Being Indigenous in an Unlikely Place: Self-Determination in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1920-1991)

Abstract

How and why is Indigeneity expressed differently in different contexts? This article examines the articulation and expression of Indigenous Rights in one of the most challenging contexts—that of Siberia in the Soviet Union era. Based on primary, archival research carried out in the Republic of Sakha, Russia, the review finds that re-claiming and re-defining Indigeneity can serve as the first step in crafting an effective challenge to the domination and control exercised by states over Indigenous populations. The study of Indigeneity in unlikely places has important ramifications for Indigenous Peoples worldwide who are struggling against colonial-minded governments that have not only deprived Indigenous Peoples of their lands and resources, but also suppressed their right to self-identification through imposed administrative definitions of Indigeneity.

Pandemic State Failure, Hydrocarbon Control, and Indigenous Territorial Counteraction in the Peruvian Amazon

“…As an international norm and concept, self-determination is rooted in freedom and equality for individuals and groups, in a way that entitles them to participate, change, or transform governing institutional orders, including those that are seen as a remedy of historical marginalized processes (Anaya, 1996). Broader purposes and goals of indigenous self-determination movements can entail 1) greater autonomy from a nation-state as a form of self-government; 2) greater participation in decisionmaking institutions at higher political levels such as legislatures or electoral coalitions; or 3) institutional changes that expand indigenous self-determination or seek to obtain state power to achieve social change (Hawkes, 2002;Jackson and Warren, 2005;Cornell, 2015;Petray and Pendergrast, 2018;Merino, 2020;Sidorova and Rice, 2020). The literature of self-determination emphasizes plurality and diversity of indigenous activism to continuously contest hierarchical relationships between governors and their subjectivities, while understanding how these produce and expand their self-determination through state, market, civil society, coalitions, and everyday practices (Gonzales and Gonzalez, 2015;Merino, 2020).…”