Decolonizing Self-Determination: Haudenosaunee Passports and Negotiated Sovereignty
Abstract
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognises both Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and simultaneously offers protections in regard to states’ right to sovereignty and territorial integrity vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples’ claims. Often, this is considered an internal inconsistency of the UNDRIP, and another common critique is that Indigenous peoples were only recognised as having a diminished right to self-determination, which is less than what everyone else enjoys. This article stands in contrast to these two lines of critique, arguing that the UNDRIP’s articulation of self-determination is potentially ushering in a broadening, and possible reshaping, of self-determination, which has been increasingly decoupled from singular Westphalian notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘territoriality’ in ways that require ongoing negotiation between peoples and states. This case study of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s issuance and use of their passports, based on original fieldwork including a set of qualitative interviews with key informants, demonstrates how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is pushing the practice and understanding of self-determination in multiple, new directions to include plural sovereignties in deeply significant ways concerning International Relations in both theory and in practice.
Since the United Nations (UN) General Assembly officially adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007),1 it has represented the global consensus for the minimum international standard of Indigenous peoples’ rights. Unlike a treaty or an international human rights convention,2 the UNDRIP operates like other human rights declarations (e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]) in that it articulates a set of principles, which all states are morally and politically obligated to respect and protect (Lightfoot, 2008; Lightfoot, 2010; Hartley et al., 2010). The meaning of these rights and principles in practice is often subject to interpretation, evolution and ongoing negotiation between various parties at the global, international and domestic levels. If a right is more controversial, it necessarily entails greater variance in its interpretation, which results in both ongoing assertions and resistances, and often negotiations, of that right. One of the most controversial elements of the UNDRIP is Article 3, which states, ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ UN Member States, and particularly the United States and Canada, have struggled with this right and have long suspected that it was a mask intended to legitimise and enable potential secessionist movements or to create new Indigenous states, in the Westphalian sense. Article 46 of the UNDRIP addresses this concern by affirming state sovereignty and territorial integrity so that ‘decolonisation’ means either the pursuit of full statehood, through the usual UN decolonisation processes or, more commonly in Indigenous contexts, the decolonisation of settler colonial states. As Tuck and Yang (2012) remind us, decolonisation in the settler colonial context must not be easy and superficial (i.e. ‘a metaphor’) but rather, it should mean much deeper processes that bring about the ‘repatriation of Indigenous land and life’ (1).
UNDRIP expects that Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination is respected, equal to all other peoples. Meanwhile, however, Indigenous self-determination cannot disrupt the sovereignty and territorial integrity of existing UN Member States in their exercise of that right. Several questions emerge from this seeming dichotomy. Can assertions of Indigenous self-determination include elements and practices that have, since the Treaty of Westphalia, been considered the exclusive domain of states yet also stop short of full statehood? Must sovereignty and its key elements – citizenship, borders and the right to issue passports – be static and state-centric or are other forms possible? Further, does this mean that the concept of self-determination can be de-colonised and shift away from a strict tie to territorially bounded state sovereignty, with Indigenous peoples’ rights leading the way globally to a more open understanding?
I argue that some Indigenous practices of self-determination are actively de-colonial and are ushering in a broadening and re-shaping of its meaning that breaks through the strict, static state-centric construction of Westphalian sovereignty in order to make room for more nuanced, flexible, dynamic and negotiated forms. In this study, I suggest that Indigenous self-determination practices can, and in some cases must, be decoupled from strict Westphalian notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘territoriality’ in order to respect Indigenous peoples’ human rights. Based on original fieldwork, this case study examines the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s issuance and use of their passports, and through this case, I attempt to unpack the evolving negotiation of the right of Indigenous self-determination in one specific case. By issuing and travelling with their own passports, citizens of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy are decolonising the concept of self-determination by pushing the international conversation in new directions that are highly instructive for Indigenous nations, but also for International Relations theory, human rights scholars and practitioners.
This article proceeds in three sections. The first part delves into the meaning of self-determination in international law and how Indigenous peoples are challenging, even shifting, its usual meaning in a push for a new, expanded interpretation of self-determination that better reflects Indigenous peoples’ lived reality and in ways typically not accounted for in International Relations. The second part is a thick description case study of Haudenosaunee passports as an Indigenous practice of self-determination and what this reveals about existing and evolving understandings of self-determination, sovereignty and citizenship and their limits. Finally, I draw out some findings and extract both practical and theoretical implications from this case study in regard to the ongoing evolution and negotiation of self-determination’s meaning not only for Indigenous peoples but also for the field of International Relations.
Self-Determination: International Law, Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples
The self-determination of peoples has been the subject of significant global conversation since it was first articulated in the 1920s during the formation of the ill-fated League of Nations. Following the global devastation and barbarity of World War II, the international universal human rights consensus began to evolve through the newly established UN, which ‘was the first time in history that human rights were addressed in a systemic manner by the international community’ (Simmons, 2009: 23). Beginning in 1945 with the adoption of the UN Charter, human rights norms and standards emerged by international consensus and began overturning prevailing international law that had previously supported state sovereignty and imperialism unconditionally. Beth Simmons (2009) explains that human rights have ‘successfully challenged the unconditional assertion of national leaders that the way they treat their own people is exclusively a national sovereign concern’ (23). Meanwhile, as Jack Donnelly (2003) articulates, universal human rights also began to delegitimise colonialism by asserting peoples’ right of self-determination, which is closely tied to and overlaps with all individual human rights (222).
Adopted in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) established that all human rights, including the right of self-determination, are the equal rights of all peoples and not exclusive to recognised UN Member States. By articulating the distinction between peoples and Member states as holding the right of self-determination and signalling the end of colonialism’s international acceptance, the UDHR also states explicitly that, in terms of human rights, ‘no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty’ (Art 2). In other words, all peoples have the right of self-determination whether or not they were currently self-governing as independent nation-states or UN Member States. This was the first articulation of a universal and equal right to self-determination. In the era of human rights, it was also the first move to interpret ‘self-determination’ as a right that was inherently possessed rather than one delegated by states. Although the two terms came to be used interchangeably over time, self-determination was originally conceptualised as distinct from ‘sovereignty’. All peoples have the right of self-determination, but the rights of sovereignty were reserved for states.
According to the International Bill of Human Rights, the right of self-determination is universal, and states are called upon to respect and promote this. As Donnelly (2013) writes, self-determination, like all human rights, is considered inherent (‘the rights one has because one is human’) rather than a delegated right (7). Therefore, neither states nor the international community can bestow or remove the right of self-determination, but they have a responsibility to recognise and uphold it. However, in practice over time, self-determination has come to be primarily understood as equivalent to decolonization in the form of independent, sovereign, territorial statehood. This construction of self-determination is necessarily state-centric and rooted in the Westphalian system of territorially bound, independent, sovereign nation-states. During the decolonisation movement, for example, which began in earnest during the 1950s, an international consensus emerged that deemed Indigenous peoples ineligible for the right of self-determination largely due to its presumed tie to statehood and the fear of states like the United States and Canada that Indigenous self-determination would lead to mass secessionist movements. Thus, a two-tiered, colonial and discriminatory structure concerning the right of self-determination was created, which has existed for many decades. In the 1950s, Belgium asserted that Indigenous peoples should be eligible for self-determination (i.e. independence) as colonised peoples, but their argument lost against the ‘Salt Water’ (or ‘Blue Water’) thesis, advanced by the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Soviet Union, which all claimed that only overseas colonies were eligible for self-determination, presumed to mean independent, territorial sovereign statehood (Henderson, 2007).
