Where Do I Belong?
No Longer "All My Relations": Indigneous Statelessness within the US
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Wilkins, Shelly Hulse Wilkins
Over the last thirty years, the number of federally-recognized Native Nations located within the United States has increased, and yet, corresponding population figures for these states have declined. Given the well-documented history of US eradication and assimilation of Indigenous Peoples, it would be easy to attribute this phenomenon to ill-conceived or hostile federal policies. However, in this case, Native governments, themselves, are driving the trend through policies of banishment, erroneous denials of citizenship, or disenrollment of bone fide citizens. Since the 1990s, more than eighty Native Nations have culturally, politically, and legally terminated the rights of Indigenous citizens. With the first comprehensive examination of the origins and significance of Tribal disenrollment, we examine these disturbing practices, which often leave targeted Tribal citizens with neither traditional options nor legal avenues for appeal. At the center of the issue are questions of how Native Nations are defined today and who has the fundamental right to define “belonging.” Through analysis of hundreds of Tribal constitutions and interviews with both former Tribal citizens and the Tribal officials who rendered them stateless, we discuss the damage to communities across Indian Country and consider ways to address the problem.
Loss of Citizenship and Ethnic Identity in the Bajo Tribe: A Case in Tomini Bay, Indonesia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Muhammad Obie, Lahaji Haedar, Natsir Muhammad
Coastal and marine resources at Tomini Bay had been possessed by the Bajo Tribe since the 1800s. The government then since the 1970s set the investment policy by giving license to capitalist enterprises to exploit it. Meanwhile since 1984 the government set the conservation policy. This study used natural resources access theory (Ribot and Peluso, 2003) and the linkage between natural resources ownership on citizenship and ethnic identity (Lund, 2011). The research analyzes the effect of investment and conservation policies towards the ownership and ethnic identity of the Bajo tribe. Methods of research were interview, observation, and Focused Group Discussion (FGD). It implicated both to sociological theory and policy making on coastal and marine resources. Investment policy had caused damaging on coastal and marine resources due to over exploitation. Meanwhile, conservation policy resulted territorialising of coastal and marine areas. Both policies caused the loss of access of the Bajo tribe which then caused the loss of its citizenship and ethnic identity. The Bajo Tribe then was in a discarded position. As a tribe entity, it had been uprooted from its cultural root. While, as a part of modern nation-state, its existence still seen as isolated and remote community.
Building of Exclusionary Identities and Its Effects on Human Rights
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Jara
The construction of exclusionary identities usually does not start in the legal field. Though it may also happen through law, often it is in the educational spaces where it is sown and from there it later flows to political levels. At those levels it becomes institutionalized and subsequently affects the legal system, either directly or indirectly, eliminating factually the efficiency of certain dispositions and rules. There are many difficulties and problems of all kinds that, each day with greater intensity, have a negative impact on the effective deployment of human rights. From the wide and diffuse space that we conventionally identify as “culture” to the accelerated economic universe of “globalization,” without forgetting factors such as religious fanaticism, new forms of violence, or the depraved use of new technologies, an entire arsenal of cultural, political, and economic elements successfully conspire against the universality and effectiveness of recognized, solemnly proclaimed and, in many cases, normatively formalized human rights. The recognition of the “sovereign state” as the central subject of international law, even assuming its juridical, democratic, and constitutional legitimacy, has not managed to completely neutralize the tendencies of political power to the exclusionary identity building and the collective self-assertion of particularisms. Therein lies, in Jürgen Habermas's opinion, “the realist sting that sticks to the flesh of human rights.” It is true that the political role of the national State is not in question, but perhaps the time has come to accelerate the search for other political actors with more capacity for action and more effectiveness in guaranteeing and protecting human rights.
