The original – and often continuing – sin of countries with a settler colonial past is their brutal treatment of indigenous peoples. This challenging legacy continues to confront modern liberal democracies ranging from the USA and Canada to Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Duncan Ivison’s book considers how these states can justly accommodate indigenous populations today. He shows how indigenous movements have gained prominence in the past decade, driving both domestic and international campaigns for change. He examines how the claims made by these movements challenge liberal conceptions of the state, rights, political community, identity and legitimacy. Interweaving a lucid introduction to the debates with his own original argument, he contends that we need to move beyond complaints about the ‘politics of identity’ and towards a more historically and theoretically nuanced liberalism better suited to our times. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in political theory, historic injustice, Indigenous studies and the history of political thought.

This book addresses the impact of a range of destabilising issues on minority rights in Europe and North America. This collection stems from the fact that liberal democracy did not bring about the “end of history” but rather that the transatlantic region of Europe and North America has encountered a new era of instability, particularly since the global financial crisis. The transatlantic region may have appeared to be entering a period of stability, but terrorist attacks on the soil of Euro-Atlantic states, the financial crisis itself and other changes, including mass migration, the rise of populism, changes in fundamental political conceptions, technological change, and most recently the Covid pandemic, have brought increasing uncertainties and instabilities in existing orders. In these contexts, the book investigates the resulting difficulties and opportunities for minority rights. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines who are engaged in work on various unstable orders, the book provides a unique and largely neglected perspective on present developments as well as addressing the pressing issue of the future of the minority rights regime at global, regional and national levels. This book will appeal to those with interests in minority rights, human rights, nationalism, law and politics.

This 2001 book focuses on the problem of justice for indigenous peoples and the ways in which this poses key questions for political theory: the nature of sovereignty, the grounds of national identity and the limits of democratic theory. It includes chapters by leading political theorists and indigenous scholars from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and the United States. One of the strengths of this book is the manner in which it shows how the different historical circumstances of colonization in these countries nevertheless raise common problems and questions for political theory. It examines ways in which political theory has contributed to the past subjugation and continuing disadvantage faced by indigenous peoples, while also seeking to identify resources in contemporary political thought that can assist the 'decolonisation' of relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

As a settler state, Canada’s claims to sovereign control over territory are contested by Indigenous claims to land and to self-determination. Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Federalism presents legal analyses that explore forms of federalism and their potential to include multiple and divided sovereignties. This collection aims to advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada and elsewhere by developing jurisprudence on the possibilities for a nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous nations and Crown sovereignty. Contributors use legal creativity to explore how federalism can be structured to include the constitutional jurisdiction of Indigenous nations. Several chapters are grounded in the Canadian context while others connect the issues to international law and other settler colonial jurisdictions, recognizing how Indigenous resistance to settler laws and government decisions can at the same time be the enactment of Indigenous legalities and constitutional cultures. Ultimately, Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Federalism offers innovative ways for Canada to move forward from this challenge using existing constitutional mechanisms to give life to a plurinational Canadian federalism inclusive of the jurisdiction of Indigenous peoples.

In 2007, 144 UN member states voted to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US were the only members to vote against it. Each eventually changed its position. This book explains why and examines what the Declaration could mean for sovereignty, citizenship and democracy in liberal societies such as these. It takes Canadian Chief Justice Lamer’s remark that ‘we are all here to stay’ to mean that indigenous peoples are ‘here to stay’ as indigenous. The book examines indigenous and state critiques of the Declaration but argues that, ultimately, it is an instrument of significant transformative potential showing how state sovereignty need not be a power that is exercised over and above indigenous peoples. Nor is it reasonably a power that displaces indigenous nations’ authority over their own affairs. The Declaration shows how and why, and this book argues that in doing so, it supports more inclusive ways of thinking about how citizenship and democracy may work better. The book draws on the Declaration to imagine what non-colonial political relationships could look like in liberal societies.