Indigenous survivance in global civil society and the pursuit of Indigenous rights within and beyond education

• In Event: Difference and the Politics of Representation

Proposal

[Relevance]

International governance frameworks have served as both barrier and boon for racially marginalized groups. The international legal regime stems from European imperialism (Mutua, 2000), with international law never explicitly defining nor prohibiting racism (Bradley, 2019). Conversely, the international human rights regime provides a framework through which marginalized groups can advocate for individual and collective rights (Koenig, 2008). Between systems of imperialism and human rights, Indigenous groups occupy a uniquely politicized space. International law historically justified Indigenous genocide and assimilation, and relational Indigenous ontologies are not represented in individualistic human rights discourses (Corntassel, 2008). Yet Indigenous groups have engaged in ‘survivance’ (e.g. survival and resistance; Vizenor, 1998) by strategically leveraging the human rights regime to advocate for Indigenous rights and sovereignties. My paper extends literature on Indigenous survivance and resistance by investigating two questions: (1) How has Indigenous survivance expanded in global civil society? (2) How do measures of Indigenous survivance help us understand the advancement of Indigenous rights within and beyond education?

[Theory/Context]

Prior theorists have applied survivance to education research within individual countries. Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit; Brayboy, 2005) leverages survivance to theorize how Indigenous collectives have sought sovereignty and self-determination in education. However, TribalCrit is specific to the U.S. and does not offer an international/comparative lens.

Meanwhile, World Society Theory (WST) conceptualizes how everyday citizens advocate within global civil society through international non-governmental organizations (INGOs; Boli & Thomas, 1997), pressuring governments to expand rights for marginalized groups (Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 2005). However, WST is a “color-evasive” theory (Annamma, Jackson, & Morrison, 2016) in that it does not account for how legacies of colonization politicize and racialize Indigenous identity (Brayboy, 2005).

Indeed, Indigenous resistance and advocacy face unique challenges. Human rights discourses may reframe Indigenous groups as minority—rather than sovereign—populations, weakening rights-based claims under international law (Corntassel, 2008). Countries may also prioritize ‘soft rights’ for Indigenous groups, such as access to education, over ‘hard rights,’ such as recognition of Indigenous sovereignty (Lightfoot, 2010).

I examine how Indigenous survivance through global civil society has increased over time, as well as how this advocacy relates to the advancement of both soft and hard rights.

[Inquiry]

I operationalize Indigenous survivance by examining the number of Indigenous INGOs (I-INGOs) with active members across 148 countries. I construct this measure using data from 1950-2020 volumes of the Yearbook of International Organizations, collected at decadal intervals. I define I-INGOs as organizations led by and centering Indigenous peoples. I argue that I-INGOs represent strategic adaptation by Indigenous groups to global civil society, using rights-based norms to advance collective self-determination.

For the first research question, I use my longitudinal data to descriptively analyze how memberships in I-INGOs have changed across different world regions. This offers insight into how Indigenous advocacy within global civil society has expanded over time.

For the second research question, I use multilevel regression to test the extent to which my novel measure of Indigenous survivance predicts two variables: first, Indigenous inclusion in higher education (a measure of soft rights); and second, country-level recognition of Indigenous sovereignty (a measure of hard rights). To measure the first, I conduct original data collection on a sample of each country’s higher education institutions to identify the proportion that include structures and programming for Indigenous groups, such as scholarships, affirmative action policies, and culturally relevant coursework. To measure the second, I identify whether the country has ratified or assented to key Indigenous rights documents, including the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention as well as the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, both of which include clauses on Indigenous sovereignty. I include country-level controls for GDP, liberal democracy, ratification of other human rights treaties, and Indigenous population. I also control for overall civil society activity using the total number of INGOs worldwide.

[Findings and Discussion]

Descriptive analyses reveal that I-INGO activity first began increasing in the 1950s, with especially high activity in settler-colonial countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These findings are consistent with literature that suggests early conceptualizations of collective Indigeneous identity first gained traction in settler-colonies countries, with support from liberal democracies in the Global North (Brysk, 2000). However, while I-INGO activity in these countries plateaued by the 1990s, my findings show it continued increasing in other regions of the world. I-INGO activity more than doubled in Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia between the 1980s-2000s. This growth included not only the expansion of existing I-INGOs’ members, but also the creation of new regional I-INGOs. Meanwhile, I-INGO activity increased more modestly in East Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. These findings offer quantitative corroboration of prior qualitative work which suggests Indigenous panethnic organizing has faced challenges in these contexts (Hodgson, 2002; Wang, 2015).

Multilevel findings reveal the extent to which Indigenous INGO activity predicts soft and hard rights for Indigenous groups. In terms of soft rights to education, for every one-unit increase in a country’s active I-INGOs, that country’s universities become 66% more likely to incorporate structures or programming for Indigenous groups, after controlling for other measures of country characteristics and global civil society. I-INGO activity also significantly increases a country’s likelihood of acknowledging hard rights for Indigenous groups through international governmental documents. However, the relationship is more modest, about a 4% increase in likelihood. Prior literature has suggested that countries may recognize soft rights, such as through education, as a replacement for hard rights, such as sovereignty. However, my findings suggest that strategic Indigenous survivance can advance soft and hard rights simultaneously.

[Contributions]

I make three contributions. First, I present a novel measure of Indigenous survivance by examining Indigenous participation within global civil society. Second, I show that this measure predicts the advancement of soft and hard rights for Indigenous groups, through both inclusion in education and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. Finally, I show one way in which protest and struggle takes shape through strategic adaptation to hegemonic power structures, advancing the inclusion and power of marginalized groups.

Author

• Hannah K D'Apice, Stanford University