Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002
Making Space at the Nations’ Table: mapping the
transformative geographies of the international
indigenous peoples’ movement1
Alice Feldman
Sociology Department, University College Dublin, BelŽ eld, Dublin 4, Ireland
Social movement scholarship has focused increasingly upon the roles played by
symbolic resources and movement discourses in the process of social transformation.
Current socio-political approaches, often characterized by an excessive focus on
movement structure to the exclusion of larger cultural considerations, still struggle to
address adequately the process of transmutation from idea to form, from symbolic
shift to material change. Through an examination of the international indigenous
peoples’ movement, this article illustrates the ways that space constitutes a mediating
dimension of the transformative processes through which the symbolic potential of
movement discourses may be manifested. The alternative spatialities and new geographies generated, deployed and legitimized by this movement have provided critical
locations for indigenous peoples to enact the creative work of mobilization. It is
argued that incorporating the work of critical geographers into existing sociological
and political perspectives will contribute to the better apprehension of these transformative processes as well as those associated with the particularly spatialized phenomena related to globalization, development, nationalism and geopolitics.
Keywords: Indigenous peoples, social movements, politics of difference, critical geography.
Social movement scholarship is focusing increasingly upon the roles played by symbolic
resources and movement discourses in the process of social transformation. Melucci (1996,
1989, 1985), in particular, has emphasized the ways in which discourses and languages,
constructed through movement formation and mobilization, may challenge and expand
dominating codes and symbolic orders. According to this view, the articulation and presencing
of subaltern perspectives activate and legitimize new sites of contestation, knowledge and
cultural production. Mobilization thus gives form to the alternative visions and counter-hegemonic languages encoded in movement discourses. These are then made manifest through
ongoing strategies of engagement with larger publics and institutions, ultimately giving rise to
new relations and practices.
ISSN 1474-2837 print/ ISSN 1474-2829 online/ 02/010031-16 Ó
DOI: 10.1080/ 14742830120118882
2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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This marks a powerful shift in social movement scholarship. Many have noted that the
literature is characterized by an overemphasis on movement genesis, internal organizational
structure and the political systems they engage. This preoccupation occurs to the exclusion of
the complex and ambiguous cultural processes which underpin their interaction with the wider
contexts in which they mobilize (McAdam et al. 1996). The focus on discourse and symbolism
has created the opportunity to further develop the systematic study of the actual processes
through which the counter-hegemonic ideas that underlie movement strategies are manifested.
Yet there are still complex questions to be asked: What connects ideas to form? Where, exactly,
do such transformation take place and how do these contexts yield new relations and
institutions? Where are the new publics and sites of production located, what are their
dimensions and how might they be accessed? In short, what are the features of the new
geographies that social movements are cultivating through their activities? These questions
bring to the fore the roles and implications of space and alternative spatialities in the process
of social change. They draw attention to the recent work of critical geographers who have
begun to examine social movements as a way of more effectively understanding the relationships between space, power and social transformation.
This article represents a parallel effort: to incorporate critical geographical perspectives into
sociological and political approaches to social movement analysis. It is based on a case study
of the international indigenous peoples’ movement. 2 The study focuses on the development of
the movement: from its inception through the coalescence of a vast array of nationally and
locally based mobilizations (the individual backgrounds of which are unfortunately beyond the
scope of this article),3 through its formal recognition and participation within the UN Working
Group on Indigenous Peoples and expansion to other global fora and locations. Thus, it does
not employ an organizational analysis as an end in itself. Rather, it uses the evolution of the
movement’s organizing activities and their institutional contexts as a map for locating and
examining the different spatialities these activities engender. It does so in order to gain further
insights into the ways symbolic resources play key roles in creating new terrains of resistance
and sites of contestation which help bring about and sustain the changes that movement actors
seek (Slater 1997; Routledge 1996; Escobar 1992). The article begins with an overview of the
key elements and perspectives of spatial approaches to the analysis of identity politics, social
movements and social change. This is followed by accounts of indigenous peoples’ development of an international constituency and platform, and their activities within and beyond the
UN system. The concluding section considers the insights and implications of a critical
geographical approach to the international indigenous peoples’ movement in particular, and
social movement inquiry as a whole.
The Politics of Space and Geographies of Resistance: Spatial Approaches to Social
Relations and Social Change
Despite their diversity, spatial approaches to social analysis turn upon the premise that space
is ‘both product and producer’ of social relations; to alter one is to alter the other (Lefebvre
1991; Harvey 1996). Consequently, Harvey (1996) argues that all social relations ultimately are
mappings of some sort, whether Ž gurative or material: they are both ‘space-forming and
space-contingent’ (Soja 1985: 98). Space is simultaneously the medium and outcome, presupposition and embodiment of social action and relationship (Soja 1989: 129). As such, the means
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
33
of spatial production can never be fully possessed or controlled (Harvey 1996; Lefebvre 1991).
