Before the state, there were fully functioning societies over which European powers asserted sovereign authority, maintaining it through violence. As Sami scholar Rauna Kuokkanen reminds us in her new book, the concept of “Indigenous peoples” was born of state domination. Likewise, the right of Indigenous self-determination: itself the product of colonialism, it has long been defined in terms acceptable to states.

The book's goal is to provide an “Indigenous feminist critique of self-determination, the structures of Indigenous governance institutions, and their ability to address violence, especially violence against Indigenous women” (2). The author seeks not simply to supply an Indigenous women's perspective, but to “interrogate the taken-for-granted political categories of nation, sovereignty, and state” in feminist terms (8). She enlists both gender regime theory and a comparative empirical study of Indigenous movements and institutions in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia to posit that efforts to realize self-determination institutionally are “always tempered or constrained by what states will or won't accept as a palatable form of Indigenous political autonomy in a specific context” (62). Viewed solely as a right, self-determination can easily be ignored if the vital interests of the settler state require it. Beyond this, the self-determination of Indigenous individuals too often is sacrificed to a repurposed nationalist ideological agenda pressed by male leaders.

Kuokkanen seeks to infuse the concept of Indigenous self-determination with more and richer content—one of the major contributions of this book. She posits self-determination as a foundational value from which Indigenous people might “restructure all relations of domination premised on inequality and injustice.” At its center, she offers the norm of integrity manifested in two forms: integrity of the land, and integrity of the individual from domination, including “freedom from bodily harm and violence” (17).

Informed by this understanding, the author assesses existing institutions in the three regional contexts. She finds them falling well short. “Indigenous self-government institutions fail to protect us,” either from the “logic and violence of settler colonialism or interpersonal sexual and physical violence and coercion” (3). And indeed, there can be little wonder why: either imposed by or negotiated with settler states, such institutions as the Sami Parliaments in Norway, Finland, and Sweden or First Nations bands and governments in Canada derive their theoretical and legal underpinnings from states. Though appearing to realize Indigenous self-determination, such institutions in fact subvert it, where self-determination in its fullest sense requires “restructuring of all relations of domination” (12).

And this in Kuokkanen's view is where Indigenous women should play a far greater role. Indigenous women have taken part in self-determination movements, but have gained little recognition for it. The labor has been divided onto two tracks: self-government and self-determination (such things as land rights), championed by male leaders, and social or gender issues (health, education, and child welfare), deemed women's terrain. Indigenous institutions have further inherited gender regimes through long-standing legal rules such as the loss of Indian status in Canada or of reindeer-herding rights in Sweden by Indigenous women who “married out” to non-Indigenous men.

As an alternative to current (male-led) attempts at self-government, Kuokkanen calls for a “rematriation” of Indigenous governance. Arguably, this idea is the one constructive aspect of a volume aiming to provide a critical deconstruction. It too centers on Indigenous women. Where sexism was the Trojan horse brought into Indigenous governance by the state, rematriation again would place “Indigenous women at the centre of nation-building by reclaiming women's leadership roles, political power, and authority” (139).

This reviewer's vantage point is from Canada, informed by direct work with both Indigenous governing institutions and the federal Crown in that country. From this standpoint, this book appears as a genuine contribution for presenting fieldwork from the three regions alone. Where the English-language literature is dominated by comparisons of the so-called CANZUS states (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and United States), a manuscript that brings Greenland and Scandinavia into the discussion is rare and valuable. And Kuokkanen certainly is well placed to do it, with appointments at both the University of Lapland and the University of Toronto.

Further points could be easily granted. Certainly, the state constrains and forms the limited options for self-government here, whether through its legislation, negotiated agreements, or funding arrangements. As Indigenous actors weigh their political and institutional options, the thumb of federal policy and resources rests heavily on the scales, to the extent that Indigenous institutions could hardly—or at least not solely—be called “self-determined.” And it is indeed true that Indigenous women here have been denigrated for their concern to preserve individual human rights at the perceived expense of a nationalist-style collective and that both band governance and membership rules under the Indian Act still labor under sex discrimination. First Nations will struggle for decades with the fallout of a legally instituted gender regime that was not of their making. In this context, rematriation may well be the antidote, restoring both traditional governance institutions and a gender balance that was lost.

And yet—again from this reviewer's vantage point—some of the book's critiques appear overdrawn. First and foremost, it hardly seems accurate to characterize Indigenous institutions simply as “puppets of government.” Though they often use the courts—admittedly tools of the state—First Nation, Metis, and Inuit governing institutions in Canada have successfully driven back the state on several fronts, ranging from membership to monies management to land use. The gains that these actors have made on behalf of self-determination have not been negligible, and should not be dismissed. Likewise, considering recent champions of various issues across the Canadian landscape, it is a caricature to regard social issues such as health, child welfare, and education as de facto the preserve of Indigenous women, and self-determination that solely of male leaders. On the regional and national stages at least, the division of labor between male and female leaders—on governance, health, and social policy files—is more balanced than Kuokkanen suggests. And finally, this reviewer would require further evidence before accepting the contention that violence against Indigenous people is inherently gendered, since the bodies of Indigenous men have always been (and remain) targets as well.

The greatest shortcoming of the book relates in part to its strength. Specifically, in importing content into the value of self-determination, Kuokkanen risks importing too much, thereby devaluing the activity of those who understand their work and cause differently. For example, the author is mildly critical of Indigenous women who understand their public office as an extension of their role as mothers, calling it a “problematic view” (165). Likewise, she describes Indigenous people working in national legislatures or state institutions as “tokenistic” and “marginalized” (23). The author reserves special criticism for the Home Rule movement in Greenland, the outlier among Indigenous-led movements for aiming to realize independent statehood. The clear favorites here are recent examples of Indigenous women “standing up, whether in the form of a camp, movement, occupation, land reclamation, rally or campaign” (17). And indeed, what kind of political activity beyond protest is possible? Where the state is perceived as omnipresent and ever-coopting, there can be no constructive activity with (or within) it.