaration? It seems that the subjectivity that victimhood offers may not differ much from that of the resilient subject that is assumed not to be the agent of change, but to constantly accommodate itself. The current praise for resilient and active indigeneity requires, at least seemingly, that indigenous peoples be consulted in, for example, environmental questions that concern them. In this context, indigenous peoples are considered holders of historical environmental knowledge and as invaluable observers of current changes. If indigeneity refused to play down its victimhood, would it lose the seeming recognition it now has? Or would it recover its political potential?

Another way of conceptualising indigenous resistance to resilience could be through hope. What resilience suggests is that subjects merely react to conditions that are already settled and seem depoliticised. Life is depicted as constant insecurity. However, Miyazaki’s method of hope offers an alternative address on this insecurity (Miyazaki, 2004). By drawing on the status, knowledge and history of indigenous peoples, he describes the persistent hope that drives the efforts of the peoples to regain what has historically belonged to them. Despite long-standing struggles and continuous setbacks, the peoples have retained their hope, which finds its expressions in their political and legal actions to adduce evidence of this dispossession. Through hope, indigenous peoples refuse to view the world as already settled for them. Accordingly, the actions that result from this refusal enable the peoples to retain their role as agents that can change their conditions.

Hope is a force that drives peoples forward; it motivates action and sustains an opportunity to engage in alternative ways of being. However, the promise that this hope entails may never be fulfilled. What is at stake for indigenous peoples is that, for example, in reclaiming their land, hope might sustain their efforts to prove their ownership. But it may well be that the proof of this ownership will never be attained or be sufficient. Hope carries potential for change, but a risk is involved in the contingency that this potential will ever materialise. Hope never dies, but one might die while hoping. As Povinelli (2011, p. 190) critically notes, the ‘incitement to wait, to be patient … is part and parcel of how power is organized’ today. The promise of something better sustains hope, but at the same time, it stems from a neoliberal biopolitical need to persevere as ‘the evidence will not be in for quite some time’ (Povinelli, 2011, p. 191). The expectation to ‘persist in potentiality’ (Povinelli, 2011, p. 128) is only assigned to some and its uneven distribution marks an exercise of power.

In sum, care, victimhood and hope as sites of resistance could offer ways in which indigeneity could be viewed in more political terms. Enabling agencies other than that borne of mere resilience entails fundamental risks, risks that are direct consequences of the refusal of the biopolitical care for indigeneity and the insistence of that politics on (re)producing a certain kind of indigeneity. The radical gamble of resistance is a gamble in which indigeneity itself is at stake.

Conclusions

As we see it, the loving care of biopower has taken over indigeneity in international politics; this is a power that indigenous peoples cannot escape. As this paper has discussed, one of the ways in which this loving embrace can be detected is through the lens of the concept of resilience. In our view, there is a script setting out what the proper and responsible indigenous being is like. The subjectivity attached to indigeneity is that of the subject that copes and is inclined to accommodate itself. These features resonate with neoliberal agendas of resilience.

We have identified three features that are inextricably attached to indigeneity: being adaptive, vulnerable and caring. Indigenous peoples are expected to adapt and they also emphasise their own capacity to cope with changes. The need for adaptation is never-ending and regardless of how well the peoples adapt, they remain excluded. Vulnerability is another defining condition of resilient indigeneity. The current embrace of this vulnerability is an acknowledgement of powerlessness that draws on indigeneity as subjectivity that reacts and accommodates itself. Hence, the aim is not to solve or remove this vulnerability. The understanding of indigenous peoples as caretakers is also an exponent of the ideal of the resilient indigenous subject. Indigenous peoples are deemed custodians of the environment and future generations. Again, indigeneity becomes extendable and malleable.

We have engaged with these features through critical discussions on resilience. The resilience discourse is a form of biopower that is in line with ‘processes of remedial abandonment’ (Duffield, 2011b, p. 763). By settling for vulnerability, adaptability and care, indigeneity ensures itself access and entitlement to political, legal and moral remedies. Indigenous peoples are the ones who need to claim equal rights, state recognition, opportunities to participate, access to land and resources and, for example, self-determination. The underlying assumption is that the peoples lack these rights or entitlements. This role of ‘claimant’ reflects the exclusion of indigeneity: indigenous peoples are the exceptions, those in need of special measures and remedies. However, once their predicament is remedied, the peoples are left to their own devices to cope. In our view, this remedial approach marks indigenous peoples not as agents of change but as those who simply adjust, thus sapping indigeneity of its political potential. We have suggested that if indigenous peoples are to reclaim this potential, an alternative conceptual discussion on resistance is needed.

Power and resistance are ubiquitous. Resistance does not necessarily describe a progressive process. Where resistance is mounted, something may be held back, diverted or yielded to; but, by the same token, power relations may remain unshaken (McWhorter, 2013, p. 68). Accordingly, indigenous resistance should not be seen only as a straightforward opposition or activism that can be pinpointed. Fine-tuned and subtle practices of resistance hold more relevance and currency in today’s biopolitical world. We align ourselves with Butler, who notes, within the legal framework, that we need other languages to address the events that concern us, ways of ‘thinking about how we are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well’ (Butler, 2004, p. 24). New words are also needed to conceptualise indigenous resistance. The neoliberal resilience discourse does not do justice to the unfinished business that indigenous peoples have from the past nor does it recognise the current deprivation and dispossession that being a resilient indigenous subject entails.

The article has reflected on the possibility of alternative concepts for indigenous resistance within the insecure design of today’s world that deems indigeneity resilient. In this insecure world, where indigeneity is cared for to death, resistance is a radical gamble involving unpredictable gains and losses. We have pondered care, victimhood and hope as sites of this gamble. All these three sites offer new words which allow us to discuss indigeneity as more than merely resilient. What is at stake in this gamble is access to certain political arenas, status as active agents and great hopes that may go unfulfilled. However, by rejecting care, embracing victimhood and sustaining hope indigeneity can redeem its politics, enabling it to set its own agendas, to reclaim a past for which the world today needs to be held accountable and, ultimately, to refuse to take the world as already settled for it.

Notes on contributors

Marjo Lindroth is a researcher of international relations at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Her research interests include questions of indigeneity and governance in international politics.

Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen is a researcher at the Unit for Gender Studies, University of Lapland. Her research focuses on sustainable development, particularly its social dimension, and intersections of gender and ethnicity.

Both Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen are members of the Arctic Centre’s research group Northern Political Economy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* The title of this paper is inspired by Prozorov’s (2007, p. 76) description of resistance as a radical gamble.

1. The empirical examples used in this paper derive from our respective research materials collected in the contexts of the Arctic Council and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. These materials include statements delivered by representatives of indigenous peoples’ organisations, states and UN agencies in the sessions of the Permanent Forum and science-policy reports published under the auspices of the Arctic Council.