Book Review: The Colonial Politics of Hope: Critical Junctures of Indigenous-State Relations

Marjo Lindroth and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen’s new book interrogates the politics of hope and how it structures and informs indigenous-state relations. While they focus solely on indigenous-state relations, the analytic tools that Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen employ have broader implications, especially given the ongoing pandemic, general precariousness, and, for lack of a better word, polycrisis. But one might also ask whether this is an appropriate time to interrogate hope. After all, maybe we all need a bit of hope these days. Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen’s analysis of hope is an important contribution to understanding how hope is managed and as a future-oriented tool to increase and intensify governance in the present. It brings us to the point of being able to ask “What might politics look like if we did not have to rely on the hope that the future would be better?” Generally, this book is useful for those who are interested in the political uses of law or the intersection of law and politics as well as those interested in the politics of Indigenous peoples’ rights. It is not focused on legal events, but rather moments of ‘eventless-ness’ that surround and lead to more public legal events. Chapter two maps the social science approaches to hope. Drawing from a Foucaultian approach to governmentality, which some socio-legal scholars would find useful, their conceptual perspective examines how hope has been politically mobilized in the context of Indigenous peoples’ rights. They examine how hope empowers and restricts, and how its political mobilization is useful for governing, exercising power, and developing and managing desire. Chapter 3 introduces the case studies on indigenous-state relations, which are ‘battlefields of recognition’. The three case studies are the demand for constitutional change to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia leading to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the discussion on ratifying ILO Convention 159 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries in Finland, and the Indigenous self-government movement in Greenland/Denmark in 2009. Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen choose these situations because these states have committed to recognizing the rights of Indigenous peoples, the processes began, and ‘these states have the means to concretely re-construct the relations with the indigenous peoples within their territories’ (p. 10). Despite the commitment and means for recognition, these projects remain debated and long drawn out. Over the decades of these projects, it often looks like little is happening; the ‘eventless-ness’ that Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen interrogate. In these contexts, Book Review