Space serves as more than just a backdrop for the stage upon which social action and social
change are enacted, but constitutes a dynamic, imaginative and practical resource in the
contexts of mobilization. It is therefore ironic that the dimension of spatiality itself has often
been marginalized, overlooked or purposively rejected by scholars and social theorists, even
within geography itself (Lefebvre 1991; Gregory and Urry 1985; Keith and Pile 1993a; Kahn
2000).
Recent work, however, has examined the ways in which power relations are infused in the
social geographies which serve as constituent elements in hegemonic formations, and in the
fragmentation, dislocation and disempowerment of marginalized communities (Keith and Pile
1993b; Pile and Keith 1997; Massey 1995; Routledge 1996). As such, space is ultimately ‘the
message and medium of domination … [for it] tells you where you are and it puts you there’
(Keith and Pile 1993c: 37). People ‘must occupy space and have an identity that commands a
recognition of that occupation’—preferably according to the terms they desire (Shapiro 1999:
161). Consequently, the Other spaces within which identity and new cultural politics are
enacted are ‘strategically spatialized from the start’ (Soja and Hooper 1993: 189). Such spaces
are especially critical for those who have been silenced or marginalized, for they mark one’s
existence or non-existence, visibility or invisibility; one’s ‘place’, and all that springs from it.
Social movement activities engender new ‘public spaces of representation’ which provide
opportunities for movement actors to recognize themselves and be recognized as alternative
constituencies or counter-publics (Melucci 1996: 220; Alvarez et al. 1998; Warren 1998). These
processes create critical openings for injecting messages and demands into mainstream
decision-making processes, and translating them into potential foundations for change
(Melucci 1985). They also provide the means through which marginalized communities are able
to inscribe themselves into new geographies through the mobilization of an ‘assertively spatial
praxis’ (Soja and Hooper 1993). This praxis empowers marginality as a strategic space of
resistance and expansion. As such, the production of space not only funds the re/ territorialization and re/ occupation of dominant institutions, but the transformation of fundamental
discourses and practices of citizenship, democracy and freedom (Massey 1995; Alvarez et al.
1998; Slater 1997).
Massey (1985) notes that bringing space into social analysis is problematic. It is not just a
matter of bringing geography in at the end, or merely equating the geographical with the
concrete: space must be incorporated into basic formulations, deŽ nitions and concepts.
Moreover, Lefebvre (1991) has argued that spatially focused work is typically descriptive,
consisting of ‘inventories’ of what is in space but not necessarily the development of knowledge
of it. Nor is the deconstruction associated with post-modern, post-structural and even
post-colonial theories sufŽ cient as they often fetishize space to the extent that ‘the mental realm
comes to envelop the social and physical ones’ (Lefebvre 1991: 5), with all meaningful activity
being reduced to discourse (San Juan Jr 1999). Analysing the kinds of space, the catalysts and
processes of their production and the relationships between them help us to better understand
how geography makes certain forms of resistance im/ possible and how resistance makes
alternative geographies im/ possible (Pile 1997).
Colonialism literally remapped the discursive and physical spaces and places of indigenous
peoples in a variety of ways: through military force, occupation and dispossession, orientalizing constructions, legal and political appropriation of their sovereignty and an array of state
apparatuses that have maintained indigenous people’s civic and institutional invisibility and
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oppression. It has engendered a legacy of ongoing symbolic and material domination based
upon Manichaean formations that has been rationalized with the myth of the ‘vanishing
Indian’ and maintained in the violence of non-recognition (JanMohamed 1985; Feldman 1998,
2000; Shapiro 1999). Indigenous peoples’ movements of resistance—and in many cases their
very survival—have rested upon the recapturing of their self-concepts and their cultural roots
to re/ create spaces of consciousness, possibility and presence through the re/ construction and
mobilization of indigenous discourses, identities, and claims in a variety of social, legal and
political arenas. In the following sections, I focus on the evolution of the international
movement to consider these dynamics.
The Symbolic Spaces of Nationhood and the Organizing Terrain of Constituency: The
Early International Indigenous Peoples’ Movement
Whilst contemporary forms of indigenous activism gained signiŽ cant exposure in the 1960s and
1970s, resistance on the part of indigenous peoples is not new, but has its roots in centuries
of struggle against conquest, colonization and subjugation. The Ž rst formal international
interventions by indigenous peoples took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s with native
peoples’ delegations from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and British Columbia to England, followed
by an appeal by an Iroquois delegation to the League of Nations in 1923 (Sanders 1980; Wilmer
1993). Submissions were also made in the early years of the United Nations, but rejected on
the basis that they were considered to be made by private individuals rather than states
(Sanders 1989).
