Source: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/15/indigenous-and-21st-century-nationalisms-153952

1. Che-Wei Lee 1
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Champagne, Duane. 2014. “Indigenous and 21st Century Nationalisms.” Indian Country Today
Media Network, March 15.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/15/indigenous-and-21st-century-
nationalisms-153952?page=0%2C0.
Review by: Che-Wei Lee, Department of Administrative and Policy Studies, University of
Pittsburgh
Accessed: Thursday, 20 March 2014, 11:24 a.m.
Note: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code).
Comment
In this essay, Duane Champagne has explicitly made a cogent ontological statement of the
differences of human rights, indigenous rights, and civil rights, between indigenous peoples and
non-indigenous nation-states. Champagne’s argument is an unarguable ontology, that is, the
nature of reality of indigenous peoples (i.e., indigenous languages, histories, territories, so forth),
which already exists for millennia before any invasions, regardless of being in certain forms and
at various levels.
Rigorously speaking, unless the host states’ governments are sincerely willing and able to
understand this ontology (i.e., the nature of Indigenous reality), recognize it, and conform to
government-to-government relations (e.g., treaty rights or trust relations), the ideal and goal of a
peaceful symbiotic relationship will not achieve easily. In many cases, I argue that such ontology
Champagne has made is a fundamental premise of ways of knowing, doing, seeing, and being
when dealing with Indigenous affairs now and in the future.
If we can respect indigenous ontology authentically, then the righteous axiology (i.e., the nature
of ethical behavior) will come along with its healthy premise. I sincerely hope that the
contemporary states’ governments can really recognize and value this positive symbiotic
relationship. Because a sound symbiotic relationship will promote our reciprocal knowing,
mutual learning, and transforming under the condition of mutual fair and equal status.
Original Text
Paragraph 1: Indigenous Peoples live within the boundaries of nation-states but usually do not
conform to the cultural, political, economic institutions and identities of their host states. Most
contemporary democratic nation states are created by agreement through adoption of a
constitution, which spells out fundamental laws and values.
Paragraph 2: The social and cultural orders of Indigenous Peoples existed for thousands of
years before the formation of contemporary states. Usually Indigenous Peoples are not
participants in the formation of nation states, and declared citizens by acts of government, not
consent. Nation states uphold equality for all citizens and progress is measured by civil rights
and human rights advances. Contemporary nation states strive to create and protect equality
among all minority, ethnic, cultural, and racial groups. One measure of improved democracy is
greater inclusion of disadvantaged groups into the political and economic protection.

2. 2 Incommensurate Indigenous Rights?
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Paragraph 3: Democratic states are better designed to manage individualistic citizen issues of
inequality than to address indigenous issues. Nation states and international instruments, like the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), provide protections
for citizens within group and individual human rights platforms, but do not directly address
indigenous rights.
Paragraph 4: Part of the reason Indigenous Peoples do not conform to nation state
understandings is that Indigenous Peoples do not believe they are, or should be reduced to,
citizen, racial, ethnic, cultural, or minority group status. In contemporary language, Indigenous
Peoples are nations, with rights to territory, cultural and political autonomy. While the term
“nation” is taken from contemporary usage, the expression nation usually does not have the same
meaning for Indigenous Peoples.
Paragraph 5: Indigenous governments included relations with the cosmic order and beings,
such as plants, animals, other human nations, and beings that had power to move and change
form, such as water to ice. Government was not only management of people, and relations with
other human nations, but included managing relations with power beings within the cosmic order.
The goal for indigenous political management was to achieve reciprocal, respectful, and
balanced relations with all nations of power beings, including the human nations. In some sense
the indigenous vision of nation was like a separate species of animals, or distinct patterns of
phenomena that have repeated and recognized personalities and effects. Humans are not the
center of the universe, but are one of many power beings who have a role to play within the
cosmic order and future unfolding of life and history.
Paragraph 6: Indigenous institutions are overlapping, interrelated, and holistic composites of
spiritual, political, kinship, economic, and community relations. Political relations are not
separable from economic, spiritual, or kinship issues. Western secular democratic nation states
compartmentalize and separate government, religion, economy, community, and individuality.
The worldviews and organization of Indigenous Peoples significantly interferes with assimilation
and acceptance of nation state citizenship and government.
Paragraph 7: While many Indigenous Peoples participate as individual citizens in the nation
state, Indigenous Peoples do not want to give up their own forms of government, territory, and
interrelated worldviews and institutional relations. While nation states prefer to recognize only
individual citizens, Indigenous Peoples want to be recognized as the holistic nations with powers
of self-government and territorial rights.
Paragraph 8: United Nation diplomats suggest and hope that the 21st century will be
characterized by increasing development of multicultural and multi-national states. Such
developments would suggest progress over single culture nation states. However, many
Indigenous Peoples will continue to resist even the new multicultural and multi-national state
formations, because most indigenous nations in practice do not separate culture, government,
land, and economy. Multi-national and multi-cultural nation states assume individual citizens
will accept the rules of the secular nation state, but that is exactly what many Indigenous Peoples

3. Che-Wei Lee 3
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
refuse to do entirely and continue to defend their own forms of self-government, cultures, and
territories.
Paragraph 9: The absence of shared understandings of government, land, culture, institutional
relations, and associated identities will ensure continued contested relations between Indigenous
Peoples and nation states.
Author Note
Duane Champagne is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from North Dakota.
He is Professor of Sociology, American Indian Studies Center, and Law at UCLA. He is
currently a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the UCLA Native Nations Law and
Policy Center, and is Acting Director of the UCLA School of Law’s Tribal Learning Community
and Educational Exchange. His research interests focus on issues of social and cultural change in
historical and contemporary Native American communities. He has written and edited over 125
publications. Recent publications include Captured Justice: Native Nations and Public Law 280
(with Dr. Carole Goldberg, UCLA School of Law) (Carolina Academic Press, 2012) and Notes
from the Center of Turtle Island (AltaMira Press, 2010).