Det förgångna är framtiden : Ursprungsfolk och självbestämmande i Hawai´i

Sammanfattning: The sovereignty- and self-determination movements of indigenous peoples are a salient factor on the political agenda in many western world countries. Indigenous peoples in Hawai´i and elsewhere have become increasingly politicised in hope of changing their relationship with the states within which they are located. The discourse of indigenous peoples turn around the concept ”First Nations” whose collective and inherent rights to self-determination have never been extinguished but prevail in international and national law as a basis for constitutional concessions and affirmative action. This claim asserts that indigenous peoples have a special relationship with the state based on a unique set of entitlements. In western countries considerable energy has been spent in redefining indigenousness as a distinctive social and political category with a corresponding set of characteristics and delegated powers that derive from acknowledgement of their historically based status as ”nations within”. Confrontation between indigenous peoples and the state in the last two or three decades or so, has focused around issues such as land and political self-determination. These issues have been seen as essential in establishing control over matters of internal jurisdiction. Without land no self-determination. Without self-determination no control over the economic, social or cultural development and future. This is a study of the political change surrounding self-determination movements of indigenous peoples who are asserting a claim to inherent sovereignty and special political status. I show how these claims have forced western democratic nations to rethink basic asssumptions regarding individual and group rights and the basis of rights in political society. This task requires examining how it has been possible for indigenous peoples to be successful in extracting certain constitutional and legislative concessions leading to self-determination. Within this context I show how structuring political debate around these claims uniquely affects national policy This study is therefore primarily concerned with the factors that have influenced that political change. In order to understand the effect of the claims of indigenous peoples the study concentrates on Hawai´i and the native hawaiian ´kanaka maoli sovereignty movement´. It focuses on how and by which strategic means the movement has been able to extract certain politically significant changes. The intention is to construct a theoretically and empirically informed framework for understanding how indigenous peoples´ movements in the West pursue goals sovereignty and self-determination. Another central concern for this study is the comparative dimension. The anthropological perspective on political change in this field focuses on the political actors and the dynamics of interaction within the arenas of government policy, law and administration. I explore indigenous-state relations as an interplay between structure and agency. Indigenous peoples in the West not only act within the limits set by the state, they also tend to act upon these limits in reworking the political order around them. This is accomplished by employing the political argument of ´inherent sovereignty´ with its content of historically founded political identity and its moral connotations in political and the legal arenas at international and national levels. By connecting political status as indigenous peoples with the argument of inherent sovereignty it has been possible to effect significant political change that generally speaking lies outside the realm of the liberal domain of the Western democratic states.