By the outbreak of global war in the late 1930s, the indigenous world had been divided into two major groups. In most temperate regions, where agricultural, mining, and forestry potential attracted thousands of out­siders, indigenous peoples had been forced off their traditional lands. As settlement pressures mounted, governments had stepped in to manage indigenous affairs and to isolate aboriginal populations from the rest of the people. In many other areas - high in the mountains, in deserts, on the tundra, on isolated and resource-poor islands - indigenous cultures remained largely beyond the reach of governments and the powerful forces of industrial change. Mining and resource development interfered in a few locations, but vast expanses of the world remained largely in the control of tribal peoples. In the African deserts, the Amazon basin, huge districts in the circumpolar North, and the seemingly impenetrable mountains of Papua New Guinea, geography protected aboriginal peo­ple from the intrusions of outsiders.

Newcomers continued their efforts to reach into these still largely unknown lands. Prospectors scoured the land in search of mineral deposits and other resources and miners and mining companies rushed in at the first sign of promising returns. Loggers, farmers, and ranchers clawed at the edges of the final frontiers, the latter two groups often deterred by climatic and soil conditions from proceeding further. Low resource prices and uncertain demand provided a further, often fatal, disincentive to development. In many countries, government agents and missionaries moved tentatively across these uncharted spaces, seeking to help the "disadvantaged" souls still living without the benefits of, the industrial age. The nation-state sought, as well, to ensure that the mobile and largely unchecked indigenous peoples understood and respected the law and their legal responsibilities - but most governments avoided costly entanglements with communities which seemed uninterested in pursuing modern commercial opportunities. Tribal peoples remained curiosities, exotic societies of marginal consequence to the rest of the world.

Only a small number of indigenous societies in such truly isolated zones as the Amazon, Papua New Guinea, Andaman Islands, and a few other areas existed without regular contact with outsiders. Across Siberia, the small peoples of the far north faced regular intrusions by the Soviet state, largely in the form of efforts at political indoctrina­tion. Government ships brought supplies annually into the most remote reaches of the Canadian Arctic. Military expeditions regularly made contact with indigenous peoples in many countries. The indigenous peoples generally knew a fair bit about the "other" societies but opted not to move into a closer relationship. For many tribal communi­ties, retaining contact with traditional territories took precedence over integrating with the values and material complexity of the indus­trial world. Knowing about the world of consumption, sedentary lifestyles, and resource exploitation did not convince the tribal societies that they should make dramatic changes in their lives.

Non-aboriginal peoples, in contrast, saw little reason to make exten­sive contact with the indigenous peoples. To the extent that they were curiosities, they attracted occasional interest by cultural observers, who came as anthropologists, assigned to recording the details of the last tribal cultures, as missionaries determined to pave their way into heaven, as adventurers and journalists looking to describe and interpret little-known regions, or as government agents seeking to ensure that the societies represented no threat to the established order. Whatever their motivation, the outsiders sought to explain the mysterious existence of peo­ples who seemed determined to live outside the "modern" world. There was opportunity and fame to be found in interpreting these unique societies to the industrial world, but the public's interest was superficial, not deep. These peoples' lands, moreover, were too remote, too unattractive, too impenetrable, and too poor to attract much interest. The better lands had long since been taken up, leaving hardscrabble desert, thick jungle, rugged mountain valleys, and snow-covered tundra for the few hardy and adaptable souls able to survive on the seeming uninhabitable lands.

The technology of modern warfare changed the nature of military conflict in the 1930s and, unexpectedly, resulted in the rapid develop­ment of vast expanses of remote regions, typically occupied largely by indigenous peoples. The global conflict of the 1930s and 1940s started slowly, with Japanese troops launching aggressive attacks into China. The gradual expansion of Nazi Germany to the east beginning in 1938 and, continuing rapidly thereafter, brought Central Europe into conflict with peoples in Eastern and Southeast Europe and Scandinavia. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, in December 1941, the conflict exploded into a truly global conflagration.

