Gail Fondahl is a Professor Emerita of Geography in the Department of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Northern British Columbia in Canada. For the past three decades she has researched the rights of Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, especially those related to land and resources.
Gary N. Wilson is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Northern British Columbia. His research focuses on Indigenous-state relations and multilevel governance in the Canadian and Circumpolar Arctic.
This post encapsulates the main points made in “Ethnofederalism and Indigenous Self-Determination in Northern Canada and the Russian Federation,” which appeared in The Polar Journal in 2024.
Russia and Canada are both ethnofederal states, comprised in part of constituent units (republics, provinces) recognizing the autonomy of geographically concentrated titular nationalities. The ethnic groups that form a majority (or plurality) of the population regard these units as a means to advance their political power and cultural identities. How do less numerous Indigenous peoples fare within these units?
We consider two cases – the “Indigenous numerically small peoples of the North” living in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in Russia and the Inuit living in the province of Quebec in Canada–to understand the extent to which the self-determination of these groups has been affected by the efforts of the titular nationalities (Sakha, Quebecois) in these constituent units to enhance and entrench their autonomy within their respective federations.
Are the governments in these constituent units more sympathetic to the territorial and political aspirations of smaller Indigenous groups because they themselves represent ethnic minorities who have struggled to realize their autonomy within a federal system of government? Our research indicates that, while Indigenous peoples in Sakha have made less progress than their counterparts in Quebec in terms of securing political and legal autonomy, they have benefitted from an alliance with the Sakha in the face of centralizing tendencies at the federal level. By contrast, the Inuit have at times been constrained by the Quebec government’s longstanding struggle for greater autonomy within, and even independence from, Canada.
Russia is one of the most complicated ethnofederal states in the world. It is made up of 83 constituent units, twenty-six of which are designated ethnic homelands of titular minorities. Canada, on the other hand, has two constituent units where ethnic minorities comprise the majority of the population: Quebec with its majority francophone population and Nunavut, an Inuit homeland in the Eastern Arctic. Both countries also incorporate the homelands of numerous Indigenous peoples. Russia legally recognizes a distinct subgroup, “Indigenous numerically small peoples” (henceforth INSP), each of whom numbers under 50,000 persons. The Sakha (Yakut) people, who constitute the majority of the population in the Sakha Republic (55%), and number around 500,0000 across Russia, thus do not fall within this state definition of “Indigenous,” although they do meet international definitions of the term.
Over 80 percent (approximately 7 million) of Quebec’s population is francophone and many are descendants of the French settlers who colonized the region beginning in the seventeenth century. Quebec is also the homeland of many Indigenous peoples, including the Inuit in the northern region of Nunavik. In Canada, Indigenous-state relations, including regarding rights to land, are for the most part defined by constitutionally recognized treaties and legal rulings. Russia, by contrast, does not recognize inherent Indigenous title to ancestral lands; Indigenous rights are enshrined in the Russian Constitution, but are less clearly defined than in Canada and limited by the power of the central state.
The Sakha Republic includes the homelands of five INSPs—Chukchi, Dolgan Evenk, Even, Yukagir—who traditionally practiced land-intensive subsistence activities of hunting and reindeer herding. Sakha people started entering the area around 1000 CE, preceding Russian colonization by some 600 years. An ethnofederal republic since the early 1920s, the Sakha Republic declared sovereignty in 1990 and adopted its own constitution in 1992. The republican government sought to control more of the vast resource wealth that flowed from its territory as well as to protect Sakha language and culture. With state centralization since the 2000s, its powers have been reined in, while federal resource extraction projects have expanded. Meanwhile, the INSP have seen critical territory for hunting and reindeer herding threatened and devastated by oil and gas pipelines, hydroelectric projects, forest fires, etc.
Notably, the Sakha Republic has crafted the most progressive legislation on INSP rights within the Russian Federation, providing for greater territorial access and protection and for representation in decision-making. Whereas federal legislation on Indigenous rights, after briefly flourishing in the 1990s, has stagnated, the Sakha Republic continued to extend its legislative protections in this area through the 2010s. It has facilitated the creation of Russia’s two forms of Indigenous territoriality (the Territory of Traditional Nature Use and the Clan Community [obshchina]), introduced an ethnocultural assessment component in addition to the federally mandated environmental assessment process for projected industrial projects, established a republican Ombudsman for Indigenous Peoples Rights, and launched a program to limit federal give-aways of land used by INSP. These moves, while promoting INSP rights, in cases also increased the Sakha Republic’s autonomy over land and resources vis-à-vis Moscow.
The province of Quebec was first colonized by France in the early 1600s. Quebec was one of the founding provinces of the Canadian federation in 1867, although its northern regions were only incorporated into the province later and without the consent of the Indigenous peoples living there. The province experienced a Quebecois nationalist awakening in the 1960s that led to calls for greater autonomy within and even independence from Canada.
This political agenda was supported by a program of intensive, state-led resource development in the northern and predominantly Indigenous regions of the province known as the James Bay hydroelectric project. The Indigenous peoples of this region, especially the Cree and Inuit, found their lands and traditional activities adversely affected by the project, yet were unable to stop it. However, they did negotiate, and sign, a groundbreaking treaty with the federal and provincial governments in 1975—James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement or JBNQA—that entrenched their land rights and provided a basis for future self-government.
Since the signing of the treaty, the Inuit in Nunavik (roughly the northern third of the province) have made considerable progress in terms of promoting their political, economic and territorial interests in the face of powerful external interests. Nevertheless, they have struggled to realize the goal of autonomous self-government within the province of Quebec. While provincial politicians, both nationalist and federalist, have at times been sympathetic to Inuit calls for self-determination, Quebec’s longstanding struggle with the Canadian federal government has complicated the political environment in the province, often making it difficult for Inuit leaders to make progress. Moreover, Nunavik’s existing administrative bodies, which were established by the JBNQA five decades ago, remain firmly embedded in the provincial system of government, a reality that further constrains the ability of the Nunavik Inuit to self-determine.
Indigenous peoples in Russia and Canada face many challenges, not least of which involves their complicated relationships to their respective settler states. In principle, the ethnofederal composition of these states should provide opportunities for Indigenous peoples to self-determine, especially in regions where the titular nationality is also trying to protect and enhance its ethnic autonomy. The reality, however, is much more complicated.
Our comparison of specific cases of Indigenous-state relations in Russia and Canada reveals that Indigenous peoples in Sakha and Quebec have made some progress in terms of realizing greater autonomy, often with the support and consent of the government of their ethnofederal unit. At the same time, their ability to self-determine is also constrained by the broader political dynamics of federalism and state governance over which they have little or no control.
