Recognition around the world

Lesson 5 of 5 in "Rights and law", about 8 minutes

Recognition is the act by which a state accepts that a group is a distinct people with a particular legal status. It does not create the people, who existed before the state took notice. It does decide who can use special rights and protections. Because every country has built its own system, the same word can mean very different things across borders.

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1. Community organises. A people exists whether or not a state recognises it. Recognition is a legal status. In the United States a tribe writes a petition. In India a community asks its state government to take up its case.
2. Evidence gathered. A United States petitioner must show, among other things, that it has been identified as an American Indian entity since 1900 and has lived as a distinct community with its own political authority.
3. Claim submitted. The United States petition goes to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment in the Department of the Interior. In India the state government sends a proposal to the central Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
4. Official review. In the United States, historians, anthropologists and genealogists examine the file. In India the Registrar General and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes are asked for their views.
5. Formal decision. The United States Department of the Interior issues a final determination. Congress can also recognise a tribe by law. In India, Parliament must pass a law to change the list.
6. Added to the list. A recognised tribe joins the list published in the United States Federal Register. In India the community is added to the Scheduled Tribes order for its state under Article 342 of the Constitution.
7. Rights take effect. In the United States, recognition creates a government-to-government relationship and access to federal services. In India it brings reserved seats, places in education and public jobs, and legal safeguards.

India: Scheduled Tribes

India's Constitution allows the President to specify, state by state, the communities to be treated as Scheduled Tribes. More than 700 are notified. In the 2011 census they numbered 104 million people, 8.6% of the population. Recognition brings reserved seats in Parliament and state assemblies, reserved places in education and government employment, and laws protecting land. A community can be scheduled in one state and not in the next.

Changing the list requires an Act of Parliament, after a proposal from the state government has been examined by national bodies. The official criteria date from the 1960s and are widely criticised as outdated. Within the list, 75 communities are classed as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups because of very small or declining numbers and other hardships. They include the Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands.

United States: federal recognition

The United States treats recognised tribes as nations with a degree of sovereignty, meaning the power to govern themselves. The federal list has stood at 574 tribes in recent years, including more than 200 Alaska Native villages, and it changes when a tribe is added. Recognised tribes have a government-to-government relationship with Washington, run their own courts and services, and hold reservation land in trust.

A tribe can be recognised by a treaty or an Act of Congress, by a court, or through an administrative process run by the Department of the Interior, which requires detailed proof of continuous existence as a community. That process can take decades. Some tribes are recognised only by a state, and others by no government at all.

Canada: First Nations, Inuit and Métis

Canada's Constitution Act of 1982 recognises and affirms the existing rights of three groups of Aboriginal peoples. First Nations number more than 630 communities. Inuit live in the Arctic. The Métis are a distinct people who emerged from unions between First Nations women and European fur traders, with their own culture and the Michif language. In the 2021 census about 1.8 million people identified as Indigenous.

Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Australia has two broad indigenous groups: Aboriginal peoples of the mainland and Tasmania, made up of hundreds of distinct nations, and Torres Strait Islanders, from the islands between Queensland and New Guinea. Governments use a three-part test: descent, self-identification and acceptance by the community. There is no treaty at national level. In 2023 a referendum to add an indigenous advisory body, the Voice, to the Constitution was not carried.

New Zealand: Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi

In New Zealand, also called Aotearoa, the relationship between Māori and the state rests on the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates breaches, and many tribes, or iwi, have reached settlements that include an apology, money and the return of land. Māori have had dedicated seats in Parliament since 1867, and the Māori language has been an official language since 1987.

The Nordic countries: Sámi parliaments

Other approaches

• Japan passed a law in 2019 that recognises the Ainu as an indigenous people.
• Taiwan officially recognises 16 indigenous peoples.
• Russia lists 40 'small-numbered indigenous peoples' of the North, Siberia and the Far East, a category limited to peoples of fewer than 50,000.
• Bolivia's 2009 Constitution declares the country a plurinational state and recognises dozens of indigenous nations and their languages.

The limits of lists

Every system draws a line, and someone is always on the wrong side of it. Peoples who were scattered, who hid their identity to survive or whose records were destroyed find it hardest to prove who they are. International standards hold that self-identification should be the starting point. Most states still insist on making the final decision themselves.

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