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Indigenous Political Representation: Identified Parliamentary Seats as a Form of Indigenous Self-Determination

This paper focuses on the relevance of self-determination for indigenous political representation. It first considers arguments for separate political representation within shared government as a form of self-determination. It summarises the history and operation of the New Zealand/Aotearoa system of separate Maori parliamentary seats. It then briefly describes the system of indigenous delegates in Maine, United States of America, and contrasts it with that in New Zealand. From such comparisons, it identifies basic issues to be discussed in the establishment (or review) of any system of separate political representation for indigenous peoples. Most notable is that different definitions of self-determination will often lead to different aims and objectives of any system of representation. These can (and should) thus lead to different features incorporated within such systems of representation. The examples in this paper illustrate such features.