Leena Heinämäki

The Participation of Indigenous Peoples in International Norm-Making in the Arctic

Indigenous peoples regularly regard international law as a very important tool for the advancement of their political goals. This is most likely because in many nation-states their opportunities for influencing political development are rather limited. Even though international law seems to be an important means for indigenous peoples to advance their goals, these peoples should be aware of its inherent limitations. One such shortcoming is that international law seriously restricts indigenous peoples’ opportunities to participate in the international law-making process; that is treaty and customary law. The contention in this article is that the recent norm-making method of soft law provides indigenous peoples with a better opportunity for influential participation than is afforded them by traditional methods. If these peoples are to benefit from this opportunity, however, we must appreciate the revolutionary potential of the concept: a potential that is suffocated if the concept is understood only from the perspective of international law. A good example of indigenous peoples gaining a better standing in inter-governmental cooperation is the Arctic Council, which based its work on the soft-law approach from the outset. There would seem to be good prospects for adopting the Arctic Council’s approach in other regions of the world in order to improve indigenous peoples’ international representational status.

Protecting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – Promoting the Sustainability of the Global Environment?

One predominant presumption in the present international legal discourse is that indigenous peoples, when allowed to participate, can make a valuable contribution to the sustainability of the global environment due to their traditional knowledge and practices relating to the environment. The aim of this article is to discuss whether and under which conditions the legal recognition of the special rights of indigenous peoples in relation to the environment can be seen as promoting the protection of the planet Earth.

Rethinking the Status of Indigenous Peoples in International Environmental Decision-Making: Pondering the Role of Arctic Indigenous Peoples and the Challenge of Climate Change

Global environmental problems – climate change being a major one – pose challenges to state-controlled international governance in many ways. One of the inherent limitations of present international law – particularly from the viewpoint of indigenous peoples – relates to international decision-making concerning the environment. The focus of this article is the rights and role of indigenous peoples in this context.

Climate Change and Human Rights

This chapter examines the inter-relationship between human rights and climate change, a linkage that has been given little attention, but whose importance is likely to grow in the coming years. Some aspects of the relationship between climate change and human rights have been selected, especially those that have emerged as having most potential in influencing climate change governance. We will identify how climate change, with its dramatic consequences, impacts the enjoyment of human rights and has already led to a human rights petition against the United States. We will, then, turn to the implications of human rights to the functioning of the climate change regime, such as how the emerging rights to participate in environmental decision-making are reflected in the negotiation process of defining the elements of the current climate change regime. More difficult question on whether human rights can or even should influence the future design of the climate change regime will be examined. The concluding remarks will focus on evaluating the pros and cons of using human rights in the struggle against climate change impacts and the influence of human rights on the design and operation of the climate change regime.

Indigenous Peoples' Cultural Heritage

Indigenous rights to heritage have only recently become the subject of academic scholarship. This collection aims to fill that gap by offering the fruits of a unique conference on this topic organised by the University of Lapland with the help of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The conference made clear that important information on Indigenous cultural heritage has remained unexplored or has not been adequately linked with specific actors (such as WIPO) or specific issues (such as free, prior and informed consent). Indigenous leaders explained the impact that disrespect of their cultural heritage has had on their identity, well-being and development. Experts in social sciences explained the intricacies of indigenous cultural heritage. Human rights scholars talked about the inability of current international law to fully address the injustices towards indigenous communities. Representatives of International organisations discussed new positive developments. This wealth of experiences, materials, ideas and knowledge is contained in this important volume.

Experiencing and Safeguarding the Sacred in the Arctic: Sacred Natural Sites, Cultural Landscapes and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights

Culturally and spiritually important landscapes across the Arctic region express this interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) with the natural and spiritual environment, and their preservation has been, and continues to be, essential to IPs’ identity and livelihoods. It is a common place to say that the lands are regarded as sacred by many traditional worldviews of indigenous peoples. However, these living landscapes contain also particular individual sites, or Sacred Natural Sites (SNSs), which are associated with strong spiritual, or cultural intangible values of the natural elements. As Schama (1995: 6–7) has noted: “Landscapes are culture, before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood, water and rock”. Consequently, culturally and spiritually important landscapes and the SNSs they encompass are at the interface between nature and culture, tangible and intangible values, biological and cultural diversity, and embody a closely woven net of connectedness between culture and nature and people’s identity (Rossler 2006).

From Knowledge to Action: How to Protect Sacred Sites of Indigenous Peoples in the North?

