Indigenous Rights, Representation, and the Crisis of Legitimacy

In recent years, Indigenous activists in Russia have faced increasing repression — often with little public visibility, and at times without response from formally recognized Indigenous institutions. This lecture begins from this tension — between visible participation and public silence — to examine how Indigenous representation operates under conditions of political constraint.

In the conference rooms of global governance — from Geneva to the Arctic — Indigenous voices are present, recorded, and recognized. But what if their authority has already shifted?

Over the past decades, Indigenous peoples have gained access to international institutions, from the United Nations system to Arctic governance forums. These developments are widely understood as a significant achievement in advancing participation. Yet they rest on a powerful assumption: that representation, once recognized, continues to reflect the communities in whose name it speaks.

This lecture examines that assumption through the case of Russia. It shows how representation can remain institutionally intact while the conditions that sustain its independence are fundamentally altered — and why Indigenous peoples, long hidden in domestic political space, have acquired growing significance for the state’s global positioning, particularly under conditions of geopolitical tension and selective engagement with international commitments.

The lecture also raises the question of legitimacy in an emerging landscape of Indigenous political activity beyond Russia’s borders. Exile-based networks and transnational advocacy are beginning to contest and rearticulate claims to representation, raising questions about authority and accountability across multiple political spaces.

These dynamics point to a broader structural challenge for global governance: how to distinguish between participation and representation when the conditions under which voices are produced are themselves shaped by power.

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Host or Publisher Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies