ETHNIC NATIONALISM AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND STATELESS ETHNIC NATIONS

Session I: Indigenous Peoples

A growing number of ethnic communities whose members think of themselves as members of a sovereign "nation" are generating problems that challenge the post-Westphalian inter-state system. To support their claims, ethnic nations use whatever historic or mythic narratives they can find (or invent), but among them the existence of treaties and constitutional charters provide especially weighty support. The first session of this panel will focus on peoples (nations) who identify themselves as "indigenous," while the second session will expand the discourse to include "ethnic nations" (national minorities) who do not necessarily think of themselves as "indigenous" and they may not be able to legitimize their claims on the basis of treaties or charters. The panel will focus on case reports in the context of theories related to the world system and international relations, in an historical perspective.

Both indigenous peoples and ethnic nations are "enclaves" inasmuch as they are not separate geographical domains, as are the "external" possessions (colonies) of an empire: rather, they are "internal colonies". This makes it difficult for them to exercise sovereignty as independent states, and the states in which they live resist giving them independence more than they resist the liberation of external possessions. This makes the notion of "autonomy" especially relevant as a formula for granting self- government to a "nation within a nation."

The issues raised here involve not only what claimant "nations" want, but what host nations are willing and able to concede to any community living within their borders. They offer fundamental challenges to widely accepted stereotypes about the viability of "nation states" in the context of a global inter-state system. States and organized groups outside the host state may intervene in various ways. Researchers outside the field of "indigenous" and "ethnic" studies tend to view indigenous movements as marginal epiphenomena, launched by micro-minorities. In fact, indigenous rights and movements challenge the basic premises of main stream international studies and require serious attention.

Questions about where these communities are located (e.g. in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc.), the extent to which the "host land" is democratic or authoritarian, industrialized or underdeveloped, are relevant to the analysis, as are variables affecting the size of the indigenous (ethnic) nation and the degree to which its members share a homogeneous life style, culture, language, religion, etc. A particulary important question involves the degree of concentration of a "nation," ranging from majority to minority within the enclave, and the extent of its dispersion outside the enclave.

The aspirations of such national enclaves raise questions that are more difficult to solve than those that arose when empires were collapsing and externally located conquered possessions were claiming independence (liberation). Two important differences come to mind: first, dispersion: more members of any "enclave" probably live outside their traditional homeland than was normal for the external possessions of the empires; and second, viability: it is difficult for an enclave to exercise sovereign powers as a land-locked (or insular) domain, and host nations can also be expected to resist secession very strenuously. We may well expect some kind of formula for "autonomy" (a nation within a nation) to be more realistic than full fledged independence.

PARTICIPANTS:

Session I: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND SOVEREIGNTY

Ted Robert Gurr (chair)
CIDCM, Suite 0145 Tydings Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7231 USA; phones: (301) 314 7710 (of) (410) 267-9620 (ho), fax: (301) 314 9256 (of) (410) 280-2633 (ho), email: tgurr@bss1.umd.edu

PAPERS:

Tom Hall: Incorporation of Indigenes: Toward A Comparative Perspective : There are deep historical patterns in the ways in which native peoples have been incorporated into states and/or world-systems. Recently, there have been shifts in the incorporation process which reflect the conditions modernity, identity politics and nationalistic movements, and globalization. I argue that to understand these changes they must be analzyed within a world-systems context. I further argue that the transformation from tributary to capitalist world-systems both constituted signficant changes in the inc orporation process and gives some insights into continuing and changing patterns of incorporation into the contemporary, capitalist world-system. Although this pattern is clear in broad outline, many more detailed studies are necessary to understand the multiple ramifications of the incorporation of indigenous peoples into the capitalist world-system, BOTH for indigenous peoples and for the world-system. See: Hall's paper (draft)
Thomas D. Hall is Lester M. Jones Professor of Sociology and Director of Conflict Studies at DePauw University. He is author of _Social Change in the Southwest, 1350-1880 (1989, Kansas) and along with Christopher Chase-Dunn he is author of _Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems (1997 Westview). Dept. of Sociology, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135; e-mail: thall@dep$ tel: 765-658-4519, HOME PAGE: http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm

