ABSTRACT
Introduction In this chapter the already and always transnational links of indigenous peoples are focused as they became visible and utilized in nineteenth and early twentieth century European and international politics.1 An increasing academic focus on classification and developmental determinism painted indigenous peoples as static societies that hinted at European prehistory, and as the dominant societies progressed, stood in need of protection and special support in attempts to bring them into modernity. As relics of the past indigenous peoples - at least in certain parts of the world - were also perceived with nostalgia for an idyllic life lost in the rapid and ruthless scramble for industrialization. Indigenous peoples, however, were never just foils for European and Western imagination. Sami people in northern Scandinavia spanned four nation states, advocated for rights and forged transnational alliances already in the beginning of the twentieth century. After World War II, contact increased between indigenous peoples in the north of the European continent and in North America. Individuals and groups crossed boundaries and travelled for leisure, for the purpose of labour opportunities, and in order to influence the political process. An international language of indigeneity grew out of these contacts, and demonstrated that while on the one hand marginalized and victims of Europe’s colonial and imperial reach, indigenous peoples were also and always agents of change and reflection in a manner that both contributes to and challenges understandings of cosmopolitanism.