In the past four decades, the UNDRIP and the international conversation that has surrounded its development has expanded and attempted to de-colonise the predominant interpretation of self-determination in several ways. First, it corrected the discriminatory exclusion of Indigenous peoples from the decolonisation regime. Article 3 of UNDRIP unequivocally states: ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination.’ With these seven words, Indigenous peoples were recognised as having the same inherent right to self-determination that all other peoples have already enjoyed. The second change is globally challenging because the UNDRIP contains a passage that also shifts the international understanding of self-determination away from an exclusive state-centric construction. Article 46 of UNDRIP provides protections for state sovereignty and territorial integrity by stating, ‘Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying or authorizing any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States.’ Therefore, with UNDRIP, sovereignty and self-determination are decoupled in an effort to extend the decolonisation regime to Indigenous peoples. For Indigenous peoples, especially those divided by borders, those borders and their accompanying state structures, such as citizenship regimes and passports, represent a particular form of colonisation – an oppression of their right to self-determination through Westphalian sovereignty. In Indigenous lived experiences, self-determination and sovereignty simply cannot be interchangeable terms, and the concept of self-determination must be de-colonised away from its state-centric form in order for their human rights to be respected.
This situation creates a new international challenge because self-determination has been understood and practiced (almost exclusively) for decades as independence, secession, and/or the formation of a new state. Currently, however, to recognise and advance Indigenous self-determination while simultaneously protecting existing states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, a new, broadened and de-colonial understanding of self-determination must emerge that accommodates both sets of rights without creating a discriminatory two-class system of self-determination, where Indigenous peoples’ right is diminished in relation to others.
The international scholarly discourse concerning the meaning of Indigenous self-determination follows several streams of thought, and Alexandra Xanthaki (2007), a legal scholar and minority/Indigenous rights expert, has grouped these into three major categories (146–176). First, a minimalist interpretation insists that Indigenous self-determination has not shifted over time and remains exclusively tied to independent, territorial, sovereign statehood. This view maintains a fixed, restrictive and strict construction of sovereignty and decolonisation that is exclusively tied to independent sovereign state status. For example, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960) and the Declaration of Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States (1970) are two key UN declarations on decolonisation and self-determination that drew a distinction between self-determining peoples/territories and those who were not yet decolonised (i.e. those whose right to self-determination was not yet realized through independent statehood). Additionally, a 1995 UN document states, ‘The concept of self-determination was set forth in the context of decolonization, mainly for colonised people who requested independence from states.’ Many states continue to hold this viewpoint.
In another interpretation, Xanthaki (2007) refers to the maximalist understanding of Indigenous self-determination, arguing that self-determination entails a bundle of social and cultural rights (152–154). This position has often been advanced by Indigenous activists. For example, a 1997 declaration on self-determination was put forward in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations:
The right of self-determination is fundamental to the enjoyment of all human rights. From the right of self-determination flow the right to permanent sovereignty over land – including aboriginal, ancestral and historic lands – and other natural resources, the right to develop and maintain governing institutions, the right to life and physical integrity, way of life and religion (Burger, 1994: 43).
The language of ICCPR and ICESC also seem to support this understanding of self-determination, as both Covenants define it in Article 1 as the right of peoples to ‘pursue their economic, cultural and social development’. While this approach has important positive qualities (e.g. viewing self-determination as an evolving concept in the context of global justice), Xanthaki argues that it has some drawbacks. For example, framing self-determination as an umbrella right may deflect attention from the highly political nature of self-determination as a right, and it risks reducing it to a set of social and cultural rights. Stavenhagen (1996) agrees that understanding it as an umbrella right ‘will end up demeaning and devaluing the idea of self-determination itself, and will thereby only harm those collectivities who require it the most’ (7).
Finally, the third path retains the political element of self-determination and is advocated by scholars such as Anaya (2004), Kingsbury (2000),Thornberry (2000) and Xanthaki. Under this mode of thought, the meaning of self-determination must expand to include multiple possibilities for Indigenous–state relationships and the right of Indigenous peoples to negotiate their political status in and with the states where they live (Daes, 1993). The UNDRIP specifically mentions several possibilities, including autonomy, self-government, the establishment of distinct institutions and participation in the state, but the central principle involved is expressed in Article 3. It states that Indigenous peoples have the right to ‘freely determine their political status’. Although multiple possibilities of autonomy, self-government and distinct Indigenous institutions already exist, many more multiple, plural sovereignty and innovative citizenship arrangements may be imagined for the future, especially since the UNDRIP and emerging Indigenous rights discourse do not propose any universal prescriptive solution.
In practice, Indigenous nations around the world are asserting their human rights and exercising their political self-determination – their right to freely determine their political status – in ways that are either entirely overlooked by International Relations theory or erroneously assumed to be matters of exclusively domestic concern, rather than of international politics. When International Relations has considered Indigenous peoples as international or global political actors, it typically analyses them only as transnational social movements (Brysk, 2000), as the objects of international human rights campaigns (Keck and Sikkink, 1998), or as key allies in global environmental and climate change campaigns (Whyte, 2016). Very few theoretical or empirical examinations explore Indigenous peoples’ political agency on the international or global level, as peoples or rather, as Indigenous nations. On closer examination, however, the political self-determination practices of Indigenous peoples as international subjects that operate independently of domestic Indigenous–state relationships or beyond the structure of the state can deepen and inform International Relations theory.
I was the first scholar to deliberately bring Indigenous political theory into conversation with International Relations theory (Lightfoot, 2016). In doing so, I demonstrate not only that notable absences and exclusions pertaining to Indigenous peoples exist in International Relations theory, but I also demonstrate the theoretical impoverishment of International Relations theory that is produced through those absences and their reproduction. By examining international theory through the lens of Indigenous political theory, however, we can clearly see how assumptions about the state, de-colonisation, liberalism, diplomacy and Westphalian sovereignty are problematically limiting and must be reconsidered and rethought in light of Indigenous human rights and practices in the international sphere. Taken a step further, a rethinking of these assumptions will necessarily deepen and enrich International Relations because Indigenous political theory offers some ‘compelling alternative visions of how global politics may be done in a future post-Westphalian world’.