The rapid expansion in the mid-twentieth century of the welfare state in many settler
nation-states, combined with ongoing crises relating to indigenous peoples’ health, deprivation
and racism, sparked a new era in indigenous resistance, particularly in Scandinavia, the
Americas and the PaciŽ c. The ability of indigenous peoples to survive required the establishment of visible and active constituencies able to effectively confront state administrations on
their own terms (Deloria 1985). Pressed to near eradication, indigenous peoples demanded the
recognition of their inherent sovereignty and self-determination rights, as peoples and nations
rather than minority populations. 4
This re/ articulation of indigenous peoples’ collective identity and status ushered in a
dynamic period of protest, litigation, national organizing, political lobbying, community
development and cultural revitalization, following on the waves of the activism of the time,
particularly in settler states. These strategies were complemented by an explosion of organizations that employed a variety of legal, political and cultural mobilization strategies, both
maximizing and initiating new political and policy opportunities. Many of these organizations
were founding forces of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples.
Mobilizing the Fourth World, creating a constituency
The inherent limitations of working within colonialist systems, combined with growing state
repression, prompted indigenous peoples to establish organizations with an international focus.
During the 1970s, the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC—considered as the American
Indian Movement’s ‘diplomatic arm’), was formed during a nations-wide conference held at
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
35
the behest of traditional Lakota elders in the USA. It was given the mandate of focusing
international attention on the conditions of indigenous peoples and to gain a formal international status for indigenous peoples within the UN system. The creation of the World
Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) by peoples in Canada was inspired by Maori activism
and successes. It engaged widely in consultations with indigenous peoples around the world as
well as such organizations as the International Labour Organization and World Council of
Churches in Geneva, the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs in Copenhagen, and
Survival International and the Anti Slavery Society in London. The IITC and the WCIP were
the Ž rst two indigenous NGOs to gain consultative status with the UN, and were followed by
the Nordic Saami Council, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders, and the Grand Council of the Crees.
Worldwide exposure of indigenous activism in national contexts also reinvigorated and
cross-fertilized a longstanding network of European advocacy organizations, which also played
an important role in the formation of the international movement (see Feldman 1998). In 1971,
the World Council of Churches and the University of Berne held the Ž rst international
symposium on indigenous peoples. This conference yielded one of the earliest international
NGO declarations in support of indigenous peoples’ liberation, the Declaration of Barbados.
These developments helped to initiate the recommendation by the UN Sub-Commission on the
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities that a comprehensive study be
undertaken to examine discrimination against indigenous peoples, which was completed in
1983. A growing body of reports of gross human rights violations, exploitation and deplorable
living conditions led to the development of additional organizations and conferences which
converged with those indigenous networks already emerging from the Americas and elsewhere.
International developments such as the UN’s 1960 decolonization project and the adoption
of the International Covenants on Civil and Political and on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (in which the right of self-determination was Ž rst codiŽ ed in international law) provided
essential foundations upon which to build an international agenda. Expanding organizational
networks of collaboration and support strengthened the sense of a collective indigenous
identity and solidarity and set in motion new resources to maximize the political opportunities
available at this time. The combination of these emerging resources and alliances fuelled a
dynamic phase of organizing which created new spaces for activities though which indigenous
peoples established the foundations of the movement and the construction of an international
constituency and agenda (van de Fliert 1994).
World conferences and international conventions: the strategizing spaces of platform
building
The decade of the 1970s was one of articulating issues and laying foundations. The regional
and world conferences held during this time have become a hallmark of indigenous innovation
and mobilization beyond the UN system. The conferences provided the contexts for solidarity
building, information sharing and agenda setting. The formal declarations they generated
created the basis for the movement’s political and legal platform and accelerated the process
of translating their claims into the language of international law (Feldman 2001; Williams
1990).
Perhaps most importantly, the organizing process created a new constituency of indigenous
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peoples, embodied by the 1975 Port Alberni Statement written at a conference in British
Columbia whose participants were said to represent between 30 and 35 million indigenous peoples from around the world (Paine 1985). It begins, ‘We, the Indigenous Peoples
of the World … vow to control again our own destiny. …’ A new space of existence, the
Fourth World, was born, and with it a new constituency of over 300 million people and a
new map of the world. This ‘new world’ also brought with it new rules and strategies
for acting in it and new opportunities and resources for achieving their goals of selfdetermination. The 1977 UN NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous
Populations conference, the Ž rst formal UN forum attended by indigenous representatives,
dramatically inaugurated indigenous peoples’ entry into the international arena. The declaration resulting from the Conference ofŽ cially brought indigenous claims and political
ideologies into the UN arena and laid the grounds for the establishment of the Working Group
on Indigenous Peoples.
The emergence of a constituency of indigenous peoples—rendered both distinct and uniŽ ed within a collective consciousness of nations and peoples who have endured centuries
of colonial subjugation—created a signiŽ cant imaginative space: an emotional, psychological and intellectual space of freedom. Within this space, indigenous peoples could nurture
the seeds of their empowerment through self-identiŽ cation and self-legitimation, regardless
of the lack of ofŽ cial, state- or public-based recognition and in deŽ ance of the material
conditions of their oppression. Through these acts of naming, they were not simply renaming selves as victims (and thus always constrained within a colonizer/ colonized binary).