This war differed from earlier conflicts, in large measure, owing to the vastly improved technology of warfare. Airplanes - bombers, supply planes, surveillance and fighter aircraft - figured more prominently than ever in military plans. Efficiently run long-distance supply lines, serviced by ship, train, and truck, moved vast quantities of military material across enormous distances. New telecommunications technolo­gies, particularly radio and radar, allowed military planners to coordi­nate far-flung armies, navies, and air forces. To all of this must be added the rapid increasing speed of military maneuvers, major improvements in the construction of wartime infrastructure, and the availability (par­ticularly in the United States and, in the first years of the conflict, Japan and Germany) of enormous sums of money to invest in military projects. World War II was larger, more expansive, faster moving, more inte­grated, and therefore more dramatic than any war in history. It engulfed the entire planet, including vast lands hitherto left largely unscathed by the advance of the industrial world.

The contours of World War II are very well-known, with the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) facing off against the Allies (partic­ularly the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and India). In Europe, the Nazi advance to the west and south­east brought most of the continent under German control. What proved to be an ill-timed or ill-advised attack against Russia in 1941 brought the Nazi armed forces into a difficult multi-front war, which included a dramatic conflict across the desert terrain of North Africa. Japan pressed aggressively into Southeast Asia, capturing Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, and standing on the verge of attacking Australia. In the process, they occupied hundreds of small Pacific islands, gaining effective control of vast expanses of Asia and the Pacific.

Descriptions and analysis of the war have, understandably, focused on the primary battlefields and the massive build-up of Axis and Allied troops near major population centers. This emphasis, however, has meant a general neglect of a surprisingly dramatic period of occupation and dislocation of indigenous peoples within their traditional territories. There was only passing public interest in the construction of a highway in the Canadian northwest when thousands had died or been captured during a failed attempt to take the French port of Dieppe. The devel­opment of airfields in Greenland could hardly compete in terms of urgency or importance with the opening of defensive positions in Eastern Australia. In remarkably short order, however, Allied forces moved aggressively into sparsely settled territories, anxious to protect the lands from Axis invasion or to use the little-known areas as supply bases or as a launching pad for military activities.

The catalogue of major military projects on and through indigenous territories is a thick one. Across Australia, American and Australian authorities built dozens of airfields and supporting facilities. Throughout northern Queensland, the closest secure Allied territory to the Japanese-held islands of the South Pacific, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a series of major staging areas. Similarly, the New Zealand government welcomed American troops onto their lands, and several major projects were constructed around Maori communities. The Americans occupied dozens of islands across the South Pacific, racing to protect them from Japanese invasion and then using them as bases for subsequent attacks on Japanese-held territories. American and Canadian civilian and military contractors constructed several military highways, dozens of airstrips and a major oil pipeline complex in north­west North America, swamping the local population. Similar construction projects were undertaken in the eastern Arctic, specifically to provide staging fields for planes and supplies being ferried to the United Kingdom. The Americans, the largest and most expansive of the Allied powers in this era, built other facilities in the Caribbean, South Asia, South America, Iceland, and other locations.

The United States was not alone in moving into indigenous territories. Russian developers, spurred by urgent military needs for resources and by a desire to protect the far east from potential Japanese attack, expanded operations across Siberia. Military bases, particularly airfields, smaller weather stations, and other facilities were constructed throughout the sparsely inhabited North. German armies entered Sami lands in Norway and Finland and established control over large stretches of tribal territory in North Africa. The Japanese, for their part, asserted authority over island populations in the Pacific, overran tribal peoples in Southeast Asia, and dominated indigenous peoples in the Philippines and other lands. They also occupied, temporarily, several of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and, before being driven off by a combined Canadian and American force, relocated a significant number of the Aleuts to camps in Japan, where they remained until the end of the war.