This article builds on my previous analysis and argues that, in contrast to prevailing International Relations literature, Indigenous peoples around the world often engage in a set of creative, innovative and assertive self-determination practices, which fully respect Indigenous laws, traditions and nation-to-nation relationships with governments while disrupting the ‘international’ in important ways deserving of deeper analysis. Studying these otherwise unseen Indigenous ‘disruptions’ can provide important insights about subtle, de-colonial shifts and openings in global paradigms that inform the theoretical development of self-determination and, by extension, enrich International Relations theory with a broader and more fulsome consideration of ‘international-ness.’ In the Westphalian system, power is held by territorially bounded states and sovereignty is considered to be exclusively held by states. Yet, as Shadian (2010) argues, Indigenous peoples (in her study, the Inuit, also a trans-border people) have removed the state from their collective political identity and rather, exercise it through the Inuit Circumpolar Council, a trans-national non-governmental organisation (NGO), which operates outside the state system. She observes that in so doing, the Inuit are reshaping ‘the inside-outside boundaries which have constituted the global political system throughout Westphalia’ (504). The Haudenosaunee Confederacy takes this even further, by asserting themselves as a sovereign political actor in international space, and one of the ways they do this is by using their own passports. They thus define their own political status, in a self-determining and de-colonising way, as a nation that is inherently sovereign. Thus, Indigenous peoples’ rights and their practice of those rights, such as the ongoing use of Haudenosaunee Confederacy passports, offer unique lenses into otherwise unseen international phenomena that can have paradigmatic implications for International Relations in both theory and practice.
Haudenosaunee Passports and Self-Determination
Background on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy: Self-Governance and Treaties
The Haudenosaunee (‘People of the Longhouse’) Confederacy (also known as the Six Nations by the British and the Iroquois Confederacy by the French) is comprised of six Indigenous nations in north-eastern North America: the Mohawk (Kaiienkehaka, the ‘People of the Flint’), Onondaga (Onodada-ge, the ‘People of the Hills’), Oneida (Onyota’a-ke, the ‘People of the Standing Stone’), Cayuga (Gayohkohnyoh, the ‘Dwellers of the Swamp Lands’), Seneca (Onodawahgah, the ‘People of the Great Hill’) and Tuscarora (Skarureh, the ‘People of the Shirt’) (George-Kanentiio, 2008: 2).
Ever since the 1783 Treaty of Paris established the border between the United States and Canada, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy has traversed it, as they have reserves/reservations throughout upstate New York, southern Ontario and south-eastern Quebec.3 The Confederacy has been governing itself under the Gayanashagowa, or Great Law of Peace, since prior to European contact,4 which makes the Haudenosaunee the oldest continuously functioning constitutional democracy in the world. The Gayanashagowa is a compact between these six nations, who have consented to being governed under its authority. The fundamental principle under this constitution is the representation of people in their governance, which includes the practice of self-determination that existed centuries before the term emerged in the parlance of international human rights. For the Haudenosaunee, democratic self-governance is accomplished through a system of clan chiefs, sub-chiefs and faith keepers that represent various clans in the council. Traditionally, decisions have not been made through individual voting but through deliberation, discussion and consensus. Even the selection of chiefs has been a democratic (rather than hereditary) process, involving the Clan Mothers’ consensus (Lyons, 1986).
The Haudenosaunee were also one of the first Indigenous nations in North America to sign treaties with the European arrivals. In the 17th century, they signed a treaty with the Dutch colonists, called Guswentah, or Two Row Wampum. The Guswentah is a physical belt with two rows of purple wampum beads that are surrounded by rows of white wampum beads, which represents a treaty agreement of peace and friendship by defining ‘how our two peoples would coexist with neither interfering with the other’ (Haudenosaunee Grand Haudenosaunee Grand Council, 1982). According to the Haudenosaunee, this treaty agreement should be interpreted to mean that the treaty partners are ‘like Brothers . . .We shall travel the river together, side by side, but in our own boat. Neither of us will make compulsory laws nor interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Neither of us will try to steer the other’s vessel’ (Haudenosaunee: Kahnawake Branch of the Mohawk Nation).
Similar treaties followed with Great Britain, France and the United States, as each wished to form an alliance with the militarily and politically powerful Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Treaty of 1794, which is also known as the Treaty of Canadaigua, declared ‘peace and friendship’, as well as demarcated territory between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the newly established United States (Whitefield-Madrano, 2011). The 1815 Treaty of Ghent, which was signed between the United States and Great Britain to end the War of 1812, did not include the Haudenosaunee as a direct treaty party, but the treaty did explicitly recognise the separate existence of the Haudenosaunee. It also insured that they would retain all the rights they had held prior to the war. Joe Heath, attorney for the Onondaga Nation, argues that the existence of multiple international treaties serves as evidence of the sovereign status of the Haudenosauneeas well as the nation-to-nation basis of relations between them, the United States and Canada: ‘You don’t make treaties with your own citizens’ (McChesney, 2010).
A Strong Claim of Indigenous Self-Determination
Despite numerous treaty violations and attempts over the last several centuries by both Canada and the United States to forcibly assimilate Indigenous peoples and undermine their sovereignty and self-governance, the Haudenosaunee continue to make a strong claim for self-determination, as they ‘enjoy and maintain a sovereign status that is separate from both Canada and the United States’ (Haudenosaunee: Kahnawake Branch of the Mohawk Nation). Due to their long legacy of a strong, democratic self-government and numerous treaties that respect Haudenosaunee sovereignty, they continue to view and conduct themselves as a self-determining people as well as a sovereign nation. Seneca legal scholar, Robert Odawi Porter (2005), notes,
Of all the indigenous peoples that exist within the United States and Canada today, perhaps no other retains a greater commitment to their own sense of nationhood than the Haudenosaunee. . .(whose) conception of political identity stands in stark contrast to nearly all other indigenous peoples in these region who have come to embrace the notion that they are ‘dual citizens’ of both their own Indian nations and either the United States or Canada (512–513).
Porter, like many other Haudenosaunee, relies on a long history of constitutional self-governance and treaties that recognise and respect Haudenosaunee self-governance as the foundation for their strong claim of self-determination. Porter (2005) writes, ‘under international law, the Gayanashagowa is a type of constitution and thus the basis for the formation of the Haudenosaunee state . . . and serves as the basis for Haudenosaunee citizenship’ (513). Haudenosaunee Chief Oren Lyons (1986) writes, ‘the Haudenosaunee . . . is a separate sovereign Nation, founded on the principles of peace, equity, and power of good mind’ (emphasis original) (120). Chief Lyons adds, ‘the Haudenosaunee Constitution and process was a gift to our people from the Creator and is ancient beyond the landfall of Columbus’ (117). Regarding contemporary notions of self-determination and nationhood, Chief Lyons states, ‘The concept of self-determination and Nation is the essence of our ancient confederacy, governed by the Great Law of Peace. People, territory and Nation were and are, synonymous with the Haudenosaunee’ (117).
