Paradigm conflicts

Abstract

Over thirty years in the making, the innovative Nordic Sámi Convention (NSC) aimed to reassert that the Sámi are one people across Nordic state borders and thereby petitioned for collective rights to self-determination and natural resources within the Sámi traditional territory, Sápmi. However, the NSC’s final draft has been criticized for not realizing what it initially proposed. Instead, some claim the NSC will limit Sámi claims to collective rights in the future, including Indigenous rights to land and natural resources. This chapter analyzes debates over natural resources in global politics theoretically and empirically to expose the structural inequalities within the international system that hinder the realization of Indigenous rights in the Nordic countries. Indigenous scholar Jerry Mander contends conflicts involving neoliberal industrial expansion and the extraction of natural resources on Indigenous traditional lands are really “worldview wars” or “paradigm wars.” The case study of the Gállok/Kallak mine controversy on the Swedish side of Sápmi clearly illustrates a paradigm conflict, as the debate centers around diverse ways of viewing the land in Gállok, how it should be used, and who has the right to make those decisions.Though conflicts involving the exploitation of natural resources on Indigenous peoples’ traditional territories are ongoing globally, the spirit of NSC represents compelling evidence of changing norms and practices within the international system to recognize both the neoliberal and Indigenous paradigms and to empower Indigenous peoples for realizing their own collective rights. Although they have a long history of political mobilization, Indigenous peoples such as the Sámi know these recent developments do not mean that Indigenous rights proponents can wait for this systemic change to happen. This chapter concludes there must be a greater awareness of structural inequalities which foster the exploitation of and conflict over natural resources. Such awareness would help reconcile differing worldviews and enact more holistic long-term solutions for realizing Indigenous rights.