Nor did the articulation of their claims involve simply the identiŽ cation of their oppressors
as locations for directing their grievances. These ‘(re)imagined communities’ of indigenous
nations and peoples re ect a veritable gestalt shift that opened up a whole new set
of possibilities, which, in turn, created the foundations for renaming their worlds and the
rules for acting within them.5 The framing of claims and grievances in the languages of
colonial subjugation and self-determination provided a language of possibility, linked to
international law and steeped in a counter-colonial critique that would challenge the very
foundations of colonial rule, along with the institutions and formations that have perpetuated
their oppression.
The activities and processes associated with consciousness raising, organizing and mobilization that funded the formation of the movement at the international level extended the
discursive space and opportunities provided by an indigenous identity based on nationhood.
The conferences and international events gave form to the discourses of indigenousness and
nationhood through the physical places of meeting, organizing and solidarity building and the
creation of networks, declarations and agendas they generated. These, in turn, became the
basis for creating a constituency that was animated by subsequent articulations of the
movement’s legal and political platform. In all, the spatial transformations of text and
organizing provided an entree into UN institutions and standard-setting processes, establishing
an active indigenous presence within the landscapes of international law and the human rights
community.
By the time the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1982, indigenous
peoples were well prepared to immediately begin shaping its disposition and direction. In fact,
the Working Group drew heavily upon the strong discursive foundation shaped by indigenous
peoples’ ideologies’ claims, languages and recommendations stated in the declarations of the
conferences of the 1970s.
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
37
The Expanding Landscape of Participation: Indigenous Mobilization within the UN
System
The WGIP: an institutional address in the UN hierarchy
The Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (WGIP) was given the mandate to review the
circumstances of indigenous peoples and develop standards concerning their rights. It has
provided a crucial opportunity to gain more direct and equitable roles in the standard-setting
process based upon self-representation. The Working Group is comprised of member-state
experts rather than indigenous peoples and is located at the bottom of the UN hierarchy. Yet
it has served as a crucial site of intervention, a place from which indigenous peoples have
begun to act upon the system itself.6
The WGIP’s annual meeting typically takes place during the last two weeks of July in
Geneva (Feldman 1998; Barsh 1993; Wilmer 1993; Sanders 1989). Between 500 and 1,000
delegates have attended the meeting each year, including indigenous and non-indigenous NGO
representatives, scholars and experts, as well as state observers. What was initiated primarily
by indigenous peoples who suffered internal colonialism within settler states has grown to
include those peoples living in Africa and Asia. The expansion of the Working Group’s
purview has no doubt been problematic as a result, leading to the inclusion of what are
sometimes divergent and con icting perspectives, issues and goals (Burman 1994; Feldman
2001).
In addition to a preparatory meeting for indigenous delegates which serves as an orientation
and opportunity to write consensus statements, daily sessions are dedicated to hearing
testimonies and interventions by delegates and observers on an array of issues set forth in the
agenda outlined by the Working Group secretariat. There are also a myriad of additional
activities such as discussions with UN agencies, Ž lms and special-issue presentations by various
NGOs. Evening events may include UN-sponsored receptions and social events hosted by
indigenous NGOs. Caucusing among delegates and writing interventions Ž lls nearly all the
time outside of the plenary sessions and often continues late into the evening hours. During the
course of the WGIP, the conventional environs of the UN are notably transformed.
Growing sites of intervention: the latent resources of the standard-setting process
The 1980s marked a time of broad-based institutional response to indigenous mobilization
which produced new textual, representational and promotional spaces for indigenous peoples.
The value of the Working Group has derived from its ability to initiate and channel
standard-setting activities that form the bases for changes in human rights, norms and practices.
Since 1985, its primary focus has been the creation of the Universal Declaration of the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples, the Ž nal draft of which was completed in 1994. Consisting of 45 articles
and 12 preambular paragraphs, the Declaration addresses three central areas of rights: cultural,
land and resource and self-determination rights. There are, indeed, substantial conceptual and
practical problems associated with a document purporting to represent and re ect the needs,
interests and visions of such a diverse array of peoples. The draft is unique, however, in the
extent to which it represents the product of a collaborative process which has included
hundreds of representatives and thousands of communities. It is also unique in its attempts to
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Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1
assert broad, collective rights which may be employed in particular ways and contexts to meet
the needs of a diverse array of individuals, communities and peoples (Feldman 1998, 2001).
While still the focus of contention even among indigenous delegates, the Draft Declaration has
served as a crucial basis for effecting changes within the system.
The 1993 International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was established to strengthen
awareness of the problems indigenous peoples experience and the need for greater international
co-operation towards their solution (Stamatopoulou 1994; Barsh 1993). The theme of the
International Year was ‘A New Partnership’, and its inauguration marked the Ž rst time
indigenous leaders addressed the General Assembly. The International Year has since been
followed by the establishment of an International Decade, from 1994 to 2003. The theme of
the Decade, Partnership in Action, ushered in a long-term perspective with regard to indigenous peoples and indigenous rights by advocating the adoption of the Draft Declaration by the
General Assembly and the establishment of a permanent forum for indigenous representation.
