Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
This article explores how frontline state officials can play a surprising role in advancing Indigenous rights, even within institutions that often uphold colonial agendas. Drawing on case studies from four continents, the authors introduce the concept of institutional braiding to describe how officials and Indigenous actors work together to navigate and reconcile conflicting normative systems.
Tent settlement for reindeer herders in the midnight sun, Sweden
Photo: TT / Getty Images
This paper challenges the monolithic portrayal of the state as inherently ‘bad’ when it comes to implementation of Indigenous rights. Offering a comparative analysis of case studies from four continents the authors demonstrate examples of frontline state officials proactively advancing Indigenous rights to land and environment. Combining distinct literatures on institutional theory, they develop an analytical framework that sheds light on bureaucratic agency within state-Indigenous relations. The findings show how government organizations maintain a broadly colonial agenda, but that officials on the inside sometimes manage to advance decolonizing or otherwise supportive actions. The authors propose the concept of institutional braiding to describe this agency exerted by state officials in collaboration with Indigenous representatives when navigating co-existing normative orders. By examining the fraught institutional constraints faced by frontline actors, they contribute to debates on Indigenous-state relations and the prospects of reaching common ground in the contact zone between divergent ontologies.
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