None of the multiple treaties that were signed with the Dutch, British, French, or Americans included the explicit surrender of Haudenosaunee ‘sovereignty’. Despite continual pressure and/or coercion on the part of the United States and Canada to encourage the Haudenosaunee (and all Indigenous nations) to assimilate, the Haudenosaunee understand themselves as a nation that is distinct from – albeit surrounded by – and undisruptive toward the United States and Canada (Deer, 2012).
Haudenosaunee assertions of their separateness and distinctiveness include full statehood claims as well as nuanced expressions of sovereignty and nationhood. For example, every July, near American and Canadian national holidays,5 the Haudenosaunee people gather at Niagara Falls to march across the border, ignoring the border guards on both sides in order to assert that they are neither Canadian or American citizens but Haudenosaunee. Harry Doxtator (Oneida) describes this march as, ‘establishing our right of having the ability to cross the border that they have designed. We are saying that we have the right to freely travel, as we call it, Turtle Island’ (Dirmeitis, 2012). Also, the Kahnawake Branch of the Mohawk Nation notes on their website that under international law, such as the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), the Haudenosaunee Confederacy meets all the qualifications for sovereign statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states (Haudenosaunee: Kahnawake Branch of the Mohawk Nation).Meanwhile, however, many Haudenosaunee leaders are more cautious about full statehood claims. In a series of interviews with Haudenosaunee leaders, which the author conducted between 2010 and 2012, the interviewees consistently stopped short of asserting statehood in preference of terms like ‘self-determination’, ‘nationhood’, and ‘sovereignty’,6 indicating that a strong claim of self-determination and Indigenous sovereignty is more complex and nuanced than independent, territorial statehood in the Westphalian sense.
Historical citizenship laws and practices in the United States and Canada provide support for the strong claim of self-determination by the Haudenosaunee, including a complex, nuanced assertion of sovereignty. As Volpp (2015) argues, the key concepts in immigration law – citizen, alien, borders, migration and birth right citizenship – cannot address the actual relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples, who often hold a unique position as both citizen and alien. For many years, treaties were the only avenue for relationships between Indigenous peoples and states. Since the United States and Canada considered Indigenous peoples ‘non-citizens’, they initially excluded them from automatic citizenship by birth and required that they fulfil the naturalization process to attain citizenship until 1924 and 1960, respectively. At that point, these countries passed blanket citizenship legislation, which unilaterally declared all Indigenous individuals to be American or Canadian citizens with or without their consent (Lightfoot, 2013). In both cases, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy officially notified both countries that they would not accept imposed citizenship and would remain Haudenosaunee citizens exclusively. Kenneth Deer,7 a Mohawk international representative, highlights this point in an interview: ‘I was born in Canada, but I wasn’t born a Canadian citizen. All Native people that were born before 1960 weren’t considered Canadians. So, if they didn’t want me when I was born, why should I be one now?’ (Deer, 2012). Similarly, the late Tonya Gonella Frichner (2011)8 describes the Indian Citizenship Act passed by the United States in 1924:
As an Onondaga, we appreciate the offer of US citizenship, however, we have never considered ourselves US citizens and want to maintain a consent process for Haudenosaunee individuals who may wish to take US citizenship, just as we have had with conscription. The US has never been able to conscript us without our consent.
Haudenosaunee Passports
The Haudenosaunee have consistently made a strong claim for self-determination in multiple ways, such as issuing passports and travel documents. For many years, Haudenosaunee individuals and delegations have been internationally travelling with their passports and travel documents to numerous countries. Kenneth Deer (2012) explains that the Haudenosaunee passport represents ‘a way of self-identification . . . and that we have the inherent right to decide who we are. It’s an expression of self-determination, a non-violent, non-territorial expression of self-determination, an expression of the right to determine who our citizens are’ (emphasis added).
Haudenosaunee passports originated in the 1920s. In 1921, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy appointed Deskaheh (Cayuga) to be the ‘Speaker of the Six Nations Council’ and asked him to travel to the UK in order to appeal to the British Crown to intervene with Canada’s ongoing actions and policies that violated the Haudenosaunee treaties that had been signed with the British (Akwasasne Notes, 1978: 18–19). When Deskaheh travelled to Great Britain, it was via travel papers (an early version of a passport) that had been issued by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. A few years earlier, Deskaheh led a delegation of Haudenosaunee to Ottawa, complaining about treaty violations and Canada’s forced assimilation policies but to no avail. Similarly, the Crown refused to give Deskaheh a hearing. Still, he returned home with his Haudenosaunee travel papers.
In 1923, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy decided to appeal to the newly formed League of Nations, charging that Canada and the United States had violated their treaties and their right to self-determination, which was a term that became increasingly utilised after World War I. It was articulated in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, for example, and it also formed part of the League of Nations’ mandate. The Haudenosaunee felt that, as a sovereign people, they had the right to appeal to the League of Nations for membership as a nation. Again, the Haudenosaunee elected Deskaheh as their official representative, issuing him the necessary official papers for travelling to Geneva.
Since he was representing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Deskaheh did not apply for Canadian or US travel papers nor did he seek the US or Canada’s permission to travel. Alongside his Haudenosaunee counsel, George P. Decker, Deskaheh travelled with his Haudenosaunee travel papers and was admitted to Switzerland. He stayed in Geneva for a year, awaiting an opportunity to address the League of Nations (Akwasasne Notes, 1978: 20). Meanwhile, Canada’s military invaded and occupied Haudenosaunee territory, forcibly expelling the traditional government and setting up a chief and council band government under the Indian Act.9 It was a blatant attempt to subvert centuries of Haudenosaunee self-governance under the Great Law of Peace. After a year of unsuccessfully attempting to address the League of Nations and using the international arena to expose Canada’s increasingly aggressive actions, Deskaheh was afraid to return to his home territory on the Grand River. Instead, he went into exile after entering the United States on his Haudenosaunee travel papers. He stayed in the Tuscarora territory in upstate New York and was never able to return home on the northern side of the border. Shortly after his arrival, he died ‘of a broken heart, they say’ (Deer, 2012).
During the mid-1970s, Indigenous groups began mobilising worldwide to approach the international community through the UN, hoping to achieve international recognition of their standing as peoples, assert their treaty rights, and resolve continual (sometimes growing) conflicts with states. Indigenous groups were noticing that the UN was prioritising de-colonisation and anti-discrimination efforts and that the self-determination of peoples was increasingly viewed on an international level as a collective, inalienable human right. They saw a new window of opportunity to utilise moral leverage by appealing to the international community. In 1974, two Indigenous organisations (the International Indian Treaty Council and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples) applied for official consultative status as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under the UN system. Unlike Deskaheh’s experience in the 1920s, both organisations successfully received consultative status as NGOs, which gave them official speaking rights at the UN.