By the end of World War II, vast stretches of land previously ignored by industrial nations and their related authorities had been brought into the ambit of the non-indigenous worlds. In most of these areas, the original inhabitants had generally been treated with benign neglect. Governments from Australia to Russia, Norway to Alaska, had general policies designed to assimilate or dominate indigenous peoples. But in most instances, the governments saw no particular value - and a great deal of cost - in attempting to bring indigenous populations formally under central control. There had been efforts, from the Soviet Red Tents in Siberia to mission-run schools in the Canadian North and govern­ment outposts in the Australian outback, to start the process of integra­tion, but the forces of separation remained strong. In the absence of sizeable non-indigenous populations and the comparatively small amount of industrial or resource 'development, tribal peoples found themselves generally left to their own devices. Fiji might have lived under the yoke of British rule, and Vanuatu may have existed under the uneasy dominance of the British and French condominium government, but most of the tribal peoples operated much as they wanted to do and followed a substantially traditional lifestyle.

Conditions changed throughout the war, even in areas that did not fall victim to bombing attacks or direct invasion. The peoples of occu­pied Pacific islands, particularly those controlled by the Japanese, faced enormous dislocations and, in many instances, saw their island existence torn asunder by invasion and battle. Populations near newly opened resource projects, hastily constructed highways or airfields, or major infrastructure initiatives experienced rapid changes in local conditions. Around the world, peoples subjected to the effects of the influx of thousands of Axis or Allied troops saw their way of life subject to vast disruptions. Indigenous people across Siberia endured the removal of large numbers of reindeer to support the desperate USSR war effort against the Germans; even more disruptive was the imposition of national conscription and the enlistment of thousands of indigenous peoples for military service, which caused significant changes in the indigenous camps. Conditions varied from country to country, often depending on the state of armed conflict and the urgency the occupiers attached to asserting dominance over the area. In most instances, civil authorities exercised little power, leaving the management of local affairs to military officials.

Although the specific impacts varied substantially across space and time, indigenous peoples experienced very dramatic changes as a result of the wartime occupations and activities. Military developers paid little attention to the preservation of the ecosystem; the imperatives of war took precedence over the needs of local peoples and wildlife, and the well-armed soldiers were not averse to using their guns on the latter. The arrival of thousands of soldiers and construction workers, typically young men with money, time, and a willingness to assert their dominance, overturned local economies and disrupted social relations. The soldiers and construction workers often mixed with local populations. Sexual liaisons with local women, consensual or aggressive, were com­monplace. Occasional opportunities to find work with the construction projects were typically offset by the disruptions of local economies, a reduction in harvestable resources, and competition for local food supplies. The availability of industrial products ranging from manufac­tured clothing to processed foods at the military bases often distorted local markets even further, providing attractive alternatives to local stores. Experiences varied depending on the origins of the occupying power - friendly invasions were far less disruptive than enemy attacks - and the precise nature of the projects being undertaken. On a global scale, and in rapid order, indigenous communities found their lives turned upside down, the victims of a military "invasion" undertaken, for the most part, by Allied forces.

In some instances, the military occupations passed quickly, as the armed forces moved on to more strategic areas; when this occurred, as it did in isolated outposts in the Canadian eastern Arctic and the Australian outback, indigenous peoples could for a time return to the old ways. In many other cases, in contrast, the military projects represented more than a transitory shift. Often the armies stayed, as they did in Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, and in portions of Southeast Asia. They were soon fixed in place by the rapid transformation of the global conflict into the "Cold War" stand-off between capitalist and communist powers.

The United States pulled back most of its troops at war's end, but did not abandon its overseas activities. For the expanding and confident American empire, the foothold established by the wartime occupations ended up becoming the foundation for postwar defence and vigilance against the new enemies in the Soviet Union and communist China. And so the United States maintained its presence in such isolated locations as the Inuit lands of Baffin Island and Greenland, in Iceland, on aboriginal territory in Alaska, and in many strategic locations in Southeast Asia. Huge US military bases in locations from Japan to the Philippines to Alaska, and specialized facilities at isolated sites around the capitalist­friendly world provided both tangible evidence of the American's deter­mination to protect the democratic states and their allies and a continuing disruptive influence on local indigenous populations.

