Bristol, UK: Policy Press at the University of Bristol; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2017. vii, 206 pp. US$115.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4473-3942-7.
This book has an unusually clear statement of purpose: “Indigeneity is a politics of potential that transcends neocolonial victimhood. The book’s principal purpose is to explain how and why” (1), and proceeds by considering comparatively the cases of Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand. Thinking about indigeneity must precede thinking about political authority, the author notes, and indigeneity broadens the lens of political claim such that sameness need not be presumed. Further, substantive self-determination requires that transgressions of justice be recognized and hence reconciliation is an important goal in contemporary secular politics.
Dominic O’Sullivan, an associate professor of political science and member of two tribes of New Zealand, then argues that discourses of reconciliation, self-determination, and sovereignty allow people to assert their rights of prior occupancy. These are realized through belonging together differently. The three cases O’Sullivan has chosen make good comparative sense: New Zealand has a strong treaty on which indigenous issues have been scaffolded; Fiji has a majority and politically dominant indigenous population but adverse relations with its Indian population; and Australia, the largest of the three countries, has a relatively small indigenous population. The author makes clear how these differences are manifested on the ground.
O’Sullivan takes on both the left’s preoccupation with class and gender politics and the focus on the individual which characterizes the right. He provides a very different view of reconciliation politics within liberal democracies than many currently entertain in North America. In fact, he writes in support of the possibilities of liberal theory to mediate tensions between indigenous peoples’ particular and collective rights and those of the whole political community. His argument is developed around the idea of differentiated citizenship (belonging together differently). The liberal democratic relationship with indigeneity, he writes, is paradoxical: it neither accommodates nor rejects entirely the general claims of indigeneity. O’Sullivan points out parallels with democratic concerns for the rights of the individual and the collective.
O’Sullivan disputes the notion that liberalism cannot account for conquest and must position indigenous peoples as wards of the state, concluding that this perspective is inconsistent with the Maori experience. The process of reconciliation, he writes, within institutionally stable democracies, can enable indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to occupy the same space peacefully and productively. To do so, indigenous communities must control their education system and engage the economy in their own culturally appropriate terms. But there are limits to reconciliation. In Australia and New Zealand, he argues, secular politics is incrementally more sympathetic to indigenous claims than in Fiji, where a coherent reconciliation is lacking, hijacked by the political instability and struggle between indigenous Fijians and the Indian population. The majority Fijian indigenous people should not seek to dominate others because, O’Sullivan points out, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is premised on the idea of harmonious relations.
A foundational assumption is that if culture, which O’Sullivan holds to be contested and variable, is preliminary to individual freedom it must concern liberal theory, which has the potential to protect indigenous peoples’ culturally framed liberties, including group rights, against the state. A key question regarding the way indigeneity is framed is whether culture is viewed as a relic demanding preservation, not subject to internal or external questioning, or as a reference point for identity and security and self-worth. Cultural practice is preliminary to effective schooling, which is preliminary to gaining access to labour markets, the utilization of land rights for material purposes and, ultimately, access to the middle class and participatory parity.
The idea of differentiated citizenship is a second building block, because it allows for difference in cultural expression and land tenure but sameness in political opportunities. Indigenous peoples claim a specific, not proportional, share in national political authority, O’Sullivan writes, which differentiates them from ethnic minorities. To obtain support for the idea of differentiated citizenship with the settler populations, it must be understood not as a response to oppression arising from prior occupancy. O’Sullivan argues for a citizenship reconceptualized as capacity rather than as rights, and as a perspective which is capable of being two-tiered. The intersection of indigeneity, differentiated citizenship, and participatory parity, then, provides ways to work out terms. There remains a problem of irreconcilable values and the political capacity to mediate difference that tests the capacity for fairness. Agreement is needed on ways that conflict is settled, but need not presume agreement on substantive points.
I have some observations from a Canadian perspective. O’Sullivan writes: “Treaty settlements are a secular parallel to reconciliation as a theological precept…” (24). This, I believe, and if I understand him correctly, is an astute comment. In my view, the failures of Crown fairness in treaty negotiations and land claims is the most important current barrier to reconciliation and to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada taking their proper place in the Canadian polity, as O’Sullivan suggests is underway in New Zealand. O’Sullivan occupies a different intellectual space, but leans on a number of North Americans, and especially Canadians. Audra Simpson, Colin Scott, James Waldron, Taiaiake Alfred, and James Tully show up.
This is a sometimes densely phrased book, and takes a while to work through. But O’Sullivan develops his argument sequentially, with a “get-on-with-business” writing style. It is a thoughtful book with a well-supported and optimistic position. A little optimism doesn’t hurt in the age of neoliberalism.
Bruce Granville Miller
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada