1932
0
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Annual Review of Political Science
  4. Volume 27, 2024
  5. Article

Annual Review of Political Science

Volume 27, 2024

Indigenous Sovereignty and Political Science: Building an Indigenous Politics Subfield

Abstract

Scholarship from the nascent subfield of Indigenous politics illuminates an enduring tension between Indigenous politics and political science. Settler colonialism continues to configure the contemporary politics of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in profound ways that political science has been slow to grapple with. In a related concern, political science has little ability to engage in Indigenous knowledge production. This article reviews the structural exclusion of Indigenous knowledge despite increased inclusion of Indigenous scholarship and argues that Indigenous understandings of settler colonialism, sovereignty, and authority hold the potential to reconfigure political science's approach to Indigenous politics in research and teaching. This reconfiguration will not only impact the development of the Indigenous politics subfield but also expand the analytic potential of political science more broadly.

Keyword(s): authority, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous politics, settler colonialism, sovereignty
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041322-050512
2024-07-29
2025-04-24
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/polisci/27/1/annurev-polisci-041322-050512.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041322-050512&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Alfred T. 1999.. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Don Mills, Ont.:: Oxford Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Altamirano-Jiménez I. 2013.. Indigenous Encounters with Neoliberalism: Place, Women, and the Environment in Canada and Mexico. Vancouver:: Univ. B. C. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Atleo ER. 2004.. Tsawalk: A Nuuchahnulth Perspective. Vancouver:: Univ. B. C. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Barker J, ed. 2017.. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Basso K. 1996.. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque:: Univ. N. M. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Beier JM. 2009.. Forgetting, remembering, and finding indigenous peoples in international relations. . In Indigenous Diplomacies, ed. JM Beier , pp. 11–27. New York:: Palgrave Macmillan
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Belcourt BR. 2017.. Indigenous studies beside itself. . Somatechnics 7:(2):182–84
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  8. Blackhawk N. 2023.. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History. New Haven, CT:: Yale Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Bruyneel K. 2007.. The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of US-Indigenous Relations. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Bruyneel K. 2014.. Social Science and the Study of Indigenous Peoples’ Politics: Contributions, Omissions, and Tensions. Oxford, UK:: Oxford Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Byrd JA. 2020.. What's normative got to do with it? Toward indigenous queer relationality. . Soc. Text 38:(4):105–23
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  12. Cairns AC. 2000.. Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State. Vancouver:: Univ. B.C. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Carroll C. 2015.. Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Cattelino JR. 2010.. The double bind of American Indian need-based sovereignty. . Cult. Anthropol. 25:(2):235–62
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  15. Cattelino JR, Simpson A. 2022.. Rethinking indigeneity: scholarship at the intersection of Native American Studies and anthropology. . Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 51::365–81
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  16. Coulthard GS. 2014.. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Crosschild R, Starblanket G, Voth D, Hubbard T, Little Bear L. 2021.. Awakening Buffalo consciousness: lessons, theory, and practice from the Buffalo Treaty. . Wicazo Sa Rev. 36:(1):5–29
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  18. Daly R. 2004.. Our Box Was Full: An Ethnography for the Delgamuukw Plaintiffs/Richard Daly. Vancouver:: Univ. B. C. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Deloria V. 1973.. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. New York:: Dell
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Dennison J. 2012.. Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First-Century Osage Nation; Illustrations by Buffalo Nickel Creative. Chapel Hill:: Univ. N. C. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Evans LE. 2014.. Tribal-state relations in the Anglosphere. . Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 17::273–89
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  22. Ferguson K. 2014.. What was politics to the Denisovan?. Political Theory 42:(2):167–87
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  23. Ferguson K. 2016.. Why does political science hate American Indians?. Perspect. Politics 14:(4):1029–38
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  24. Ferguson K. 2023.. Why did they assume only humans had politics?. Political Theory 51:(1):74–85
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  25. Ford L. 2011.. Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836. Cambridge, MA:: Harvard Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Goldstein A. 2014.. Colonialism, constituent power, and popular sovereignty. . J19 2:(1):148–53