The creation of an International Day now serves as a yearly reminder.
There have been, no doubt, many problems and contradictions with regard to these
developments. All of these initiatives have been plagued by lack of sufŽ cient funding and
participation on the part of state governments, both within UN-based forums and in domestic
arenas.7 And, whilst purely symbolic in many ways, these commemorative acts have provided
opportunities to catalyse and to acquire funding for many indigenous-based initiatives,
including the establishment of communications networks, databases, publication series, training programmes on human rights, materials produced in indigenous languages, relevant
research and inter-agency consultations. Most importantly, following its approval by the WGIP
in 1994, a new Inter-sessional Working Group (IWG) for state observers was convened to
review and approve the Draft Declaration so it can then be routed to ECOSOC and the
General Assembly. After much lobbying by indigenous representatives who feared that states
would use this as an opportunity to water down the Draft which had taken so many years to
write, a procedure was set up to allow indigenous attendance of the IWG. This marked the Ž rst
time indigenous peoples were given access to a state forum; however, ongoing concerns
illustrate the inherent limitations and unavoidable precariousness of working within the state
system (Barsh 1996; Feldman 2001).
The outcomes of the standard-setting process garnered further exposure, maintain momentum and kept indigenous issues on the international agenda. They also cleared the ground for
further advances by creating platforms for launching additional policy initiatives, gaining
leverage for funding and serving as reminders that a substantial amount of work remained to
be done. The recognition, adoption and elaboration of international standards pertaining to
indigenous peoples by other NGOs and human rights-based movements linked their endeavours to larger global issues, thereby increasing their proŽ le. These new forms of support lent
further legitimacy to these emerging standards and are contributing to their evolution into
customary law and other practices which do not rely upon state authorization. The growing
body of studies, doctrine and projects generated by indigenous peoples’ mobilization mixed
with activities and initiatives in other spheres in a dynamic process of diffusion and synergy
which created further possibilities along with the resources for manifesting them. And, after
years of lobbying and negotiation, a Permanent Forum for Indigenous Peoples was ofŽ cially
established in 2000. While its agenda and responsibilities are still evolving, crucially it has been
decided that the panel of experts will consist of an equal number of indigenous and
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
39
non-indigenous experts: another Ž rst, this time with respect to direct indigenous representation
on a UN body.
Autopoietic Zones of Decolonization: Indigenous Mobilization beyond the UN System
Whilst states blocked the ofŽ cial designation of 1992 as the International Year of Indigenous
Peoples in order to prevent con ict with plans for celebrating the Columbus quincentenary, it
was nevertheless a landmark year. Indigenous peoples around the world seized the opportunity
for using the quincentenary as the basis for counter-colonial protests and projects, and their
causes received further legitimation when Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize that year. By 1993, the ‘ofŽ cial’ International Year, the presence and inclusion of
indigenous peoples within the world conferences of the 1990s had been established as accepted
practice. The conference declaration and programme of action for the 1991 UN Conference on
Environment and Development already had explicitly recognized the vital roles they play in
environmental management and sustainable development. The documents acknowledged that
indigenous peoples needed protection for their environments and territories, and advocated
concrete steps for the empowerment of their participation and autonomy. The declaration of
the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna has become an important and
oft-cited source because of its direct and speciŽ c statements supporting the goals of the WGIP.
The past several years have already seen the prospering of co-operative projects between
indigenous NGOs and communities, state agencies and organs like the UN Development
Programme, UNICEF, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, Intermonetary Fund, Organization of American States (United Nations 1994; Dallam 1991; Quesenberry
1997). They have also witnessed the  ourishing of indigenous traditional knowledge and
sustainable development programmes, centres and initiatives based upon traditional cultural
perspectives and practices (World Bank 1998). Despite the obvious hazards of exploitation and
co-optation such institutionalized ‘popularity’ can initiate, the incorporation of indigenous
knowledges within these international arenas has strengthened the currency of indigenous
critiques of Western science, politics and development that underpin the sustainable alternatives they provide. 8 And whilst the International Year and Decade kicked off a number of
UN-sponsored events, they also gave rise to a new wave of conferences hosted by indigenous
peoples in their own homelands, independently of the Working Group, and run according to
traditional and spiritual forms of meeting practices, cultural exchange and celebration. Some
of the gatherings may include international experts and Working Group representatives, yet
they have substantially altered the taken-for-granted practice of indigenous peoples having to
take their concerns to European venues.
In conferences held from Greenland to Australia, to Peru and Malaysia, indigenous peoples
have addressed such issues as home rule and autonomy, youth and health, as well as cultural,
genetic and intellectual property. These conferences have not only expanded the range of topics
addressed by the Working Group and the studies it has initiated, they have fed into wider
human rights and civil society mobilizations, from nuclear disarmament and environmental
racism, to biopiracy and intellectual property rights. They have generated an extensive corpus
of their own conventions and standards, supported by a growing body of legal scholarship
advanced by indigenous scholars and lawyers (Anaya 1996; Williams 1995). Tribunals also
provide the means for indigenous peoples to circumvent the constraints of state governments.
