The exercise of power over indigenous peoples has not decreased, even though they enjoy improved opportunities for political participation and increased recognition of their rights. Rather, power has taken on more subtle forms.

Photo: Irma
Varrio

This is among the insights which Marjo
Lindroth puts forward in the research for her dissertation, Governing
Indigeneity Globally: Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations. Ms.
Lindroth has found that the considerable progress seen in the recognition of
indigenous peoples internationally does not signal that less power is being
exercised over them. Her analysis of the improved participation and rights that have
been embraced in the United Nations (UN) reveals that power and governance have
continued in more subtle forms than previously. As she points out, “Measures that
are often perceived as self-evidently desirable and empowering for indigenous
peoples have effects of power that, in fact, continue the marginalisation of those
peoples”.

Ms. Lindroth’s analysis illustrates how access
for indigenous peoples to certain political institutions and recognition of their
rights can be part of the economical functioning of governance. Measures such as
these can thus also be desirable goals for states and other actors, meaning that
states are not necessarily changing their attitude towards indigenous peoples in any
profound way.

The empirical material which Ms. Lindroth
draws on in her research encompasses her observations in the sessions of the UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, political statements delivered by the
participants in the sessions and reports of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples.

A critical
perspective on the recognition of rights

Marjo Lindroth’s research does not deny the importance of rights or political
participation in the efforts to improve the situation of indigenous peoples.
Clearly, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples are milestones in the advancement of the status of the
peoples. Indigenous peoples have better possibilities for political participation
and agency than previously.

In fact, given that indigenous
peoples’ demands for self-determination have traditionally been problematic for
states, the current international trend towards acknowledging the rights of
indigenous peoples would seem to be a heartening development that will further
enhance their status.

Many of the states that are now
recognising indigenous rights are among those that have colonised those same
peoples. Acknowledgement of indigenous rights and the inclusion of indigenous
peoples in political institutions can be seen as a victory for the peoples, who have
had to act in a challenging and even hostile environment.

Against this backdrop, Ms. Lindroth critically challenges the view that improved
political participation and rights are necessarily solutions. She then goes on to
address what she considers a more salient issue: How did participation and rights
become desirable goals in the first place?

Information on the defence:

Marjo Lindroth’s doctoral dissertation, Governing Indigeneity Globally:
Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations, will be publicly examined in
the Faculty of Social Sciences on Friday, 20 March at noon, in lecture hall 3,
Yliopistonkatu 8, Rovaniemi. The Opponent will be Ole Jacob Sending, Director of
Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and the Custos Monica
Tennberg, Research Professor in the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland.
Welcome!

Information on the
doctoral candidate:

Marjo Lindroth (born
1976 in Rovaniemi) completed her matriculation examination at Lyseonpuisto Upper
Secondary School in Rovaniemi in 1995. She graduated with a master’s degree in
social sciences from the University of Lapland in 2001.

Ms.
Lindroth has worked as a researcher in the LeCTra Doctoral Programme at the
University of Lapland and in the Arktis Doctoral Programme at the Arctic Centre. She
has also worked as a grant-funded researcher and in different projects at the Arctic
Centre.

Currently she works as project coordinator for the
journal Barents Studies: Peoples, Economies and Politics.

Further
information:

Marjo Lindroth
Tel.
040 762 3346
marjo.lindroth(at)ulapland.fi

Press copies of the dissertation are available from Lapland University Press, tel.
040 821 4242, julkaisu(at)ulapland.fi

Publication information:

Marjo
Lindroth: Governing Indigeneity Globally: Indigenous Peoples in the United
Nations. Acta Universitatis Lapponiensis 293. ISBN 978-952-484-788-9.
ISSN 0788-7604.

ULapland/Communications/RJ