CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Semenenko, Marika |
|---|---|
| Title | This is simply who I am. I have no other option: Indigeneity, Nation-ness, and Decolonization in Indigenous Activism in Russia |
| Summary | This study examines why people who once identified as national minorities have redefined themselves as Indigenous. Unlike Indigenous activism worldwide, which is often sparked by extractivism, Russian Indigenous activism has been uniquely catalyzed by the war in Ukraine. This shift allowed activists to reclaim a suppressed self and offered a framework to see the revival of disrupted traditions not as invention but as transformative continuation. Strategically, by appealing to the UN, activists challenged Russia’s narrow definition of Indigenous peoples as only KMNS and aligned themselves with a global Indigenous movement. Despite critiques of the UN’s limited inclusion (Corntassel, 2008), this engagement made their existence visible, countering the Russocentric narrative of a multinational Russian state that undermines the autonomy formally granted to republics. Indigeneity empowered activists to articulate their core goal—decolonizing Russia—not as a struggle for power but as dismantling colonial hierarchies. Even calls for republic independence are framed as expressions of Indigenous sovereignty, promoting radical diversity, overlapping autonomies, and non-exclusion, thereby challenging the nation-state model. I apply Brubaker’s concept of nation-ness as a contingent happening to emphasize Indigenous nationhood as fluid and event-driven, not fixed by static cultural traits. This is enriched by Ivakhiv’s decolonizing democracy, which views nation-ness as grassroots agency extending beyond the conventional, exclusionary idea of “the people,” embracing diverse and even non-human actors. This also reframes nation-ness as a process rooted in collective memory and actively expressed today. While acknowledging Indigeneity can be exclusionary, activists have found in it a pathway to emancipation. |
| Supervisor | Szabolcs Pogony |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/semenenko_marika.pdf |
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