Against strong resistance, indigenous communities are asserting their right to inclusion in the political systems of their respective nations. Andrew Mueller speaks to Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the illustrator of ‘When the World Was Soft: Yindjibarndi Creation Stories’, Alex Mankiewicz, and a justice of the Shawnee Tribe Supreme Court and law professor, Kristen Carpenter. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The United States passed a notable centenary in 2024.
If you didn't hear much about it, it's because it wasn't the kind of anniversary you would boast about.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Native Indian Citizenship act, which, clue in the name, proclaimed that all Indigenous people born on US territory were indeed entitled to the rights of citizenship on the lands their ancestors had inhabited for immemorial centuries, mighty big of all concerned, etc.
And even so, there were those who suspected at the time, and probably not without reason, that the Native Indian Citizenship act was either or both, a ruse by which ideas of tribal identity and sovereignty might be extinguished, and a gesture both paternalistic and patronising at least one tribe.
The Onondaga believed that endorsing the act was treasonous.
The Native Indian Citizenship act was therefore representative of two recurrent attitudes towards Indigenous peoples by nations founded on conquest that the descendants of the original inhabitants are a menace to be neutralised or a heritage to be charitably protected.
But what if it did not and does not have to be that way?
There is still clearly an amount of nervousness attached worldwide to endeavors aimed at including Indigenous peoples in modern politics.
It is a little over a year since Australians voted against the establishment of a constitutionally protected Indigenous voice to Parliament.
But is there an argument that greater Indigenous inclusion in politics works for everybody?
What have we learned from those countries which have made progress on this front is a win win option there for the taking?
This is the Foreign desk.
The term referendum is so dangerous towards Indigenous peoples because we're always going to be the minority, not the majority.
I think people feel that Australians in general have much more exposure and much more first hand experience with Aboriginal culture than they do.
Even while tribal members are making gains in representation, there is still the open question of why tribal nations themselves are not represented in our democracy.
You're listening to the Foreign Desk with me, Andrew Muller.
And we start with a New Zealand politician who last month became known the world over as a video of her performing a protest haka in Parliament went viral.
Hana Rafiti Maipi Clark represents the constituency of Hauraki Waikato for Te Paiti Mori and is New Zealand's youngest m in over 125 years.
The haka she performed recently was not her first on the floor of Parliament.
We spoke to Hannah a few weeks before her more recent parliamentary haka.