Indigenous Peoples: Citizenship and self-determination – Australia, Fiji and New Zealand

Distinctive geo-political and genealogical attachments contextualise contemporary indigenous claims to citizenship and self-determination. Although in Australia and New Zealand, these are the claims of minority populations the comparison with Fiji, where the indigenous population’s majority status has been restored, shows why Maori and Indigenous Australian political claims cannot be considered as ethnic minority politics. The comparison also shows that indigenous politics requires explanation beyond a simple coloniser/colonised binary. Therefore, the chapter considers what scope there is in liberal political theory for thinking beyond that binary to establish, on the one hand, an indigenous right to self-determination as a right to independent political authority over one’s own affairs and a right to distinctive influence in the affairs of the state, on the other. The chapter shows why indigeneity rather than relative population size is more instructive in explaining the claims that indigenous peoples make on contemporary states. Including the claim to distinctive indigenous belonging.