We are delighted to present a new international research project “Indigeneity in Waiting: Elusive Rights and the power of Hope”, that received funding from Kone Foundation. The three-year project (2016-2018) is led by Professor Julian Reid, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland and it employs us as postdoctoral researchers. The project is linked to our previous work that has studied resilience, adaptation and current governance in the context of indigeneity and international politics.

The new project takes a critical approach to legal and institutional advances concerning indigenous peoples. These advances promise progress and a better future. The project views this promise as an integral component in the ways in which political power is exercised today. Questions of rights, hope and indigeneity are studied in three contexts: Australia, Finland and Greenland.

Linked to the project, we will present our work in a workshop titled “Indigeneity and the Promise of Inclusion”, hosted by professor David Chandler, that will be held at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London, on 12 February 2016. The event will include a roundtable discussion and presentations by scholars interested in indigeneity and politics from various perspectives. The discussion will address the current claim that, in the wake of legal and institutional advances in indigenous issues, political power is being redistributed and exercised in new ways. We will explore this alleged progress and ask whether it has marked a significant change in the ways in which indigenous subjectivity is perceived. An important line of inquiry will also be on what kinds of links there are between claims to push forward the status and rights of indigenous peoples, and the interpellation of indigeneity in terms of adaptation, endurance and persistence.

For more, have a look on the project's webpage www.ulapland.fi/InWaiting

Text by Marjo Lindroth and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen