Indigenous Politics Virtual Mini-Conference

This year, APSA calls for proposals that promote pluralism across multiple dimensions. The Indigenous Politics Mini-Conference embraces this call. The scholarship in the Mini-Conference is multimethod and advances dialogue across subfields. We value the 2021 Theme Statement’s recognition that “diversity of our scholars in terms of racial and ethnic background, nationality, gender, sexuality, and gender expression, institutions and professional career stage contributes to knowledge and ways of understanding the world.”

We acknowledge that APSA has planned to gather in 2021 on the unceded land of the Duwamish people at QulXáqabeexW, a place also known as downtown Seattle, alongside the shared waters of the Duwamish, Puyallup, Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations.

The Mini-Conference opens with a roundtable to discuss the discipline’s recent and future engagement with settler colonial and Indigenous studies. It is designed to cultivate disciplinary pluralism by bringing together scholars from across subfields, methodological and epistemological traditions, and with varying regional expertise to address areas that have long been underrepresented in political science. After recent critical accounts of disciplinary neglect and erasure, and amid a broader interdisciplinary surge of interest in settler colonialism and Indigeneity, what developments have there been in different sectors of political science?

The second panel focuses on Indigenous political identity, which is shaped by varying experiences of sovereignty, colonialism, and racism. Also, Indigenous political identity has been the target of potent nation-state campaigns of subjugation and erasure. These papers consider how Indigenous peoples today define their political identity. Indigenous self-definition is an act of self-determination that engages and challenges the past and ongoing agendas of nation-states. With awareness of Indigenous epistemologies, these scholars deconstruct and reconstruct both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

The third panel centers on Indigenous political participation. The papers consider how Indigenous peoples choose to use their votes and their political organizing skills. The papers also examine how other political actors may facilitate new political opportunities for Indigenous participants or may erect barriers.

The fourth panel considers Indigenous sovereignty, which operates in the face of nation-state policies that undermine and challenge Indigenous rights. In addition, as Indigenous peoples reject nation-state threat and impositions, they make choices about how they will define and exercise sovereign practice. This panels considers the obstacles that nation-states have created for Indigenous sovereignty, and the choices that Indigenous peoples make about how they apply their sovereignty.

The fifth panel focuses on Indigenous peoples and climate change. The papers consider the political opportunities and obstacles that Indigenous peoples must confront in climate change mitigation and adaptation politics. Indigenous peoples’ response to climate change is influenced by past and present actions of nation-states, by international organizations, and by specific political resources that Native nations have cultivated.