In 1977, the International NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas – the first major international conference of Indigenous peoples – was held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva from 20 to 23 September 1977. Sponsored by the Special Committee for NGOs on Human Rights and its Subcommittee on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Apartheid, and Decolonization, this conference was primarily organised by the International Indian Treaty Council, the American Indian Law Resource Center, and the World Peace Council. Over 250 Indigenous individuals from sixty Indigenous nations in North America travelled to Geneva in order to participate.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy decided to participate in the 1977 Geneva conference, but as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy rather than an NGO. As noted in the Basic Call to Consciousness, the Haudenosaunee explain, ‘(we) have consistently been aggressive in asserting that we are a state, a government, and a people who have a right to a place in the international community’ (1978: 6). Thus, they sent a delegation of twenty-one people to Geneva and decided that, like Deskaheh, they would travel with Haudenosaunee travel documents. So, they decided to create and issue passports once again by establishing the Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee to determine the process and design of the passports. The Committee decided that only one passport would be issued for the members of all six nations, and they would be issued out of Onondaga. The leather-bound passports said ‘Haudenosaunee Passport’ on the cover, and they were printed as well as handwritten, which was not unusual at the time, especially for smaller, often poorer, countries.10
When the delegation arrived in Geneva, however, Swiss immigration officials were uncertain how to handle the passports. The delegation was held at the airport for several hours, while immigration/customs officials deliberated the validity of the Haudenosaunee passports. The delegation was asked to sign some papers that granted them a special permit to enter Switzerland, but they refused to sign any document or accept any permit that would negate the validity of the Haudenosaunee passport. These would imply that they either accepted Canadian/American citizenship or that they would be treated differently than any other nation (Akwasasne Notes, 1978: 38–39). After all, they went to Geneva to seek international recognition. After several hours of negotiations and the Mayor of Geneva’s intervention, the delegation was offered a ‘laissez-passer’, which is a temporary permit to enter Switzerland. This was the same kind that was issued to passport holders from nations that had no formal relations with Switzerland: ‘by this act, the Swiss were recognizing the Haudenosaunee right to travel with their own passport’ (Akwasasne Notes, 1978: 39). After deliberation, the delegation decided to accept the ‘laissez-passer’ and enter Switzerland.
During the same year as the first Geneva conference of Indigenous peoples, the US State Department explicitly recognised Haudenosaunee passports, and this agreement stated that anyone who presented this passport to US officials should be treated like an American citizen, including all appropriate services (Deer, 2012). Agreements with other countries followed, including Canada and the UK (Wallace, 1990). Since 1977, many Haudenosaunee have used their passports to travel to many countries, and all of the official travel by Haudenosaunee delegations are exclusively with Haudenosaunee passports. Similarly, members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s sports teams have always travelled on Haudenosaunee passports. When a Haudenosaunee individual or delegation wants to travel to another country, they approach the consular services at their intended destination with their Haudenosaunee passport and ask for a visa, which provides official permission to enter a country (Lloyd, 2008; Salter, 2003; Scott, 2002).11This is typically performed quietly and non-publicly, like anyone respectfully requesting permission to enter a country by applying for a visa.
Many Haudenosaunee citizens have reported travelling on their passports for years, which has been mostly without incident. Chief Oren Lyons was part of the original 1977 delegation to Geneva, and he has only travelled internationally (participating in numerous international conferences and diplomatic meetings abroad over the years) by using his Haudenosaunee passport (McChesney, 2010). Likewise, Kenneth Deer reports that he has travelled with his Haudenosaunee passport for over two decades and successfully received visas to 20 countries.12 Several countries, including Brazil, Guyana and Peru, however, denied him a visa. Consequently, he did not travel to those countries (Deer, 2012). Furthermore, Percy Adams, the Executive Director of the Iroquois Nationals Men’s Lacrosse team, explains that the men’s lacrosse team uses Haudenosaunee passports ‘all the time (and) have travelled to so many places’(Byrne, 2010).
Due to the security atmosphere during the decade following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. on 11 September 2001, the ease with which Haudenosaunee could travel on tribal ID cards between the United States and Canada, as well as overseas on Haudenosaunee passports, became hindered. When the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was launched in 2007, it required all persons travelling by air between the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere to present a valid passport. Since the Haudenosaunee passport was deemed insecure, it was left off of the restricted list of acceptable documents for entering the United States (Dirmeitis, 2012). Rather than encouraging Haudenosaunee citizens to seek US or Canadian passports, however, the Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee responded with a commitment to redevelop Haudenosaunee travel credentials that would ‘meet or exceed contemporary international security standards’ (Haudenosaunee Documentation Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee, 2007).
Prior to the law’s implementation, the Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee began meeting with US and Canadian officials ‘to coordinate both the political and technical development of this initiative’ (Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee, 2007). In a communication to Haudenosaunee citizens in February 2007, the Documentation Committee estimated that it would take six months to develop passports with US and Canadian governments, which would contain the necessary security enhancements (Haudenosaunee, 2007). However, in 2010, after several years of discussions and over $1 million spent by the Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee to redevelop securer passports, Joe Heath notes, ‘America’s federal government has still not agreed to a design for a more secure form of identification’ (Economist, 2010). Meanwhile, the Haudenosaunee continued to travel on their previously issued passports, which was generally successful (Haudenosaunee Documentation Committee, 2007).
In April 2010, a delegation of three Mohawks from Kahnawake presented their Haudenosaunee passports at Toronto’s Pearson Airport in order to travel to Bolivia and attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth conference. Per the usual procedure, three members of the delegation had received visas through their Haudenosaunee passports from the Bolivian Embassy in Ottawa beforehand. However, as they were boarding their flight, a representative from Taca Airlines directed them to Canadian Customs in order to inquire about the validity of their passports. Canadian Customs told Taca Airlines that no problems existed with the passports due to their Indigenous status, so the delegation was allowed to board. Upon their return home, however, they were stopped by three agents from Bolivian Customs, who asked to see their passports. One of the delegation members describes the encounter:
They took (the passport) and they showed the other guy and he was nodding his head and then looks at us and asks, ‘Indigenos?’ and we said yeah. . . .With what little Spanish we have and what little English they have I explained. It just happened that I was wearing a shirt with the Five Nations flag on it and I explained the structure and who we are. So the three guys shook our hands and said, ‘Good work, keep up the good work’ (Horn, 2010).
On 28 April, the delegation flew to Lima, Peru and San Salvador, El Salvador without incident. However, as they were boarding their flight back to Toronto in San Salvador, the security officials decided to call the Canadian Embassy in order to inquire about their passports. They were told not to allow the delegation onto the flight. After several hours of calls and negotiations, the three men were given eight-day visas in El Salvador, so they could handle the situation. The airline required confirmation (e.g. a letter or a phone call) from Canada that the three would be allowed entry into Canada when they arrived in Toronto. The Canadian Embassy, however, claimed that their policy had changed due to security concerns and insisted that they accept an emergency travel document, which is the equivalent of an emergency Canadian passport. The delegation adamantly refused: ‘We can’t do that. We can’t compromise who we are because we left on these passports; we’re not Canadian; we’re not American; our political stance has always been that’ (Horn, 2010).
