Indigenous peoples and identity*

Abstract

This article analyses the question of Indigenous peoples’ identity through the lens of Martha Fineman’s theory of vulnerability and human rights law. Answering questions of Indigenous identity is a difficult and complex endeavour, and is subject to many considerations, including individual, collective, internal and external perspectives. The theory of vulnerability of Martha Fineman provides the author with a prism through which to examine Indigenous identity and inequality across the social, economic, cultural, environmental and political spectra in the Indigenous peoples’ context, and permits the elaboration of a normative pathway to inform legal responses able to compensate for situations of inequity. In the author’s opinion, Fineman’s theory of vulnerability provides an innovative perspective from which to engage in the epistemological, analytical and normative legal analysis that is required, with the aim of supporting the resilience of the Sami peoples at the collective and individual level. The debate within the paradigm of human rights is based on the premise of the existence of different groups with different identities within States (such as minority groups and Indigenous peoples). The recognition of different rights defined internationally and constitutionally has resulted in the possibility for these groups of recognition of their specific cultural traits.