Franke Wilmer: Restructuring Indigenous-State Relations: What Indigenous Peoples Want. || draft paper I did much of the research last summer in Australia and New Zealand, have already done the research here in the US and will be doing a bit more in Canada soon. What I came up with was a list of preconditions for restructuring indigenous peoples' relationship with the state based on interviews with activists and leaders in the four Anglo settler states... There are implications for restructuring ethnic-state relations as well, though each case needs to be considered in light of the particular socio-political context.
Political Science, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717; co-chair, APSA section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics; phone: 406-994-5246; fax: 406-994-6692, e-mail: franke@gemini.oscs.montana.edu

Michele Weber: ..Native Wisdom: Indigenous Identity and Contemporary Rural Resistance in the Americas. Although Michele will not be able to attend the panel in Montreal, she has promised a paper. She writes: Rural indigenous communities have had increased successes in recent years resisting oppressive state policies. Some degree of such successes can be attributed to greater outside awareness, NGO support, and the trans-nationalization of indigenous movements. Yet significant aspects of contemporary indigenous identities affect internal levels of community support for resistance and also contribute to better resistance strategies. By comparing rural indigenous resistance to that of neighboring non-indigenous communities in "similar boats" so to speak, a clearer understanding of non-Western indigenous identities and their effect on contemporary resistance to the nation state emerges.

Michele Weber is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics and International Relations in the Department of Politics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is a Coordinating Editor of the journal Latin American Perspectives and also the Southwestern United States Regional Coordinator for Witness for Peace, a human rights organization. She conducts activist field research with many Southwestern indigenous communities, most extensively with the Western Shoshone nation of Central Nevada and the Pai Pai peoples of Northern Baja Mexico. Ms. Weber very recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside with extensive interdisciplinary training in Political Science, Social Anthropology, and Development Economics.

Pomona College, Department of Politics, 425 N. College Avenue, Claremont CA 91711-6336. Phone 909-607-3088 and fax 909-607-1274.

Orbach, Harold: Native American "Indigenous" Peoples: The Complexities of the Historical Residue of Colonialism, Conquest and Nation-Building The situation of North American Indian and other "indigenous" peoples in the United States and Canada is a complex and diverse one that is not reducible to any simple generalization. Different laws, different constitutional structures and different histories of colonization, warfare, conquest and subordination to the status of dependency with some recognized forms of rights -- under European conceptions of law and right, i.e., so-called "Eurocentric" ideas, have led to a variety of situations that have constantly been re-defined and are being re-defined as part of a changing set of political and economic processes associated with modernity and the modernization of the societies.

Different situations of different Indian tribes and self-styled nations with claims of "sovereignty" and rights to "self-determination" have to be viewed in the light of the original situation of various indigenous peoples, their own internal power struggles and kingdom building and destruction and their alliances with different colonial groupings. The claims to "tradition" and at the same time to rights that are "western" and the constant re-defining of what is "traditional" pose difficult questions.

Many groups are relatively tiny and never constituted a level of social or political organization above that of tribes or bands. Others were relatively highly organized politically and militarily and warred on their neighbors, conquering them, driving them out of their "traditional" lands, etc. Today, the historical remnants of these pasts continue to create problems for any simple idea of "sovereign independence" when such claims are subordinated in the U.S. to Acts of Congress and in Canada to complex treaty situations and fundamnetal Canadian Law. The situation of Crees and Iroquois in Quebec, of Hopi and Navajo in Arizona, of various groups in Alaska as well as the unique situation of non-resevation Oklahoma nations like the Cherokee serve to distinguish them from the "typical" European or Asian situation where state building was accomplished in a different economic and political-legal context. At the same time, the control over who is an Indian in the U.S. by the Federal Government illustrates the ultimate dependent status of Native Americans who are denied by law the essential defining rights of modern nation-states: independent economies, armed forces, and legal and political structures.
Dept of Sociology, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan, KS 66506-4003; e-mail: hlorbach@ksu.edu, Tel: (913) 532-4961 (Office with voice mail), (913) 539-3428 (Home with answering machine), Fax: (913) 532-6978

