ABSTRACT
The discursive practices surrounding Indigenous Peoples’ Movements (IPMs) in liberaldemocratic states are a rich, and mostly untapped, resource for political analysis, although little practical, and even less theoretical, po litical science literature treats the subject as a major issue.1 IPMs continue to be a growing force in world affairs particularly in the white settler states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States (Stavenhagen 34). In fact, Ted Robert Gurr in Peoples versus States (his latest book based upon the Minorities at Risk program) identifies that almost all new episodes of ethnopolitical mobilization in the 1990s are due to IPMs (Gurr 45). While one may ponder the reasons behind this mismatch of practice and theory, there is a more subtle danger in social science (mis)treatments of IPMs. The very nature of mainstream social science inquiry threatens to cover over the key aspect of IPMs-the systemic nature of the indigenous challenge to Western institutions (Gurr 2)—with the logic of a new “Orientalism.”
