In this incisive work of political anthropology, Paul Nadasdy presents a richly drawn portrait of indigenous state formation in Yukon. Building on five years of ethnographic fieldwork and a career-long relationship working with Yukon First Nations peoples, Nadasdy documents the sociocultural consequences of a modern treaty process premised on the concept of “sovereignty.” He reveals how the use of this seemingly “timeless and universal principle” to frame indigenous struggles for autonomy disrupts and constrains the social, political and economic life of indigenous peoples in Northern Canada (4).
Prominent among these constraints is the requirement that indigenous political systems resemble those of the modern nation state—a demand that has resulted in the creation of territorial, relational and ontological divisions incompatible with pre-contact Yukon societies (85). Ironically, processes designed to deliver “self-government” have obliged Indigenous peoples to adopt the state-like structures of Canada's colonial administration in order to reassert control over their communities and lives. Attempts to indigenize or otherwise rehabilitate sovereignty outside the Euro-Canadian context have failed, Nadasdy argues, because neither the “concept itself nor its principle cultural entailments are easily dispensed with” (75).
In Sovereignty's Entailments, Nadasdy presents a sweeping critique of the concept and its use in structuring Indigenous–settler intergovernmental relations. The book dedicates a chapter to sovereignty and four accompanying concepts: territory, citizenship, the nation and time. In these chapters, Nadasdy adeptly surveys the theoretical literature, while grounding his arguments in the nuanced personal narratives of Yukon First Nations people, particularly members of the Kluane First Nation. In keeping with his previous monograph, Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon (UBC Press, 2003), Nadasdy moves adeptly between theoretical debate, historiography and storytelling, weaving together the experiences of individuals, communities and the Canadian state to great effect.
The book's strengths reside in the nuanced vignettes used by Nadasdy to highlight what state-like status has won for Yukon First Nations—and also what has been lost. Throughout Sovereignty's Entailments, Nadasdy is at pains to assure the reader that he remains neutral on these outcomes. In his experience, some “Yukon Indian people I know think [these changes] are on the whole beneficial,” while others “are horrified by what they see happening” (10). This will strike some readers as avoidance, but in allowing the nuances of this debate to play out through the experiences of his subjects, Nadasdy's amply reveals sovereignty's shortcomings for indigenous peoples without resorting to heavy-handedness.
In the book's chapter on citizenship, the story of Joe Johnson at the Fourth of July Creek hunting camp is particularly poignant. Informal kinship networks and reciprocity traditionally governed access to resources, such as hunting grounds, in pre-contact Yukon, and colonial imposition of hunting restrictions by Canada was a brutal and destructive experience for Indigenous peoples. Self-government promised to return control and access to these resources, but the boundary-making and bureaucracy inherent to self-government have reinforced, rather than removed, barriers to traditional production. Mr. Johnson found it less “insulting” to seek a licence from the settler Yukon government than to access hunting grounds through a neighbouring Indigenous government's licensing process (124). Instead of liberating Indigenous peoples, sovereignty has often resulted in a new form of political and cultural alienation.
Scholars of Indigenous government and public administration will find this book particularly enlightening. Nadasdy is gentle when he admonishes such scholars for grounding their work in statist concepts: “To the extent they take these concepts for granted … such studies ignore—and in so doing help to render invisible—the cultural transformation that northern indigenous societies” have undergone (10). Acknowledging these changes and, perhaps, seeking ways to resist sovereignty's entailments is a good first step for scholars seeking to create space for alternative forms of politics to emerge.
Despite his aversion to normative claim-making, Nadasdy does embrace prescription in his conclusion by calling for the development of an “anti-sovereignty” that better reflects the organization and values of Indigenous societies. In his opinion, Yukon First Nations should reject Indigenous sovereignty, as well as “the state form and all the cultural baggage that goes with it” (303). Nadasdy does not interrogate the practicalities of this approach in any detail, but as a jumping-off point for future research, it holds promise.
For political scientists, this book is not without its absences. While Nadasdy engages with the ideational underpinnings and structure of the modern nation state, he does not always grapple fully with the particularities of its liberal democratic variant. In his chapter on citizenship, for example, his focus is on the divisions that citizenship creates rather than on the responsibilities it bestows. Nadasdy leaves unexplored the approaches taken by Yukon First Nations to democracy and the rule of law—bedrocks of the liberal democratic state. Also largely absent are the perspectives of non-Indigenous Yukoners and their settler government. In what ways do they reinforce sovereignty in Yukon and how might they be integrated into a future premised on anti-sovereignty?
Sovereignty's Entailments is a significant addition to the literatures on Indigenous and Northern politics. Nadasdy's contributions on time and on human–animal relations are particularly striking. Indeed, the latter topic finds a companion piece in the pages of this journal, which won the 2017 John McMenemy Prize (Nadasdy, Reference Nadasdy2016). This book is both theoretically driven and deeply human—it should stand as a classic of Indigenous political anthropology and Northern studies.