After several days of negotiations and the involvement of an international lawyer, the delegation decided to attempt going through the United States. However, they were told by US Embassy officials that they would need to apply for an emergency American passport, citing security reasons. Eventually, an official at the US Embassy sent copies of the delegation’s Haudenosaunee documents to US Customs and Immigration in Miami, and their travel was approved. So, the delegation booked a flight to Miami and a representative from the US Embassy in San Salvador even accompanied them to their flight in order to ensure that they would have no problem with Salvadoran officials or the airline. Upon the delegation’s arrival at Miami Airport, US Customs and Immigration officials were expecting them. They were ushered past the long lines towards the diplomatic exit and were asked about how their conference went. One US official told them, ‘You’re doing really good work. We want you to keep up the good work that you guys are doing.’ They returned home to Kahnawake the following day without incident.
In July 2010, a men’s team of 23 Haudenosaunee lacrosse players, the Iroquois Nationals, planned to compete at the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester, England. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has been a national member of the Federation of International Lacrosse since 1984 and the only Indigenous nation member of the Federation (Deer, 2012). Both the men’s and women’s Haudenosaunee lacrosse teams compete internationally under this membership, but never on behalf of Canada or the United States, which each have individual national memberships and teams that compete (Frichner, 2011). All the team members, including players, coaches and support staff (fifty people total), planned to travel to the UK on Haudenosaunee passports, as previous teams had done in recent years when competing in Japan, Australia and twice in the UK (Waterman, 2012). Unsuspecting of any issues, the team gathered in New York City to formally apply for visas at the UK Consulate prior to travelling.
The team was surprised to learn, however, that the UK denied them visas, and the team could not board their UK-bound flight on time due to the insecure nature of the Haudenosaunee passports, which lacked ‘the holograms and other technological features that guard against forgeries’ (Kaplan, 2010). Although the team agreed to fingerprinting and other biometric data in order to address the UK’s security concerns, the UK suddenly denied the legitimacy of the Haudenosaunee passports. They told the team members that they needed to acquire US or Canadian passports in order to travel or (at a minimum) they needed some assurance from the United States that the team would be allowed to return after their competition in Manchester. While the US State Department offered to issue US passports to all team members born on the US side of the border, the team firmly held that it was their right to carry Haudenosaunee passports because they were representing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the World Championships. Collectively, they refused to accept US or Canadian passports.
While the team was stranded in New York City, Kenneth Deer was in Geneva, having travelled without incident, several weeks earlier, to Switzerland on his Haudenosaunee passport and Swiss visa. During the dispute, Mark Kelley interviewed Deer for CBC Radio on the phone from Geneva:
We travel on our Haudenosaunee passports because we are Haudenosaunee and our passports reflect that identity. The Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team is not representing Canada or the US but is representing the Haudenosaunee. In fact, they are there to play against Canada and the US (Deer, 2010).
Despite the team’s and their representatives’ best efforts to solve the problem quietly and through ordinary diplomatic channels, the delay in New York lasted several days, which meant that the Iroquois Nationals had to forfeit their first game in the tournament (against England). This prompted significant attention from the international press, sparking global conversation about the existence and usage of Haudenosaunee passports. In private interviews, several Haudenosaunee individuals expressed that this attention is usually counter-productive and largely responsible for (what they viewed as) the ‘bizarre’ responses of the UK and United States in July 2010. For example, Kenneth Deer (2012) explains:
One of the successes we’ve had with the passport is that we haven’t gone public with it. I mean, we don’t travel somewhere and call a press conference and say, ‘Look, we got into this country.’ The purpose of the passport is to travel. We ask permission of the country to allow us into their country, respectfully. This is who we are. And we tell them, at least I do, that I’m not there to create publicity. And in many cases, that reassures them. But, in this case, the team was sitting in New York City, the centre of media and all of the sudden there was a big 14 page spread in Sports Illustrated . . . and I think that kind of publicity put unusual pressure on the countries involved . . . But, really, it is normally just a quiet assertion (of) our sovereignty.13
During the flurry of international attention on the lacrosse team and their Haudenosaunee passports, including interventions on behalf of the Haudenosaunee by other Indigenous nations and large Indigenous organisations in the United States and Canada (e.g. the Assembly of First Nations and the National Congress of American Indians), the UK stated that it would accept the passports if the United States would vouch for them in writing and guarantee the team’s re-entry into the US. At first, the US State Department balked, continuing to strand the team in New York City and forcing a second forfeited game. After a week of refusals, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the team a one-time ‘waiver’ on their passports, guaranteeing the team’s right to return to the United States but only this once. Even with this reassurance, the UK still denied the team visas without further comment or explanation.
Unable to travel to Manchester on their Haudenosaunee passports or compete in the world championships, the Iroquois Nationals team returned home. Even though the team was disappointed, during the weeklong dispute, not one member suggested that they accept US or Canadian passports because it would be a blow to their national identity, self-determination and right to represent their nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Waterman, 2012). Joe Heath explains that the Haudenosaunee passports are ‘part of an expression of sovereignty. It matters a great deal’ (McChesney, 2010). Percy Abrams, the team’s Executive Director in 2010, explains that the issue concerned national identity and was a matter of nationality: ‘We, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, have been around for over 1000 years. We’ve certainly pre-empted the American government or Canadian government. We have a right to self-determination. We have a right to present our own passport’ (RT Question More, 2010).
While the New York Times characterised the UK’s refusal to accept the passports and the team’s return home as a ‘defeat’ for the Haudenosaunee and their passports (Kaplan, 2010), Haudenosaunee individuals overwhelmingly express that the outcome was a victory in a larger fight to fiercely protect their self-determination through non-submission to US or Canadian sovereignty. The team goalie, Marty Ward, explains, ‘We fought a battle that was bigger than lacrosse’ (Kaplan, 2010). Similarly, Kenneth Deer (2012) notes, ‘It’s not a defeat. I think defeat would have been if the guys got American passports and went, then that would have been a defeat. What we did is we just held our ground. We didn’t give in.’ Tonya Gonella Frichner (2011) responds that by defending their self-determination and right to travel on Haudenosaunee passports, ‘We won the games without having to go to Manchester.’ Denise Waterman (2012), who was a board member of the Iroquois Nationals in 2010 and became Executive Director in November 2011, describes the team’s return home as giving the entire Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and other Indigenous nations, a strong sense of pride:
It was the moment when the world took a look at us. We had incredible support from our people and from other members of the Native American community. We drew our strength and our resolve from that support but also from our historical legacy. It was a hurdle for us, but our ancestors always picked up and continued on. We are only following through on that. And, now our youth all talk about how they want to grow up to be Iroquois Nationals.