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For example, in 1993, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawai’ian) peoples held a 14-day international
tribunal to investigate charges brought against the US government for the illegal overthrow of
their monarchy, forced annexation of their lands and the genocide that underpinned it. The
First Nations International Court of Justice held its Ž rst hearing on the violations of the
Canadian government in Ontario in 1996. Growing in their roles as key consultants and
familiar critics, they have been recognized for their contributions to human rights efforts as a
whole.
Walking out, walking in, walking on: the creative de/con/struction of space
At the start of the second session of the IWG in 1996, indigenous delegates presented a
consensus statement to the Chair. The statement outlined their concerns that the state-based
IWG would dilute the Draft and derail its approval whilst claiming to have the consent of
indigenous peoples because of their attendance of the sessions.9 They requested that the IWG
immediately adopt the Declaration as a minimum standard and then hold general debates
about the legal and political principles underpinning it. Mindful of their effective exclusion
from the process, indigenous delegates had also agreed that if these demands were not met they
would leave the IWG. Despite several attempts by delegates to gain a response to this
statement, the Chair continued to ignore them, on the basis that they were allowed only to
observe the meetings, not to make motions. He also stated that the IWG mandate involved
elaborating the Draft, not adopting it (thus conŽ rming delegates’ fears that the draft completed
over the course of 12 years’ work in the WGIP was still subject to modiŽ cations that could gut
its protection). After indigenous delegates went ahead with their walkout, a somewhat shocked
Chair eventually suspended the meeting in response to concerns expressed by several state
observers that the absence of indigenous delegates compromised the legitimacy of the IWG.10
In 1997, indigenous delegates organized a procession commemorating 20 years of their
peoples’ involvement at the UN and recalling a time when they were denied access to it.
Dressed in traditional attire, delegates proceeded from the main gates of the Palais in Geneva,
through its halls, to the Working Group chamber where they took their seats. This event was
co-ordinated with an annual mayoral celebration in Geneva where the leader, Deskaheh, is
remembered for his historic trip from British Columbia in 1923.
Indigenous peoples were also present 2 years later at the Hague Peace Appeal, considered the
largest civil society forum yet held.11 Issues pertaining to colonialism were explicitly identiŽ ed
as key strands of the Appeal mission and several panels were devoted exclusively to the
presentations of indigenous representatives. Yet whilst prominent leaders and advocates from
around the world were featured in the main plenary sessions of the conference, none
representing indigenous nations had been invited to be part of these. Indigenous delegates,
however, arranged with organizers in the Ž nal hours of the conference to walk from their seats,
down the aisles of the colossal auditorium onto the centre stage during the closing plenary and
stand whilst an elder representative read a collectively written statement.
These acts constitute powerful images of, and metaphors for, the changing roles and status
of indigenous peoples within the state system of international law and the NGO-based human
rights community, and their ability to reŽ gure the architectures of state power and governmentality (see Schirmer 1994; Ó’Tuathail 1994; Shapiro 1999). They celebrate indigenous peoples’
arduous journey from virtual exclusion and invisibility to established presences within the
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
41
bounds of hegemonic, colonialist spaces, and depict the processes through which they have
begun to re/ occupy, re/territorialize and decolonize institutions whose very seeds were sown in
their conquest. Yet neither these images nor their realities end in the arenas of the Working
Group or Hague auditoriums. For, as the delegates left these contexts to return home, they
drew and extended the strands of these presences out from and beyond the institutions
themselves, to be rewoven into the everyday life struggles of their communities and to be taken
up in indigenous-hosted legal, political and cultural forums in the global space of the Fourth
World.
Whether through the construction of innovating spaces or the creative de/ con/ struction of
others, these acts embody a critical shift from presence to participation and from inclusion to
transcendence. It is a shift in which indigenous peoples move from seeking the validation of
their oppressors to generating the self-authorizing, self-legitimating counter-hegemonic sites of
production of self-determination, and rapidly evolving indigenous cultural and intellectual
paradigms and critical pedagogies which will carry on this work (Feldman 1998, 1999, 2001).
In these repositionings, the margins, simultaneously heterogeneous and overarching, fold into
the centre and swirl out again, permeating, blending with and reŽ guring dominating institutions and material realities. They are ‘shifting the centre’, generating alternative geographies
which re-centre indigenous peoples and de-centre colonial power (see Ngũgõ˜ 1993).