The communist powers, for their part, were determined to protect themselves against the threat of attack by the United States, and they too maintained their military presence in hitherto neglected hinterland areas. The Soviets, in particular, extended their commitments to traditional indigenous territories in Siberia, which they reinforced militarily and developed strategically, pouring vast sums of money into mines, logging operations, hydroelectric stations, and other such projects. China expanded its military and administrative control to the west and south; it was in this period that the communist state established effect control over Tibet and placed the smaller indigenous groups in the far west and south under communist influence.

In areas of rapidly declining military importance - the Pacific islands, Australia, the Canadian North, Newfoundland (not part of Canada until 1949), New Zealand, and elsewhere - the withdrawal of the United States and the collapse of Germany, Japan, and Italy provided an opportunity for the reassertion of national control. In these cases, the military construction projects, which usually involved some mix of roads, airfields, wharves, supply facilities, telephone lines, and other basic infrastructure, were either abandoned or shifted to civilian uses. The military facilities had been constructed with little attention to long-term value or suitability; the imperatives of war had shaped most of the decision-making processes. Around the world, hastily built airfields returned to weeds and forests. I11-planned roads and railway lines soon fell into disuse, as did hundreds of warehouses, barracks, and other wartime undertakings. Some, of course, had been damaged or destroyed by war - the Japanese facilities on the Pacific islands and in Southeast Asia, in particular, had been bombed and torched into use­lessness - and had little productive value. Other military investments, however, were seized upon by local authorities and businesses when the armed forces pulled out. These many projects, built by the Axis and Allied powers at considerable cost, provided a foundation for economic and administrative activities in hitherto neglected regions. And even if the military facilities were not up to proper civilian standards - highways built in the Australian outback and the Canadian Northwest fell far short of finished quality - they represented to regional non-indigenous populations and national governments a vast improvement over the paltry infrastructure of the prewar period.

Indigenous peoples played very little military role during the war, save to be battered by the residual damage of warfare and disrupted by the massive and rapid military preparations. No governments, domestic, allied, or invading, consulted them on the use of their lands and resources. At war's end, as businesses and governments rushed to capitalize on the leftover benefits of military occupation, concern for indigenous issues scarcely made a dent on national or international consciousness. That non-aboriginal people saw the wartime projects as a foundation for postwar economic development meant that war's end represented a continuation, not an end, of a period of intense transfor­mation. In isolated lands around the world, indigenous peoples discovered that their hitherto largely unchallenged use of traditional territories and resources had fallen to the imperatives of war and inter­national politics. Operating well below the geopolitical radar, aboriginal communities suffered as well from the social, cultural, and economic dislocations associated with the expansion of military activity and the complex implications of having soldiers, sailors, and aviators occupying traditional lands.

On a broader level, the extension of national interests in remote regions convinced governments to pay greater attention to these regions. At war's end, even as the Axis powers retreated and the Allied/American forces pulled back to a peacetime footing, the vast indigenous lands occupied in this brief, intense period remained under external control. Military planners recognized the long-term strategic importance of these areas and, in particular, their resources. Government officials and private developers realized that the resource wealth of these remote regions might well hold the key to postwar national prosperity; they were determined, too, not to repeat the errors of the prewar period and to leave these now-valuable lands available for foreign occupation. As well, the completion of a wide variety of infrastructure projects provided a unique foundation for subsequent developments. And even if the mil­itary roads, airfields, construction camps, wharves, and other facilities fell below private- and public-sector standards and were often located in open at war's end. Private developers moved quickly to meet the seemingly insatiable desire for consumables, requiring in the process access to new and cheaper resources. Put simply, the world needed more resources - and the once remote regions of the world seemed to offer an enormous storehouse of untapped wealth. Fortuitously, it seemed, wartime construction projects provided unexpected access to these previously isolated regions.