Since the high-profile dispute in July 2010, the Haudenosaunee have continued working with the US and Canadian governments to make their passports more secure and have continued travelling with them (without international press attention). Kenneth Deer, Chief Oren Lyons, and others continue practicing international advocacy and regularly travel on Haudenosaunee passports. In 2011, the Iroquois Nationals team competed in Prague, Czech Republic by travelling on their Haudenosaunee passports and Czech visas. Also, in 2011, the women’s lacrosse team competed in Hannover, Germany, by travelling on Haudenosaunee passports and German visas. In 2012, the men’s team competed at the World Championships in Finland without incident by acquiring visas through their Haudenosaunee passports. In addition to several competitions each in both Canada and the United States, the women’s team competed in England in 2017 and the men’s team competed in Israel in 2018, and as usual, all team members travelled on Haudenosaunee passports each time.
Findings and Implications
The Haudenosaunee passports case entails many instructive points – in practice and in theory – for the evolving international conversation on Indigenous self-determination as well as self-determination in a broader sense. First, difficulties with Haudenosaunee passports are the exception rather than the rule. Although the Iroquois Nationals’ dispute in 2010 was high profile, Haudenosaunee passports have been recognised and accepted by many states, albeit not without some hard work on the part of Haudenosaunee citizens, who must plead their case each time. Nevertheless, states routinely (though not universally) accept Haudenosaunee passports and issue visas, accordingly. This effort tends to be the most successful when it is done quietly rather than being spotlighted in the press. Acceptance of the Haudenosaunee passport indicates a surprising openness, in practice, to a wider and more nuanced interpretation of self-determination that moves beyond an exclusive state-centric conception.
Haudenosaunee act sovereign by asserting their right to self-determination, but they generally stop short of asserting full statehood even though they feel their nation would be entitled to it under international law. Rather, they assert self-determination in many quiet, confident ways, like issuing and travelling with their passports. This example of insistence carves out a space for them to de-colonise self-determination, which challenges the existing structures of sovereignty and citizenship in ways that many states (especially the United States and Canada) are not readily willing to accept. This assertion, however, is central to Haudenosaunee identity, which includes issuing and travelling on their passports. While other Indigenous nations (e.g. the Hopi, Western Shoshone or Anishnabek) have occasionally issued their own passports, only the Haudenosaunee Confederacy has incorporated their passports as part of their right to self-determination consistently and uniformly, even in the face of resistance by states that are uncertain how to recognise them within existing institutional structures.14
Even though they have expressed some level of public rhetorical support, the United States and Canada are far more ambivalent about Indigenous rights (as articulated in the UNDRIP), especially self-determination. Often, they even engage in a quiet pattern of practical resistance to the emerging international Indigenous rights regime (Lightfoot, 2012). Sometimes, for example, they inexplicably switch their previously held positions to strongly assert state sovereignty. States often prefer to force Indigenous peoples into state citizenship rather than engage in a nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous nations. Thus, Indigenous rights are pushed into a domestic minority rights framework, as these nations jealously guard their existing interpretation of sovereignty, citizenship and self-determination. States are often recalcitrant to accept Indigenous rights or any reconfiguration of sovereignty that would involve plural sovereignty arrangements (e.g. the Haudenosaunee passport). It is difficult (especially for states) to imagine new, innovative possibilities for plural sovereignty and multi-level citizenship, preferring their colonial pattern of jealously guarding their sovereignty and using it to dominate Indigenous peoples. States are often publicly reticent to accept a new international understanding of self-determination, preferring tight interpretations of sovereignty, especially in a post-9/11 world. Meanwhile, they are often routinely stretching the boundaries anyway, such as by quietly accepting the Haudenosaunee passport.
Indigenous peoples’ self-determination cannot be achieved exclusively within the bounds of existing state structures. As the widespread, routine acceptance of Haudenosaunee passports demonstrates, Indigenous self-determination can, and must, exist in a different and more plural sovereignty arrangement. Thus, it must be decoupled from dominant understandings of state sovereignty. Despite the rhetoric of (and occasional policy moves by) the United States, UK, Canada etc. to maintain the two-tiered system of self-determination (where Indigenous peoples have a second-class, qualified, right to self-determination, while all other peoples of the world enjoy a full right to self-determination), the case of Haudenosaunee passports demonstrates a contrary trend. In practice, these states (as well as others) are often willing, albeit reluctantly, to accept a de-colonised Indigenous self-determination, in practice.
In December 2010, after President Obama announced a change in the official US position to support the UNDRIP, the US Department of State also issued a White Paper to further explain the US position. This document specifically states that the UNDRIP had created a new interpretation of self-determination that was specifically for Indigenous peoples. While it recognised their right of self-determination, it restricted them to operate within state-centric framework (United States Department of United States Department of State, 2010). Despite this discriminatory and colonial policy, the Haudenosaunee passports case demonstrates that a more nuanced, plural sovereignty arrangement with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is possible and does, in fact, occur.
Further, Indigenous rights, including the Haudenosaunee passports, are in an ongoing process of interpretation and evolution. The right of self-determination for Indigenous peoples will continue to be de-colonised through assertions, discussions and negotiations on international, domestic and community levels. By advancing its interpretation towards something that can be successfully decoupled from territorial, sovereign state structures, the Indigenous right of self-determination may drive a broader global conversation regarding the meaning of self-determination, especially its ability to exist outside of a Westphalian construction, with potential openings and implications for other peoples divided by the imposition of – often colonial – state borders.
With a handful of exceptions (Beier, 2005, 2009; Chowdhry and Nair, 2002; Kuokkanen, 2009; Lightfoot, 2016), Indigenous peoples are typically ignored or marginalised in International Relations. Yet, closer study of Indigenous rights and practices, as in the case of Haudenosaunee passports, reveals particularly salient lessons of real-time disruptions in predominant assumptions of International Relations theory and practice.
The Haudenosaunee passport is simultaneously an assertion of the inherent and unceded sovereignty of the Confederacy as well as an act of outright resistance to settler colonialism, or what Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson (2014) calls a ‘politics of refusal’ to accept either Canadian or US citizenship, which both countries attempt to unilaterally impose on Haudenosaunee through their birth right citizenship regimes. Australian Aboriginal scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2007) likewise identifies a multitude of ways that Indigenous peoples can contest a state’s usurpation of unceded and unextinguished sovereignty. At the same time, Pugliese (2015) notes how Aboriginal passport ceremonies in Australia, like the Haudenosaunee, ‘situate Aboriginal sovereignty within the very geopolitical relations of power that . . . are effectively disavowed and effaced by the hegemonic force of the settler-colonial state’ (86).
As Torpey (2000) argues, citizenship and thus entitlement to a passport are intended to serve as the state’s ‘monopolization of the legitimate means of movement.’ Salter (2003) agrees, adding that passports are a central feature of the modern state and the state system and serve the purpose of enabling mobility and as well as state control over movement across borders, defining who is legitimately allowed to cross. Haudenosaunee feel they must reject US and Canadian passports not so much on the grounds of the mobility they might offer but on the grounds that by accepting them, they would also be accepting that each country had the right to define, claim and control them and their movements. Because the existing categories of citizen and alien in both Canada and the United States are insufficient to account for and accommodate Haudenosaunee interpretation of their political status as a pre-existing sovereign nation, they must reject both citizenships outright in order to assert their own (Volpp, 2015).
