Indigenous Internationalism and the Art of Recognition: A Soviet Trace on a Global Stage

Abstract

This article explores the contributions of Soviet writers to global discourses of Indigenous rights. The author focuses on the work of three writers, Yeremei Aipin (Khanty, b. 1948), Vladimir Sangi (Nivkh, b. 1935), and Yury Vella (Nenets, 1948–2013), as they entered into transnational Indigenous movements and navigated a rapidly changing political landscape in the final years of the Soviet Union. The author argues that they engaged in a complex “art of recognition,” working across genres and modalities in order to reckon with legacies of colonialism and usher in new visions of identity and political sovereignty. This approach highlights the Soviet Union as a locus for international congresses and solidarity movements, such as the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders, and the 1990 Sacred Run for Land and Life, led by American Indian Movement cofounder Dennis Banks. Ultimately, an Indigenous-centered approach to the end of the Cold War provides a counterbalance to prevailing narratives of this era, which cast the ascendance of a Western-dominated capitalist world order as an inevitable conclusion.