By taking into consideration the diverse contributions presented in this book, and by intertwining them with the overall approach presented in our introduction, this concluding chapter aims to summarise key messages and strategies for supporting Sacred Natual Sites (SNSs) and related indigenous cultural heritage. It does so in a form of introducing and analysing the Statement and Recommendations on: “Recognizing and Safeguarding Sacred Sites of Indigenous Peoples in Northern and Arctic Regions” (The Conference Statement hereafter) (Pyhatunturi Statement 2013), which was mentioned in the introduction of this volume. The process of writing the Conference Statement was guided by Bas Verschuuren, who serves as co-Chair of IUCN’s Specialist group on Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas and is co-founder of the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative, to whom we would like to express a special gratitude.

Indigenous peoples' Customary Laws, Sámi People and Sacred Sites

Although recognized both in the ILO Convention No169 and in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the right of indigenous peoples to maintain their customary laws and systems continues to be a rather unexplored issue in legal literature. Until recently, customary laws of indigenous peoples have mainly been explored by social anthropologists (e.g., Bennet 2006), while largely legal experts still mainly focused on written and codified ‘positive’ law (however, see Weisbrot 1981: 3–4). The recognition of such laws though is really important for indigenous peoples. Embedded in the culture and values of indigenous communities, indigenous customary laws are an intrinsic and central part of their way of life and their identity. They define rights and responsibilities relating to key aspects of their cultures and world views, and guide indigenous communities on a wide range of issues; from the conduct of spiritual life, to land, and to use of and access to resources. Maintaining customary laws can be crucial for the maintenance of the cultural heritage and knowledge systems of indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities all around the world have steadily argued that any legal regime for the protection of their knowledge must be grounded in their own customary laws and practices.

Our ice is vanishing Sikuvut Nunguliqtuq, a history of Inuit, newcomers, and climate change

enthusiasts interested in going a little beyond the usual narratives. That said, polar studies researchers working on the cultural history of Antarctic exploration might find Shackleton: A Life in Poetry, with its high level of detail, a useful resource. Shackleton is, as its title makes clear, a biography, but a biography told through the very specific lens of its subject’s appreciation of poetry – in particular, the poetry of Browning, Tennyson, Kipling and Service. Mayer’s choice of a biographical format, while understandable, introduces some weaknesses into the book. In the end, Shackleton is not a book about a life in poetry, but about poetry in a life. The standard events of the explorer’s life and career are necessarily retold and scoured for poetic references, which are thicker in some places than others. As Shackleton unsurprisingly came back to the same beloved poems time and again, the book feels repetitive in places. Mayer injects interest, however, by returning periodically to his own efforts to trace the provenance and authorship of particular poems in the archives. The chapter on how Shackleton’s “L’Envoi” arrived in the pages of the published South Polar Times is particularly intriguing. Mayer argues convincingly that Shackleton (like some other explorers of the period) used poetry as a form of motivation. More than this, he contends that Shackleton, while unable to sustain the concentration to write a book (both of his expedition narratives were ghost-written), took from his poetic experience his ability to produce epigrammatic sound bites, which in turn made him so beloved of late twentieth-century how-to guides on leadership and management. This also helps to explain why, as Mayer observes, he was such a charismatic speaker. It is difficult to do justice, in this short review, to the insights which Mayer’s book provides into Shackleton’s inner life, and more generally into literature’s central – rather than merely decorative – role in early Antarctic exploration. Inevitably, the book is lacking the kind of nuanced cultural contextualisation and analytical insight that a literary scholar might have brought, and Mayer makes occasional slips with dates and details. There is little engagement with a growing body of academic work looking at the relationship between literature and Antarctica. However, Mayer’s aim is not to contribute to literary studies, but rather to convince readers that “for Shackleton, poetry was not just for show, but was at the very core of who he was” (x). On these terms, his book is certainly a success.

The Protection of the Culturally and Spiritually Important Landscapes of Arctic Indigenous Peoples under the Convention on Biological Diversity and First Experiences from the Application of the Akwé:Kon Guidelines in Finland

Culturally and spiritually important landscapes in the Arctic region express the interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples with the natural and spiritual environment, and their preservation has been, and continues to be, essential to Indigenous People’s identity and traditional livelihoods. During the last decade, the importance of cultural landscapes for the conservation of biological and cultural diversity has received increasing legal attention. One of the international legal instruments developed are the Akwe:Kon Voluntary Guidelines, under the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). This paper elaborates on the worldwide first implementation process of the Akwe:Kon Guidelines in Finland, and draws on first experiences made during the testing case of these guidelines in the management process of the Hammastunturi Wilderness Area, in order to investigate to what extent culturally and spiritually important landscapes of Arctic Indigenous Peoples are recognized internationally, especially under the CBD and related international agreements and jurisprudence, and in the national context of Finland, in particular at the local level of the Hammastunturi Wilderness Area.