As Salter (2003) reminds us, passports are not only tightly tied to borders and static-state structures but are also a reflection of the centrality and domination of the sovereign state in the international system. He writes, ‘passports can be seen as part of the larger discourse of sovereign statehood and the life-world of international relations that the state engenders’ (6). Passports, Turack (1972) notes, are primarily for use at borders, and they enable officials at those borders to determine the legitimacy or illegitimacy of movement across. Therefore, discretion by both the agents at embassies who issue visas to Haudenosaunee passport holders as well as officials at the border are both key players in the successful use of Haudenosaunee passports. In fact, as discussed through this case study, Haudenosaunee passport usage necessitates ongoing, and repeated, negotiation at these sites of state power. Negotiation takes place whenever a Haudenosaunee passport holder approaches a foreign embassy for a visa, and it happens every time a Haudenosaunee passport is presented at a port of entry. States other than the United States and Canada seem to have an easier time with this discretion because they are only the recipients of the Haudenosaunee’s assertion of political self-determination, whereas the United States and Canada are also simultaneously the targets of Haudenosaunee resistance to their presumed control of birth right citizenship and unilateral imposition of sovereignty, which reads to them as a more direct threat on their sovereignty in principle, even if not materially. As Cote-Boucher (2013) notes, immigration officials exercise International Relations on a micro-level, relying on their discretionary powers to make and enforce wider policies. While each individual agent exercises their discretionary power to issue a visa or allow a border crossing with a Haudenosaunee passport, each of those micro acts represent a crack in the armour of the strict sovereign state construction so often assumed by International Relations.
In contrast to the usual tight link between territorial sovereignty, citizenship, borders and passports, Haudenosaunee passports demonstrate that Indigenous sovereignty, even without formal statehood, can include some elements normally ascribed to statehood and do so without violently disrupting another state’s sovereignty. Each successful use of a Haudenosaunee passport is a quiet and peaceful assertion of self-determination, an act of sovereignty at the level of the individual that can have larger collective and cumulative effects. Such individual acts of sovereignty, however, require constant and continuous negotiation. Such negotiated acts of sovereignty by an Indigenous nation represent subtle paradigmatic shifts away the strict, static boundaries of territorially based Westphalian sovereignty and demonstrates that the forms of self-determination that can be accepted by various states and the international system is far more variable and negotiable than is typically understood. It also indicates that expressions of Indigenous peoples’ self-determination need not be limited to a strict ‘inside or outside’ relationship with states or a ‘one size fits all’ approach. In fact, the case of Haudenosaunee passports demonstrates that borders, citizenship and sovereignty can be de-colonised in practice are all far more flexible, dynamic and peacefully negotiable for Indigenous peoples than International Relations theory would presume or expect.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Sheryl R. Lightfoot https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4164-713X
Footnotes
1. The acronym UNDRIP came into common usage only after its passage by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Numerous transnational Indigenous activists have stated that, prior to that, they always referred to the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as ‘the Draft Declaration’, which then naturally transitioned to ‘the Declaration’ immediately after its passage. Many of these individuals have stated that, in their nearly 30 years of work on this document, they never thought about the acronym would come to be attached to it. Due to the rather unattractive nature and sound of ‘UNDRIP’ and out of respect to those activists who laboured so diligently for nearly three decades, my preferred term for this document matches their preferred term, ‘the Declaration’, although I also recognize that UNDRIP has come into widespread international usage since 2007 and is often an editorial preference.
2. For example, International Labour Organization, No. 169 (1989), an international convention on Indigenous peoples’ rights, is only binding on the states that sign and ratify it. As of this writing, 23 countries have signed and ratified this treaty: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Spain and Venezuela.
3. Canada uses the term ‘reserve’ while the United States uses the term ‘reservation’.
4. The Great Law of Peace was originally an oral tradition agreed to by five nations (Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Cayuga). The oral tradition pre-dates European arrival in the area. The sixth nation, the Tuscarora, entered the Confederacy in 1720.
5. 4 July is the American Independence Day, celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, while 1 July is Canada Day, celebrating the enactment of the British North America Act of 1867.
6. Personal interviews with Haudenosaunee leaders were conducted by the author in various locations and over the telephone between December 2010 and April 2012.
7. Deer (Mohawk) has been heavily involved in the international Indigenous rights movement at the UN and other international forums for decades. He was also the former publisher and editor of The Eastern Door, an independent newspaper serving the Mohawk community of Kahnawake.
8. Tonya Gonella Frichner (Onondaga) was an attorney, President and Founder of the American Indian Law Alliance. She was active in the international Indigenous rights movement for many years and served as North American Representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She passed away in 2014.
9. The Indian Act of 1876 is the piece of colonial legislation that Canada relies on to define who is an ‘Indian,’ establish chief and council Indian band governments under Canadian colonial administration, administer reserves, and to articulate the rights and disabilities of registered Indians.
10. In the early 1920s, when Deskaheh was travelling, people travelled internationally on travel papers, which usually consisted of an official letter or a set of letters that described the individual travelling and requested safe passage. The League of Nations held a series of passport conferences in the 1920s intended to standardize passports into booklet form.
11. A passport serves as an identity document and as an internationally accepted right to return to the country that issued the passport. A passport does not in and of itself provide permission to enter any particular country. Visas serve as official permission to enter. Often, two countries have international treaties or visa agreements with one another so that visas are issued upon entry. For example, the United States and Canada have such an agreement with one another as well as with many other countries, including the UK, Japan, Mexico, etc. In the absence of such a treaty or agreement, visas must be secured before travel may commence.
12. Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Estonia, Libya, Tunisia, South Africa, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Bolivia, Denmark, Liechtenstein and Venezuela.
13. Deer, interview by author.
14. It must be noted that the Haudenosaunee passport is unique and not a sovereignty model that is readily transportable to other Indigenous peoples. Due to treaties that pre-date either Canada or the United States as well as the historical continuity of the Confederacy’s sovereignty and citizenship claims as separate from both countries, the Haudenosaunee passport offers its citizens a unique form of self-determination with its passports. For other Indigenous peoples who have, at one time or another, in one form or another, acknowledged American or Canadian citizenship, the grounds on which to claim such a form of self-determination evaporate. Nevertheless, this case demonstrates the possibilities that can be achieved though creative and innovative assertions and negotiations of Indigenous self-determination.
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Biographies
Sheryl R. Lightfoot is Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics at the University of British Columbia, where she holds academic appointments in Political Science, Indigenous Studies, and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. She is the author of Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution, a pathbreaking book that places Indigenous political theory into conversation with International Relations theory. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in North America, New Zealand and the UK. She is Anishinaabe, a citizen of the Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe.
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