Majid Tehranian: Although Majid will not be able to join the panel in Montreal, he has promised a paper on: Hawaii as a Global Metaphor. He writes, Hawaii presents a suggestive metaphor for understanding the impact of the dual processes of globalization and indigenization on a global scale. History of Hawaii since Captain Cook's arrival in 1778 has been a history of intensifying incorporation into the world capitalist system. The impact of this process on native Hawaiians and local population has proved to be both devastating and liberating. A language and culture that was at the brink of extinction by the 1970s, has been revived through a sovereignty movement and localist resistance against external domination. Although the future of this movement is uncertain, it has proved itself to be a viable countertrend to the hegemonic forces of globalism that have created serious environmental and cultural imbalances.

Majid Tehranian is professor at the University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy. His latest book is Globalism and Its Discontents: International Communication and Modernization in a Fragmented World (1998).
Dept. of Communications, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822; Director, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research; tel: 808-988-9563, E-mail: majid@hawaii.edu, or mtehrani@isdi-hi.com

DISCUSSANT

Virginia Q. Tilley "...I have just finished my dissertation on indigenous politics in El Salvador. My interest in this issue is explicitly comparative. (I've done some comparative work on indigenous politics in Siberia and North America), particularly addressing how the international state system and transnational idea flows affect local conceptions of ethnicity, nation and state. My present focus is particularly on the state as an institution: how it affects ethnic ideas both by providing an ideational (Gramscian) political arena and by introducing certain imperatives regarding its own security and international standing into local debates about indigenous peoples and their rights/character.
Department of Political Science, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Geneva NY 14456 USA. Fax/office: 315-781-3422, email: tilley@hws.edu Tel/office: 315-781-3430 Tel/home: 315-789-5263,

Session II: STATELESS ETHNIC NATIONS

Franke Wilmer (chair);

PAPERS:

Fred W. Riggs: Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Nations: The Concept of E'claves" text ABSTRACT. National movements among indigenous peoples and ethnic nations can only be understood in terms of a long-term world-systems context. Although ethnic communities have overlapped each other ever since cities and civilizations came into existence, the modern world has given ethnic nations a central role as the source of legitimacy for governance in sovereign states. Contemporary globalization reinforces the process whereby ethnic communities become self-conscious about themselves in relation to other communities, aware of threats to their own cultural practices and interested in mobilizing to protect and enhance them in the modern world system, relying on self-determination and sovereignty as key concepts. During the past half-century such movements led to the formation of new states in most of the dependencies of the industrial empires that were located outside the boundaries of their metropoles. Increasingly, during the coming decades, we may expect them to occur inside the boundaries of existing states -- both old and new -- as ethnic nationalism arises among both indigenous peoples and within the framework of tribalized and conquered nations surviving in the heartlands of many of the well established states of our post-Westphalian world. An important factor, both in the emergence of ethnic nations and the likelihood that they will achieve autonomy or independence, involves the presence of politically recognized boundaries that separate their homelands from external lands and peoples. Although the collapse of industrial imperialism means the world no longer needs to fear major wars between super-powers, it does need to recognize a rising danger caused by the efforts of existing states to preserve their internal and external borders as they have increasingly come under attack by ethnic nations who seek sovereignty and want to create their own autonomies or states within newly created boundaries.

