SUMMARY:

The essay by Sergei Sokolovsky explores the relationship between the concept of indigeneity as it is practiced in autochthonous, nationalistic, and indigenous claim making and identity politics and the more respectable spheres of production of regulatory norms and knowledge, such as international law and biomedical sciences. Sokolovsky begins his essay with an analysis of the concept of the indigenous, aboriginal, and autochthonous as modern discursive formations. With the help of political theorist Jeremy Waldron, the author unpacks the essential contestation in the definition of indigeneity. There are two contradictory models: one is based on the claim of first settlement on a given territory and the utilization of land resources; the other defines indigeneity as the preceding social and political order in relation to colonial rule by Europeans. Sokolovsky demonstrates that even though the second model is applied in the system of international law, it is paradoxical because many peoples who are defined as indigenous according to this model were the conquerors of their territories in the distant past. Sokolovsky contends that these contradictions in international law arose as a result of the problematic epistemology of the discourse of indigeneity. The author further discusses how this problematic epistemology is transferred to biomedical sciences and the international program of containment of invasive species. Sokolovsky demonstrates the resemblance of the biology of invasive species and environmental thinking to the discourse of sociocultural nativism and xenophobia. The author then applies the critique of nativism and indigeneity from social sciences to the analysis of discursive formations in contemporary biomedical sciences. With the help of environmental studies of Hawaii, he shows that many premises of the biology of invasive species are based on flawed assumptions about indigeneity taken from cultural and social constructions.