With stunning speed and intensity, the industrial world unleashed a development boom on the remote regions that had, only a few short years before, felt the effects of military occupations. In the Soviet Union, large cities grew around major resource deposits, with the government effectively bribing workers from southern and western cities to venture north. Huge development projects - hydroelectric dams and transmis­sion lines, oil and natural gas fields, base metal mines, large sawmills and pulp-and-paper operations - sprang up through the 1950s and 1960s throughout isolated regions in Australia, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, Canada, Russia, and Brazil.

Until World War II indigenous peoples in many remote districts retained considerable freedom and substantially unchallenged access to resources. Yanomami in the Amazon, Inuit in the High Arctic, Sami reindeer herders, !Kung Bushmen in Botswana, tribal peoples in Papua New Guinea, Irian laya, Sarawak, northern Thailand, and dozens of other hard-to-reach and economically marginal zones, lived with relatively little intervention by outsiders. Even across the Russian North, intrusion from outsiders remained relatively limited before World War II and the creation of national districts provided the Siberian indigenous peoples with consid­erable protection from development. The dynamics of ideological con­flict, population growth, independence movements in the Third World, the Cold War, an increasingly globalized economy, adventure tourism, and late-twentieth-century altruism and paternalism brought developers, government officials, and the multiple traumas of incorporation to the remaining tribal peoples. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s and contin­uing into the twenty-first century, these remote populations began to experience processes and dislocations strikingly similar to the intrusions associated with the earlier expansionary efforts of colonial powers. Put simply, the process of becoming "administered peoples" occurred at different times in different places, and continues through to the present.

Colonial powers and the fragment states which followed clearly thought little of the long-term viability of indigenous cultures and economies. For generations, it has been stated that the governments observed the striking demographic trends - falling populations, declining birth rates, and frequent epidemic and endemic illnesses - and concluded that the original peoples would soon die out. To the extent that this was true, government policy was like palliative care, designed to ease the pain of dying and to provide a measure of comfort during difficult years. After the Japanese imposed their authority on the Ainu in the late nineteenth century, they passed the Hokkaido Aborigine Protection Act (1899) and endeavored to encourage the integration of the Ainu into mainstream society. Officials were generally pessimistic about the prospects for change. They admitted, with chagrin, that the aboriginal problem would be around for many decades, if not centuries, and that subsequent governments would face comparable dilemmas in the future. They managed, in the process, to problematize an entire group of people, for the conception of tribal peoples varied little around the world. In country after country, colony after colony, it was assumed that the cultures of the indigenous peoples were unsustainable, primitive, and doomed to be displaced by the new industrial and material order.

There was, therefore, an incomparable irony in the fact that these same countries found so much to celebrate and to promote in the uniqueness of the indigenous cultures. Countries around the world idealized the very societies they sought to undermine and replace. Colonial exhibits at major expositions, like the famous 1851 Great Exhibition in London, celebrated the diversity of indigenous cultures. Colonies and, in later years, fragment states that had little otherwise to distinguish themselves from other nations displayed aboriginal artifacts. Their presentations, reflected in national, colonial, and regional muse­ums, mirrored the contradictions in government policy toward indigenous peoples. While there was much gawking at ceremonial headdresses, elaborate carvings, and dances or other cultural activities, there were often also presentations of indigenous educational accomplishments. The juxtaposition of traditional and transitional cultures symbolized the difficulties colonial and national governments had in determining just where indigenous peoples stood within the newcomer societies. It was a dilemma few people resolved.

