Jeff Corntassel

Indigenous Peoples and Multicultural Citizenship: Bridging Collective and Individual Rights

Many heralded 1998, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as a milestone for universal legal protection of individuals. For others, this anniversary was a time for critical reappraisal of existing human rights instruments and norms.1 Two pressing issues for critics of existing human rights mechanisms are the lack of progress in promoting universal recognition of group rights and the continued exclusion of indigenous groups from political, economic, and social participation in many parts of the world. For many, the problem lies in the individualistic nature of existing human rights discourse. The concern is that existing

In pursuit of self‐determination: Indigenous women's challenges to traditional diplomatic spaces

Due to colonization and on‐going imperial influences, Indigenous women have had to create new diplomatic spaces at the global, regional, state, and local levels to pursue simultaneous negotiations and assertions for both their individual rights as women and collective rights as members of Indigenous nations. Through a series of case studies, such as the recent Haudenosaunee re‐occupation of Caledonia and Indigenous womens narratives of their own work and positions, we argue that Indigenous women engage in a politics of intersectionality as well as multi‐layered citizenship in framing their diplomatic engagements. These frameworks reveal that spirituality and politics are interconnected and Indigenous womens multiple and intersecting roles and responsibilities, i.e., as family members, clan mothers, leaders, etc. are an integral part of any examination of Indigenous diplomatic strategies, thus challenging the traditional definitions of state‐based diplomacy as well as a purely collective rights understanding of Indigenous self‐determination.

A “Revolution within a Revolution”

In his reflections on the early days of the 1994 Zapatista (EZLN) uprising that garnered global attention, Subcomandante Marcos acknowledges the real impetus for change behind this Mayan political and cultural movement that was hidden from the headlines: the women. As Vinding (1998, 12) notes, Indigenous women have been “underrepresented in Indigenous organizations and are seldom heard in international fora.” Although women’s rights and Indigenous rights are now officially codified as human rights,1 both women’s rights and Indigenous rights movements have been problematic spaces for Indigenous women’s participation in treaty making and standard setting in domestic and international legal fora. Due to colonization and ongoing imperial influences, both rights movements often require Indigenous women to make trade-offs (either as women or as Indigenous peoples) rather than make space for the more fully intersectional frameworks that Indigenous women have been demanding through strategies that go beyond political lobbying.