The Inuit and Sovereignty: The Case of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and Greenland (original) (raw)
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Rearticulating Sovereignty in the Arctic, Examining an Inuit Claim to Complementary Sovereignty
The motivation of this project is to revisit and reconsider the central concept of sovereignty within International Relations. From a social, historical and discourse-embedded standpoint, it will be argued that the known conception and narrative of sovereignty as tied to the Westphalian nation state, comprises only one definition of several other autonomous uprising and contesting loci of sovereignty in our contemporary transforming and globalised world. Thus, the concept of sovereignty as inherently bound to a demarcated territory and authority of the nation state needs reconsideration in the aim of exploring more suitable ways to describe and conceptualise emerging non-state agency and polities in our current globalised world order. Deconstructing sovereignty into the elements of territory, population, authority and recognition provides a useful framework for understanding the significance of transnational non-state polities’ claim to sovereignty. An examination the sovereignty claim of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, functions as an empirical example, possibly indicating new ways in which transnational and non-state polities are altering known conceptions of sovereignty within International Relations. The Inuit Circumpolar Council’s claim to sovereignty consequently exhibit how the concept of sovereignty is best understood as transformative by nature rather than static or insignificant.
This dissertation examines the role of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) as a case study for the ways in which non-state actors are changing previous conceptions of sovereignty in the study of International Relations. This dissertation explores the ways in which sovereignty, as demarcated by a territorially bounded state, is becoming only one dimension of a new locus of sovereignty. Legitimate sovereignty has been transferred from the sole discretion of the state to the domain of existing non-state and emerging institutions. As an institution, the ICC has attained both Arctic domestic and international power and influence. Yet, its legitimacy is derived through an ongoing historical narrative of what it means to be 'indigenous' and 'Inuit' within international politics. The dissertation focuses on three different yet overlapping levels of analysis. Specifically, these levels are (1) the domestic ---Inuit political identity construction in Canada, Greenland, and ...
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This article engages the ongoing theoretical debates in IR through a re-examination of sovereignty as traditionally understood. Despite a growing theoretical turn in IR towards more general investigations of institutions, much uncertainty and ambiguity as to how to best incorporate new issues and actors which transcend traditional state-centred politics remains. How can IR theory sufficiently take into account 'other' political actors which are neither NGOs nor states and cannot easily be categorized according to traditional dichotomies? Rather than concluding that sovereignty is in a state of demise, this political inquiry deconstructs and abstracts sovereignty from its Westphalian limitations. Instead, sovereignty is relocated from bounded state territories to the process of collective political identity and institution construction. Throughout this process, the power or importance of physical territory does not disappear but rather becomes subsumed under ongoing political contestation over the symbolic meanings of physical space more generally.
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Greenland is undergoing a significant transformation as the result of the 2009 Self- Government Act. The new self-government era signifies much greater autonomy and decision-making for a country with an overwhelming Inuit majority. The Greenland Inuit are no longer subjugated by a colonial state and the constitu- tional protection of the rights of the Greenland Inuit exceeds that of most other Indigenous peoples in the world. Achieving extensive self-government in 2009 has compelled Greenland to explore new revenue sources and has created enormous pressure to develop the country’s mineral resources, considered the main avenue for implementing Greenlandic self-government and a condition for full independence. The development of mineral resources creates a range of social, environmental, and political challenges compounded by complex circumstances characterized by climate change, global geopolitical tensions, and race for control of and resources in the Arctic. This chapter considers Greenland’s unique political state of affairs and discusses how it departs from and also contradicts the norm of Indigenous self-determina- tion as non-secession. I discuss different conceptions of sovereignty and examine how they play out in Greenland. The chapter begins with a discussion of concep- tions of sovereignty and self-determination and proceeds to consider the political context and implementation of self-government in Greenland. In conclusion, I pro- pose that Inuit Greenlanders are advancing what I call “Indigenous Westphalian Sovereignty,” a unique approach to self-determination in the Indigenous world. Notwithstanding that Greenland’s aspiration for modern nationhood is not widely shared by most Indigenous peoples in the world, the chapter sheds light on the limits of the concept of Indigenous self-determination as non-secession, and on the enormous challenges and existing rifts that an endeavor for Indigenous independence poses. The chapter draws on interviews I conducted with 17 Inuit Greenlanders in Nuuk in March and April 2013, and is based on my comparative research on Indigenous self-determination in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia (Kuokkanen 2019).
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Established in 1979 as Home Rule and replaced in 2009 as self-government, the Greenlandic Inuit have developed the most advanced form of self-government. Concerning the status of the Greenlandic Inuit, this process of nation-state building may have an influence on being indigenous. The focus of this article is to answer the question of how indigenous peoples are affected by the existing relations of power and domination in a world polity. Taking the continued permission to hunt whales of the Greenlandic Inuit as an example, the article will demonstrate that Greenlanders adopt the projected images of otherness as their own because of the fear of losing the rights exclusively reserved for indigenous peoples. The early and later versions of a working paper by an international group of experts commissioned by the Greenlandic self-government illustrate the debate about the cultural self-images in Greenland. While the narration of the Greenlandic Inuit as indigenous peoples secures rights...
Greenland's Arctic advantage: Articulations, acts and appearances of sovereignty games
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Greenland representatives successfully use the renewed international geostrategic interest in the Arctic to enhance Greenland’s foreign policy sovereignty. This is facilitated by Denmark’s dependence on Greenland’s geographic location and continuous membership of the Danish Realm for maintaining the status of an Arctic state, which recently has become one of the five most important security and foreign policy priorities. The dependency gives Greenland an ‘Arctic advantage’ in negotiations with Denmark, while turning circumpolar events into strategic arenas for sovereignty games in the aim to move the boundary of what Greenland may do internationally without Danish involvement. This article analyzes how these games unfold in the Arctic Council, at the high-level Ilulissat meetings and at circumpolar conferences where Greenland representatives articulate, act and appear more foreign policy sovereignty through outspoken discontent, tacit gestures and symbolic alterations. Altogether, this contributes to the expanding of Greenland’s foreign policy room for maneuver within the current legal frameworks, while enhancing Greenland’s international status and attracting external investments, important in their striving towards becoming a state with full formal Westphalian sovereignty.