The Spaces Difference Makes (and the Differences Space Makes): ‘Indigenous Internationalism’, Self-determination and New Challenges for Social Movement Scholarship
According to Harvey (1996), the imagination ‘is a fertile source of all sorts of possible spatial
worlds’ and creates discourses that makes power relations most apparent, more visible. Yet it
is material practice that renders the mental concrete by making it part of social life, and that
constitute the framework within which social relations, institutions, power structures and
discursive practices unfold (Harvey 1996). Thus social space is simultaneously a Ž eld as well
as a basis of action; it is both actual and potential, quantitative and qualitative, of materials
and materiel (Lefebvre 1991).
The transformative geographies generated by the international indigenous peoples’ movement illustrate the ways space—textual, organizational, psychological, visual—constitutes an
integral, intermediary dimension of the transformative processes which manifests and real-izes
the symbolic potential of movement discourses to bring about changes in social relations and
institutions. Through sustained mobilization, the movement has gained recognition of
indigenous peoples and the value of their contributions to world community, and established
a new role and place for this participation in the world community. This ‘indigenous
internationalism’ (coined by a refugee, as cited in Wearne 1996: 187–90) articulates an
emancipatory and particularly indigenous subjectivity which is polyvocal and inclusive of a
multiplicity of communities of resistance ‘capable of linking together many radical subjectivities and creating new meeting places and spaces for diverse oppositional practices’ (Soja and
Hooper 1993: 184 after hooks on the subject of a radical African-American subjectivity).
Whereas conventional politics are ‘invariably about closure’ (Keith and Pile 1993c: 222), social
movements have the ability to engender transformative geographies that are spaces of ‘radical
openness’ (Soja and Hooper 1993) which thwart the binaries of centre/ margin, subaltern/
hegemon, us/ them, insider/ outsider, good/ evil: wherein the margin refuses its
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designation as ‘other’ (Soja and Hooper 1993: 190). This is the ‘space that difference makes’
(ibid.), space that displaces the boundaries between lived and imagined spaces, and that is thus
key for understanding the links between the production of movement discourses and their
manifestations.
These spatial dynamics and dimensions are intrinsic to key areas of sociological and political
social movement scholarship yet are largely overlooked in that literature. In important ways,
therefore, these frameworks remain insufŽ cient to conceptualize, recognize and learn from the
advances of indigenous internationalism as well as other complex global transformations
relating to ethnonationalism, development and diaspora, decolonization and global civil
society. Even in recent works that have made an important shift to a focus on transnational
and global social movements, there continues to be a notable top-down focus that is
institution- and organization-centric (see Smith et al. 1998 and della Porta et al. 1999). Rather
than emphasizing the very active role social movements have played in shaping the opportunities provided by international legal/ political regimes upon which they are now capitalizing, the
movements discussed in these works are portrayed more as reactive entities simply making use
of the existing resources these structures and institutions are offering.12 Moreover, the excessive
focus on organizational structures appears to have led to a con ation and casual interchangeability between transnational social movements (TSMs) and transnational social movement
organizations (TSMOs), whereby discussing the TSMO becomes equivalent to the TSM as a
whole and its global contexts.13 The focus on structure to the exclusion of context leaves TSMs
as simply organizational containers that are somewhere ‘out there’ in global space. They are
distinctly transnational because of their propensity to cross structural (state) boundaries but do
so within an indeŽ nable landscape, only visible when in the limelight of a protest, institutional
or political arena. Notions of constructive diffusion are still predominantly considered within
the contexts of exchanges between different movements or movement organizations (and
typically from those deemed ‘successful’ and often from ‘First’ World locations to those that
are smaller or more marginalized), rather than between movements and the world(s) they are
trying to bring about.
Such limitations are particularly evident in a recent account of the indigenous peoples’
movement in a volume concerned with transnational movements that attributes the globalization of the movement almost exclusively to the existence of supranational institutions. The
author writes, for example, that local/ national grievances ‘globalize when they enter the UN’,
and that the transformation and globalization of the political con icts underpinning the
movement result primarily from the act of challenging the UN (Passey 1999: 149, emphasis
added). The emphasis seems to be on what the UN bestows (consultative status, access,
resources) and how movements may be or seek to be incorporated into a supranational
structure. There is little consideration of what ultimately amounts to centuries of indigenous
peoples’ efforts to shape and force open international institutions and Ž elds of mobilization.
Nor does it consider the very complex trade-offs, constraints and contradictions associated
with these strategies, or the alternative ways forward once the limits of the hegemonic,
state-based institutions have been reached. It is not just a matter of getting in the door—getting
a seat at the table—but also mobilizing beyond it in order to carry on and carry forward.
It is perhaps equally unclear whether spatial or geopolitical approaches can deliver the
cumulative and uniform analysis that has been sought and cultivated by sociological and
political approaches, and be developed sufŽ ciently to yield practical (rather than potentially
fanciful) analyses. 14 Yet it is clear that they can contribute to the substantial expansion of (and
Feldman: Making Space at the Nations’ Table
43
consequently advancements in) mainstream sociological and political social movement inquiry
and theory building, particularly in three central and intersecting areas: (1) greater attention to
the cultural dimensions of mobilization and the substance of movement discourses through a
focus on sites of knowledge production and the content of ‘subaltern’, counter-hegemonic, and
non-Western epistemologies, and their practical as well as imaginative utility; (2) more
purposeful emphasis on process—especially diffusion (beyond tracing the paths of movement
networks and multi-organizational Ž elds) in order to ascertain the ways in which legitimation,
autopoiesis and, ultimately, self-determination, are being achieved; (3) grounding inquiry in
greater contextualization of movements, beyond their internal structures and political/ legal
arenas to their roles in larger historical and global transitions and evolutions.