Fred W. Riggs is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. His research interests in comparative government include the analysis of constitutional democracy, development in third world countries, and the problems caused by ethnic nationalism. He is the author of Administration in Developing Countries; the Theory of Prismatic Society and many articles and books on related subjects. In recent years he has focused on semantic analysis, especially in the context of IPSA's Committee on Conceptual and Terminological Analysis. A bibliography of his work can be found in Who's Who in the World.

Political Science Department, University of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A.; Phone: (808) 956-8123; Fax: (808) 956-6877; e-mail: FREDR@HAWAII.EDU, Web Page: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/

Josephine Squires: Ethnic Nationalism among the Scots. The Scots are a people whose culture, language, and political freedoms are repressed by those of England. The paper will focus the struggles of the Scottish Nationalist Movement from its inception to the present day, based on first hand information gained from interviews with Scottish Nationalists, including members of the Westminster Parliament.
Department of Political Science and Justice Studies, Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS 67601; e-mail: <pojs@fhsuvm.fhsu.edu>

Alynna J. Lyon and Emek Uçarer, Kurdish Separatism in France and Germany Ethnic nationalism can and often does have consequences for countries other than traditional homelands. A prime example of this is the Kurdish separatist movement which continues to be one of the most intriguing and potentially volatile cases of transnational ethnic nationalism. Kurdish people not only reside in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria as citizens but also in Western Europe where they live as resident aliens. Kurds arrived in Western Europe as guest workers in the 1960s and early 1970s and then as asylum seekers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Recently, hunger strikes, protest marches and terrorist bombings have been much publicized manifestations of the increasingly mobilized separatist movements within Germany and France. These protests are being staged outside the traditional Kurdish homelands. German and French governments are now faced with considerable dilemmas concerning internal policy towards their Kurdish residents as well as tenuous external relations with the counties from where they originate.

In the last two decades, Kurdish nationalism has been exported from indigenous territories to Western liberal democracies, particularly to those with which they have migration ties. There are several factors which contribute to the exportation of ethnic conflict. Countries with established migration links to countries of origin are more likely to be confronted with the consequences of the mobilization of ethnic nationalism. These countries, which at one time had favorable immigration and asylum policies, now have established Kurdish enclaves. Germany and France are thus (inadvertently) importing an indigenous population that then forms an enclave in its host society. Segments of these ethnic immigrants have become mobilized, capitalizing on the opportunities for dissent that are guarded by liberal democracies. This process is affecting the internal political circumstances in Germany and France as they seek to come to terms with protests that threaten public order and internal stability. It also contributes to mounting domestic turmoil in Turkey, which has of late manifested itself in military action taken against the Kurdish separatist factions. The internationalization of ethnic conflict in this case has significant political impact on both host and home countries.

This project explores Kurds migration into Germany and France and how these recipient countries have enabled their entry and responded to their presence. In addition, the paper explores the internationalization of these separatist movements as Germany, France, and Turkey have become entangled in the political web of Kurdish nationalism. The process of mobilization of ethnic nationalism in host societies, and the factors that make such mobilization possible in Western liberal democracies are given specific focus.

Emek Ucarer, Institute for Families, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208; tel: 803 799-1973, e-mail: ucarer@vm.sc.edu,

Alynna J. Lyon, Dept. Of Government and International Relations, Univ. Of South Carolina, Columbia SC 29206; tel: (808) 777-8180, fax: 803 777-9308, e-mail: lyonaly@vm.sc.edu

A doctoral candidate of Political Science at the Department of Government and International Studies of the University of South Carolina. She received her M.A. and B.A. in Political Science and Law and Society from New Mexico State University. She is currently working for the Walker Institute of International Studies under the direction of Donald J. Puchala. Her primary research interests include international relations, comparative politics and public policy. She is currently working on her dissertation which examines the internationalization of ethnic conflict and separatist nationalism.

DISCUSSANT

Jonathan Friedman, Department of Social Anthropology University of Lund Box 114 221 00 Lund, Sweden;Tel:46 46 222 88 42, Fax:46 46 222 47 94, email:jonathan.friedman@soc.lu.se