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  27. Garner R, Ferdinand P, Lawson S. 2022.. Introduction to Politics. Oxford, UK:: Oxford Univ. Press. , 3rd ed..
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Green J. 2001.. Canaries in the mines of citizenship: Indian women in Canada. . Can. J. Political Sci. 34:(4):715–38
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  29. Green J. 2003.. Balancing strategies: Aboriginal women and constitutional rights in Canada. . In Women Making Constitutions: New Politics and Comparative Perspectives, ed. AZ Dobrowolsky, V Hart , pp. 36–51. London:: Palgrave Macmillan
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Hunt S. 2014.. Ontologies of Indigeneity: the politics of embodying a concept. . Cult. Geogr. 21:(1):27–32
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  31. Hunt S, Holmes C. 2015.. Everyday decolonization: living a decolonizing queer politics. . J. Lesbian Stud. 19:(2):154–72
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  32. Hutchison A. 2014.. The Whanganui River as a legal person. . Altern. Law J. 39:(3):179–82
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  33. Ivison D, Patton P, Sanders W, . 2000.. Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. . Cambridge, UK:: Cambridge Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Kauanui JK. 2008.. Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Kauanui JK. 2018.. Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Keal P. 2003.. European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society. Cambridge, UK:: Cambridge Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Kuokkanen R. 2019.. Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-Determination, Governance, and Gender. New York:: Oxford Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Kymlicka W. 2007.. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford, UK:: Oxford Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Ladner K. 2003.. Governing within an ecological context: creating an alterNative understanding of Blackfoot governance. . Stud. Political Econ. 70:(1):125–52
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  40. Ladner K. 2017.. Taking the field: 50 years of Indigenous politics in the CJPS. . Can. J. Political Sci. 50:(1):163–79
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  41. Lightfoot S. 2016.. Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution. New York:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Lightfoot S, Maddison S, eds. 2024.. Handbook of Indigenous Public Policy. London:: Edward Elgar
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Lucero AJ, Turner T, VanCott DL, eds. 2013.. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous People's Politics. Oxford, UK:: Oxford Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Maaka R, Fleras A. 2005.. The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Dunedin:: Univ. Otago Press
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Macoun A, Parker K, Strakosch E. 2019.. Australian political studies and the production of disciplinary innocence. . Aust. J. Political Sci. 54:(3):378–95
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  46. Maddison S, Strakosch E. 2019.. Whose politics and which science? Rethinking the discipline in the context of Australian settler colonial relationships. . Aust. J. Political Sci. 54:(3):372–77
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  47. Madley B. 2016.. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. New Haven, CT:: Yale Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Manuel G, Posluns M. 2018.. The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Migdal JS. 2001.. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. Cambridge, UK:: Cambridge Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  50. Moreton-Robinson A. 2005.. The house that Jack built: Britishness and white possession. . Aust. Crit. Race Whiteness Stud. J. 1:(1):21–29
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Moreton-Robinson A. 2007.. Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters. New York:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Moreton-Robinson A. 2015.. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Nelson M. 2017.. Getting dirty: The eco-eroticism of women in Indigenous oral literatures. . See Barker 2017 , pp. 229–60
  54. Nichols R. 2019.. Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  55. Ostrom E. 2015.. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK:: Cambridge Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  56. Ostrom E. 2000.. Reformulating the commons. . Swiss Political Sci. Rev. 6:(1):29–52
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  57. Patton P. 2016.. Philosophical justifications for indigenous rights. . In Handbook of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, ed. C Lennox, D Short , pp. 13–23. London:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  58. Pierre J, Peters BG. 2020.. Governance, Politics and the State. London:: Bloomsbury
     [Google Scholar]
  59. Povinelli EA. 2002.. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  60. Raheja MH. 2010.. Reservation Reelism Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film. Lincoln:: Univ. Neb. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  61. Rana A. 2014.. The Two Faces of American Freedom. Cambridge, MA:: Harvard Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  62. Rifkin M. 2012.. The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  63. Sanders W. 2015.. Indigenous politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: a review. . Aust. J. Political Sci. 50:(4):679