The capacity to apprehend the nature of the overlapping tears and folds, the radiating paths
of cultural innovation and change that lie at the heart of mobilization and social transformation is crucial for effectively engaging and realizing the potential of Melucci’s and other
related perspectives. Such scholarship would provide further insights into what types of spaces
are conducive for cultivating different kinds of innovations, the conditions for, and limits of,
their diffusion, and the differences between dominating spaces and counter-hegemonic, decolonizing ones. These areas of expansion respond to and support growing calls for multi-dimensional and holistic frameworks, for practice-oriented and relational approaches which extend
political analyses through the use of cultural lenses (Warren 1998; Alvarez et al. 1998). Such
work promises to expand the purview of social movement scholarship to a substantially wider
range of contemporary global issues and timely scholarship. The fusion of social movement
perspectives with those of critical geography and geopolitics—combined with increasingly
more sophisticated work regarding indigenous peoples and decolonization—is thus an exciting
and promising one.
Space is more than just a backdrop or fashionable metaphor, but both a critical process and
product in itself. Existing at the nexus of political institutions and collective demands, such
spaces, and the new (counter)publics and ‘glocalities’ (Luke 1994: 624) of the resistance and
innovations that make them home, serve as key points of fusion between inside and outside,
margin and periphery, the present, past and future. They ensure that debate, negotiation,
re/vision—and thus growth—move forward. Indeed, as Melucci (1996) has observed, the
ongoing production and command of space is at the very heart of democracy and freedom.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Steve Quilley and Aogán Mulcahy for their comments on earlier versions of this article, in
addition to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for their insights and support.
2 This case study is based largely on Ž eldwork and documentary analysis undertaken between 1993 and 1997 as part
of a larger study funded by the (US-based) National Science Foundation and the Institute for the Study of World
Politics.
3 For work concerning mobilization in the Americas see Cornell (1988), Smith and Warrior (1996), Wearne (1996),
Urban and Sherzer (1991), the PaciŽ c (Burger 1987; Wilmer 1993) and the Arctic/circumpolar regions (Dyck 1985)
as well as Brösted (1985) generally.
4 Such claims rest in large part upon the notion that sovereignty and self-determination ultimately derive from the
recognition and consent of ‘the people’. As a result, the inherent rights and status that  ow from these principles
(which were legally and morally enshrined in early international law and in many treaties made with their
colonizers) have never truly been extinguished (see Williams 1990; Hanke 1959).
5 It is important to note that, as in all other contexts involving the assertion of collective identities, the use of such
44
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1
terms as indigenous peoples, nations, tribes, etc. are all ultimately problematic and contentious, generally, in the
contexts of indigenous mobilization and in terms of their use within the UN process (see Feldman 2001; Barsh
1993).
For a detailed description of the events and processes discussed in the following section see Feldman (1998). For
recent trends and developments see Barsh (1996), Dallam (1991), Quesenberry (1997), Williams (1990b, 1995).
Neither are they free from the problems facing all collective mobilization: accountability, inclusive grassroots and
community representation, co-optation, etc. of organizational members and front-line representatives.
See, for example, the Indigenous Knowledge Monitor, produced in association with the Centre for International
Research and Advisory Networks (http:/ / www.nufŽ c.nl/ik-pages).
The documentation of this event was obtained through an Internet site set up during the 1996 IWG by Netwarriors
(http:/ / hookele.com/ netwarriors). A report by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO)
(1996) also provided supplemental records of this and other IWG and WGIP sessions.
Whilst some indigenous representatives returned to the meeting after consultations with the Chair and have
continued to participate in this process because they felt their presence essential for defending the Draft, others
continued to meet outside IWG and many have since left this forum. See Feldman (2001) for a more detailed
account of the implications of the Draft Declaration and the IWG.
See the conference’s Website, http:/ /www.Haguepeace.org
It is interesting to note that the internationalization of many of these movements extends back to the 1970s, at the
time when social movement theory was just beginning to address their local and national manifestations and
consequences.
In contrast to Cohen and Rai (2000), a collection that focuses more on confronting the implications of globalization
as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon for social movements.
Yet, given their limitations, the assumed robustness of their analytical power is also uncertain. Moreover,
‘globalizing’ social movement theory by applying conventional social movement frameworks to global contexts
may run the risk of merely making global phenomena ‘Ž t’ into an existing mould.
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The Author
Alice Feldman is a lecturer in the Sociology Department at University College Dublin, Ireland.