Book Review: Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-Determination, Governance, and Gender
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211043940 |
| Author | Leah Sarson |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal
2021, Vol. 76(3) 477–490
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00207020211043940
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Book Reviews
Rauna Kuokkanen
Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-Determination, Governance, and Gender.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 368 pp. $78.00 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-19091-328-1
Reviewed by: Leah Sarson, (Leah.Sarson@dal.ca), Dalhousie University
There is a growing pluralism in many corners of International Relations that recognizes
that global politics reach far beyond the state and its machinations; however, the
contributions of Indigenous politics, both theoretically and practically, tend to be
overlooked in the field despite their significant contributions to conceptualizations of
essential concepts in International Relations such as sovereignty, nationalism, legiti-
macy, and security. In her 2019 work Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-
Determination, Governance, and Gender, Dr. Rauna Kuokkanen seeks to redefine
self-determination by foregrounding Indigenous feminisms and the knowledge of
Indigenous women within understandings of nationhood, nation-building, governance,
and rights. The theoretical advancements Kuokkanen offers demonstrate that Indig-
enous politics look far beyond the domestic realm, where they are usually housed, to
consider their wider transformative effects.
This work interrogates much of the literature on Indigenous self-determination and
sovereignties—including that of this author—by emphasizing the ways in which self-
determination is expressed via the individual rather than the nation, and specifically via
women. Kuokkanen reveals a complex relationship between gender and self-
determination in which Indigenous women’s conceptions of individual integrity
weave into understandings of self-determination that extend past law and rights dis-
course to venerate personal “acts of sovereignty”(50) along with collective approaches.
By proposing processes of Indigenous self-determination that focus on re-establishing
the roles of women in governance structures and respecting women’s corporeal in-
tegrity, as well as traditional governance and political practices, Kuokkanen joins the
growing body of literature challenging political scholars to imagine alternatives to
state-based polities that look beyond colonial oppression.
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