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  64. Sawer M, Curtin J. 2016.. Organising for a more diverse political science: Australia and New Zealand. . Eur. Political Sci. 15::441–56
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  65. Scott JC. 1985.. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT:: Yale Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  66. Scott JC. 1990.. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT:: Yale Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  67. Scott JC. 1998.. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT:: Yale Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  68. Shaw K. 2008.. Indigeneity and Political Theory: Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political. London:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  69. Simpson A. 2014.. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  70. Simpson A. 2016.. The state is a man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the gender of settler sovereignty. . Theory Event 19:(4). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/633280
     [Google Scholar]
  71. Simpson A. 2020.. The sovereignty of critique. . South Atlantic Q. 119:(4):685–99
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  72. Simpson LB. 2017.. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis:: Univ. Minn. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  73. Smith A. 2009.. Native studies beyond the academic-industrial complex. . In “ I Thought Pocahontas was a Movie”: Perspectives on Race/Culture Binaries in Education and Service Professions, ed. C Schick, J McNinch , pp. 79–90. Regina, Sask:.: Univ. Regina Press
     [Google Scholar]
  74. Smith LT, Tuck E, Yang KW, eds. 2018.. Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. New York:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  75. Starblanket G. 2019.. The numbered treaties and the politics of incoherency. . Can. J. Political Sci. 52:(3):443–59
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  76. Starblanket G, Stark HK. 2018.. Towards a relational paradigm—four points for consideration: knowledge, gender, land, and modernity. . In Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, ed. M Asch, J Borrows, J Tully , pp. 175–207. Toronto:: Univ. Toronto Press
     [Google Scholar]
  77. Stark HK. 2016.. Criminal empire: the making of the savage in a lawless land. . Theory Event 19:(4). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/633282
     [Google Scholar]
  78. Temin DM. 2023.. Remapping Sovereignty: Decolonization and Self-Determination in North American Indigenous Political Thought. Chicago:: Univ. Chicago Press
     [Google Scholar]
  79. Teves SN, Smith A, Raheja M. 2015.. Native Studies Keywords. Tucson:: Univ. Ariz. Press
     [Google Scholar]
  80. Turner D. 2020.. On the politics of Indigenous translation: listening to Indigenous peoples in and on their own. . In Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies, ed. B Hokowhitu, A Moreton-Robinson, L Tuhiwai-Smith, C Andersen, S Larkin, ch. 13 . New York:: Routledge
     [Google Scholar]
  81. Turner D. 2006.. This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy. Toronto:: Univ. Toronto Press
     [Google Scholar]
  82. Tynan L. 2021.. What is relationality? Indigenous knowledges, practices and responsibilities with kin. . Cult. Geogr. 28:(4):597–610
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  83. UN General Assembly. 2007.. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New York:: United Nations
     [Google Scholar]
  84. Veracini L. 2011.. Introducing settler colonial studies. . Settler Colon. Stud. 1:(1):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648799
    [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  85. Wildcat M, De Leon J. 2020.. Creative sovereignty: the in-between space: Indigenous sovereignties in creative and comparative perspective. . Borderlands J. 19:(2):1–28
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  86. Wilkins DE, Stark HK. 2017.. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Lanham:: Rowman & Littlefield
     [Google Scholar]
  87. Williams RA. 1994.. Linking arms together: multicultural constitutionalism in a North American indigenous vision of law and peace. . Calif. Law Rev. 82::981–1049
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  88. Wilmer F. 1993.. The Indigenous Voice in World Politics: Since Time Immemorial. Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage
     [Google Scholar]
  89. Wilmer F. 2016.. Indigenizing political science or decolonizing political scientists?. Perspect. Politics 14:(4):1050–51
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  90. Witmer R, Carlson KM, Evans L. 2022.. Introduction to the special issue on indigenous politics. . J. Race Ethn. Politics 7:(1):1–8
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  91. Wolfe P. 2006.. Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. . J. Genocide Res. 8:(4):387–409
     [Crossref] [Google Scholar]
  92. Wynter S, McKittrick K. 2015.. Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future: conversations. . In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, ed. K McKittrick , pp. 9–89. Durham, NC:: Duke Univ. Press
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041322-050512
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error