Lesson 6: What Is Self-Determination?
Native Studies 20 | Unit 2: Self-Determination and Self-Government | Lesson 6
Lesson 6: What Is Self-Determination?
Native Studies 20 | Unit 2: Self-Determination and Self-Government | Lesson 6
Native Studies 20 | Unit 2: Self-Determination and Self-Government | Lesson 6
LEARNING GOAL
I can define self-determination and explain why it is a foundational right for Indigenous peoples around the world.
VOCABULARY
• Self-determination: the right of a people to decide their own political status and control their own economic, social, and cultural future.
• Sovereignty: the authority of a nation to govern itself without outside control.
• Self-government: the legal and practical authority of a nation to make and enforce its own laws.
• Treaty rights: rights a nation holds because of an agreement it signed with another government.
• Tribal council: an organization formed by multiple First Nations to share services and represent their shared interests.
• Territorial integrity: the principle that a state's borders and political unity cannot be broken apart. Referenced in Article 46 of UNDRIP.
Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states it plainly. 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. The UN General Assembly adopted this declaration on September 13, 2007, after more than twenty years of negotiation between Indigenous representatives and member states. The vote was 144 in favor, 11 abstentions, and 4 against. Canada was one of the four that voted against it. Canada did not fully endorse the declaration until 2016, and did not pass a law to implement it until 2021. That gap between the right existing on paper and a government acting on it is something you will return to throughout this unit.
This right did not appear out of nowhere. For generations, colonial governments in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and dozens of other countries made decisions for Indigenous nations instead of with them. Governments moved people off their land, banned ceremonies and languages, and replaced traditional governments with imposed systems like the Indian Act's band council model. Self-determination is the right to reverse that pattern. It means a nation gets to decide its own laws, run its own institutions, and shape its own future, instead of a foreign government making those choices first.
Self-determination is not one fixed arrangement that a nation either has or does not have. It exists on a spectrum. At one end, a nation might govern its own schools, health services, or cultural programs while still operating inside a larger state's legal system. At the other end, a nation might hold full law-making authority over its own land, citizenship, and justice system. Where a nation sits on that spectrum depends on history, negotiation, and how much power a state is willing to share.
Self-determination is often called a foundational right because it makes every other Indigenous right possible to act on. A nation cannot protect its language, manage its own land, or pass its own laws about child welfare and education if another government is making those decisions for it. Rights to land, culture, and governance only become real once a nation holds the authority to exercise them. That is why UNDRIP places self-determination in Article 3, near the start of the declaration, ahead of the specific rights that follow it.
Canada's Nisga'a Final Agreement shows one end of that spectrum. Signed in 1998 and in effect since May 2000, it made the Nisga'a Nation in northern British Columbia the first Indigenous nation in the province to hold a treaty with constitutionally protected self-government. The Indian Act stopped applying to the Nisga'a people at midnight on May 10, 2000, except for the purpose of Indian registration. The Nisga'a Lisims Government now makes its own laws over roughly 2,000 square kilometres of Nisga'a land in the Nass Valley, covering everything from citizenship to resource management. The Nisga'a Nation negotiated with Canada and British Columbia for more than twenty years before the treaty took effect.
Sapmi, the homeland of the Sami people across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and part of Russia, shows a different point on the spectrum. Sami Parliaments opened in Norway in 1989, Sweden in 1993, and Finland in 1996. These parliaments give the Sami a formal voice in decisions about their language, culture, and traditional livelihoods like reindeer herding. But in most of Sapmi, the Sami Parliaments mainly advise governments rather than pass binding law. Norway's Sami Parliament has grown into a stronger institution over time, but Sami self-determination still covers a narrower range of decisions than the authority the Nisga'a hold over their own territory. Neither model is wrong. Self-determination looks different depending on what a nation negotiates and what a state is willing to recognize.
Self-determination is not only a distant example from another country. The eleven First Nations of the File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council, including Muscowpetung, Piapot, Peepeekisis, Standing Buffalo, and Okanese, formed their own tribal council in Treaty 4 territory to run shared programs and speak with one voice on matters that affect all eleven nations. That structure is an act of self-determination. It represents nations choosing their own form of collective government instead of accepting a structure designed in Ottawa.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline is another example. In 2015 the tribe passed its own resolution declaring the pipeline a threat to its land, water, and burial sites, and argued the project violated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty's promise of undisturbed use of reservation land. The tribe's stance was not just an environmental protest. It was an assertion of the right to make decisions about land the tribe never gave up, using the tribe's own government to make that argument. As of 2025, the tribe was still fighting that case in court, which is a reminder that claiming self-determination is often an ongoing fight, not a single event.
Governments have historically resisted recognizing Indigenous self-determination because they worry it threatens their own control over land, resources, and borders. Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand voted against UNDRIP in 2007 partly over concerns that Article 3 could be read as a right to full political independence. UNDRIP addresses that concern directly. Article 46 states that nothing in the declaration authorizes any action that would dismember or impair the territorial integrity or political unity of a sovereign state. Self-determination under UNDRIP means a nation controlling its own affairs within existing borders, not a route to secession. That distinction is part of why all four countries eventually endorsed the declaration.
Every one of these examples answers the same question in a different way. Who decides what happens to a nation's land, laws, and future? Self-determination says the answer has to be the nation itself. The rest of this unit looks at how that right gets denied, what international law says about it, and how nations around the world are still fighting to hold governments to their word.
KEY IDEA
Self-determination is not a single achievement a nation either has or does not have. It shows up differently in different places: a treaty like the Nisga'a Final Agreement, a parliament like Sapmi's, a tribal council like FHQTC, or an ongoing legal fight like Standing Rock's. UNDRIP protects this right while also protecting the borders of existing states.
United Nations. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 2007.
Nisga'a Lisims Government. Understanding the Treaty.
Sami Parliament of Finland. The Sami Parliament.
File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council. Who We Are.
American Civil Liberties Union. Stand with Standing Rock.