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Jusrisdictional Sovereignty

26-Aug-2009 |

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (www.hks.harvard.edu/hpaied) has pushed forward thinking about development for indigenous groups not in only in America but around the world.

One of the key challenges though in taking this group’s research to a wider audience is the degree to which development in the case studies that they have looked at is predicated on a degree of sovereignty which indigenous groups outside of North America generally don’t possess. This sovereignty then opens up a range of economic development opportunities including the development of an independent tax base which can help power development within indigenous communities.

However, in other settler countries like Australia and New Zealand there are no opportunities for indigenous groups to pursue similar development strategies given their lack of jurisdictional sovereignty. Instead, these groups are having to pursue development through the use of corporate structures rather than those of ‘Native Nations’. In many respects though this ‘corporate’ approach doesn’t provide as firm a development base for indigenous groups. One of the key challenges for those of us working in this field is thus to see what the most effective structures are for those indigenous groups who don’t have the advantage of the residual sovereignty possessed by those groups in North America.