Normatively this investigation acts as a critical test of claims by experts and elites to define, name, create and speak for particular forms of recognition and presentation of indigenous peoples, and thereby questions their legitimacy towards locally situated groups experiencing change due to such advocacy work.
As such my proposed research is new and different with its emphasis on a people-centered and top-down analysis to indigenous political activism that concurrently captures the institutional and structural arrangements influencing the behavior of individuals and groups across multiple levels. It will achieve this by bringing together theoretical approaches of international and transnational political action that are concerned with intrinsic transnational forces and their transformative possibilities in juxtaposing them with local identity politics focusing on the ways identities are built and altered while concurrently aimed at asserting social justice demands. The research will therefore extend theoretical boundaries and innovate new theories and research. In paying attention to possible negative effects, as in the above example, where indigenous people were left out in the deliberation process occurring between international and local actors, this research will add an original aspect to existing scholarship in problematizing widely held assumptions of positive effects of transnational linkages and bottom-up activism.