Self-determination and Sovereignty

Taiaiake Alfred & Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark

What are the differences between western and Indigenous leaderships, governance, and justice?

• For the west: Hierarchy, (absolute) authority, autonomy and independence, coercion, individuality, distribution , power/over

  • Political authority: people do things by commands and through use of coercion 

• For Indigenous: Equality, primacy of conscience, power-with, relationality, accountability, responsibility, non-coercion, harmony, balance

  • Primacy of conscience: no one is in a position to override your conscious

  • Non-coercive: If it coercive, you are overriding conscious, instead power-with

• Governance: 

  • Conducted through persuasion

  • Guided by 6 principles

• Justice: Indigenous centre pursuit of harmony

What is strategic resignification

• To stipulate alternative meanings for established concepts

• Restorative justice: things come back

Why is sovereignty implausible according to Alfred?

• The role of moving beyond and undermining the state

  • To argue within dominant western paradigms is self-defeating. State-sovereignty is a fiction.

• The nature and role of self-conscious traditionalism

  • A return to Indigenous philosophies and practices

• A capacity to articulate how it differs from other projects discussed, like Turner’s. 

  • Turner believes there can me mediations within the state dominant framework, whereas Alfred believes to gain autonomy the Indigenous must turn from the state

How does stark connect identity and sovereignty

• An understanding of the various types of political contentions that can take place at the same time through the enactment of Indigenous sovereignty.

  • Relational and grounded (Nenabozho)

  • Recognize other than humans

  • Resignification of sovereignty: Indigenous sovereignty (strategic resignification)