Once indigenous peoples had been dealt with as a military threat, and once strategic alliances were no longer essential to ensure peaceful settlement, governments faced a difficult challenge. It was hard to figure out where aboriginal communities stood in the evolving colonial and national order. Optimists believed that they could be incorporated into the mainstream through educational efforts and the transformation of cultures. The Japanese, for example, saw education as the cornerstone of their efforts to assimilate the Ainu, an effort that almost succeeded in undercutting the viability of their language. Pessimists believed that the indigenous peoples were doomed' to die a slow and painful death. Both could agree that extended contact with the newly dominant, non-indigenous society was not in the interests of either group. Indigenous peoples became, as a consequence, administered and controlled by external agencies whose policies bore little evidence of being derived from consultation with the aboriginal communities. Governments knew best; there was virtually no questioning of this basic assumption. But governments were also wary of spending too much time and money on what some believed to be a hopeless cause. The resulting policies proved to be intrusive and, in many instances, culturally destructive.

 

Indigenous peoples resisted, where they could, but often to only limited effect.

Scholars have demonstrated that indigenous groups exercised agency - they knew what they wanted, they found as many ways as possible to make their wishes known, and they developed sophisticated governments and colonial powers alike as a challenge to the integrity of the national unit. With a state-wide emphasis on conformity, through national schools, a common legal system, and shared political structures, the indigenous peoples were once again viewed as the "Other." The reaction of the nation-states was uniform: indigenous peoples were expected to change, to conform to national social codes and conventions, to participate in the national economy, and eventually, through processes of civilization, to become full citizens in the new entity.

Governments devoted considerable effort and money to the challenge of assimilating the indigenous peoples to the national norms, but enjoyed many fewer successes than they had anticipated. Through the coercive power of the state, governments forced most indigenous peoples to leave their traditional lands and to move onto managed reserves, reservations, or other indigenous settlements. In many regions, they undermined indigenous languages and challenged traditions and customs. The indigenous peoples were generally left marginalized and isolated socially, economically, and politically. But, to the dismay of numerous colonial powers and national governments, they did not surrender their indigenity. Their commitment to culture, community, and land remained strong, often in the face of grotesque indignities and physical force. Values, world-views, and spiritual understandings survived, though weakened and often seriously damaged by the intrusions of state education and missionary activities. The indigenous peoples around the world became, in a variety of different ways, administered communities, under the influence of governments and following the directives of the nation-state. They did not, as many had predicted, surrender their identity as indigenous peoples to the uncertain benefits of the nations and settler societies.

For political scientist Greg Poelzer, the evolution of the modern state was the single most important development in the transformation of indigenous-newcomer relations around the world. As he observed in his comparative study of aboriginal self-government in Canada and Russia:

Modern state-building forever changed aboriginal-state relations and, as a consequence, the course of aboriginal political development. The change in aboriginal-state relations reveals as much about the nature of modern states as it does about aboriginal political life. Colonial and absolutist regimes tolerated the coexistence of "other" political communities within the bound­aries of the territories over which these political orders claimed domination. Under colonial British North America and absolutist Tsarist Russia, aboriginalmeans of cultural persistence in the face of demands for change. But there were real, practical limits on what was possible. In the eyes of the authorities and their supporters in the churches, and in the non-indigenous societies at large, aboriginal cultures were doomed. Moving them into the mainstream was, therefore, an act of charity and compassion, not an exercise in aggression. For the indigenous peoples, ravaged by epidemic and endemic diseases, and suffering from dislocation from traditional activities and lands, falling into the grip of administrators brought wide-ranging and little-understood transformations. Many aboriginal parents supported schooling; they wanted their children to have the chance to participate in the new economic and social order and could not have anticipated the culturally and personally destructive experiences that many young people endured. The era of administration created, as well, the foundations for post-World War II cultures of dependency, as the national and regional systems brought indigenous peoples under the daily control of non-aboriginal authorities.

Through the latter half of the nineteenth century, the nation-state emerged as a major political and constitutional entity. Before that time, even within the major imperial powers, most people had only vague allegiances to national governments. The grand nations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Japan, Italy, and Belgium existed more as cartographical descriptions than as shared or well-understood communities. This began to change in the nineteenth century, with German and Italian unification, the reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War, and efforts to create, through school systems and national government administration, a sense of belonging and citizenship. It is worth noting, in this context, that as late as World War I, the French army had difficulty managing its troops because they did not share a commonly understood language. This era, too, saw the emergence of new states - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and others - and the early growth of nationalistic and anti-colonial sentiments in major colonies like Indonesia, India, and China.

