Indigenous citizenship, shared fate, and non-ideal circumstances

Abstract

This paper discusses the notion of ‘citizenship as shared fate’ as a potentially inclusive and real-world responsive way of understanding Indigenous citizenship in a non-ideal world. The paper draws on Melissa Williams’ work on ‘citizenship as shared fate,’ and assesses some of the benefits and drawbacks of using this notion to understand citizenship in Indigenous and modern state contexts. In particular, the paper focuses on the challenges that existing non-ideal circumstances – past and enduring injustices and unequal power relations – bring to the understanding of ‘citizenship as shared fate’, and the normative constraints for realizing such citizenship in our contemporary world. By developing this notion in light of Indigenous claims for justice, the paper proposes three side constraints to the notion of ‘citizenship as shared fate,’ including its openness to different views of history, the role of history in shaping the future, and acknowledging – and countering – prevailing power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The paper concludes by looking at some of the implications of the reconceptualized notion of ‘citizenship as shared fate’ for the shaping of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in the Nordic/Sápmi context.