The development of nationalist sentiments and the coincidental emergence of new states in the former colonies created formidable challenges for indigenous peoples. Once a threat to development and settlement, they remained both that and a barrier to national integration. Their differentness and their unwillingness to conform automatically to the values, structures, and assumptions of the nation-state were seen by governments and colonial powers alike as a challenge to the integrity of the national unit. With a state-wide emphasis on conformity, through national schools, a common legal system, and shared political structures, the indigenous peoples were once again viewed as the "Other." The reaction of the nation-states was uniform: indigenous peoples were expected to change, to conform to national social codes and conventions, to participate in the national economy, and eventually, through processes of civilization, to become full citizens in the new entity.

Governments devoted considerable effort and money to the challenge of assimilating the indigenous peoples to the national norms, but enjoyed many fewer successes than they had anticipated. Through the coercive power of the state, governments forced most indigenous peoples to leave their traditional lands and to move onto managed reserves, reservations, or other indigenous settlements. In many regions, they undermined indigenous languages and challenged traditions and customs. The indigenous peoples were generally left marginalized and isolated socially, economically, and politically. But, to the dismay of numerous colonial powers and national governments, they did not surrender their indigenity. Their commitment to culture, community, and land remained strong, often in the face of grotesque indignities and physical force. Values, world-views, and spiritual understandings sur­vived, though weakened and often seriously damaged by the intrusions of state education and missionary activities. The indigenous peoples around the world became, in a variety of different ways, administered communities, under the influence of governments and following the directives of the nation-state. They did not, as many had predicted, surrender their identity as indigenous peoples to the uncertain benefits of the nations and settler societies.

For political scientist Greg Poelzer, the evolution of the modern state was the single most important development in the transformation of indigenous-newcomer relations around the world. As he observed in his comparative study of aboriginal self-government in Canada and Russia:

Modern state-building forever changed aboriginal-state relations and, as a consequence, the course of aboriginal political development. The change in aboriginal-state relations reveals as much about the nature of modern states as it does about aboriginal political life. Colonial and absolutist regimes tolerated the coexistence of "other" political communities within the bound­aries of the territories over which these political orders claimed domination. Under colonial British North America and absolutist Tsarist Russia, aboriginal peoples could exist on the political, cultural, and geographical frontiers of the state. From the perspective of the peoples of European descent, aboriginal peo­ples were always the "others." However, the Canadian and Soviet states were to transform frontiers, eliminating differences. The "others" were no longer to exist. This logic brought aboriginal peoples into inescapable conflict with the modern state. As a result, modern states and aboriginal people became political enemies in Schmitt's sense of term: the political enemy is "the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible." Modern state-building changed the politics of aboriginal-state relations from one of coexistence to one of "friend and enemy." (2)

For Poelzer, the state initially emerged for the purposes of waging war. The modern nation-state, in contrast, had primarily internal priorities and commitments, including: the assertion of sovereignty, the mainte­nance of borders, the establishment of a bureaucracy, universal citizen­ship, the creation of a sense of nationalism, centralization of political and administrative proceses, internal pacification of all "others," and the development of a universalizing ideology.

The transformation of the indigenous peoples from allies and military foes of the emerging states to the internal wards or residents within the rapidly developing nation-states of the industrial world had profound implications for indigenous populations. The new states, proud, confi­dent and determined, believed that they were operating in the interests of the country at large. Their aggressive tactics, particularly in education and cultural control, were matched by paternalistic assumptions about how best and how fastest to convert indigenous peoples into "citizens." The transformation of administrative cultures associated with the emergence of the nation-state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was, as Poelzer argues, among the most important and influential changes in indigenous-newcomer relations in history.

 

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