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Paper short abstract

The paper examines nativism and indigeneity (claims) among sovereign citizens at the example of the ‘Indigenous People Germanites’. It introduces the concept of innocent whiteness to analyse how racism and white supremacy are concealed behind conspiracy narratives and claims to indigeneity.

Paper long abstract

Sovereign citizens have gained traction since the COVID-19 pandemic. This article examines the role of nativism and indigeneity claims among sovereign citizens. Drawing on fieldwork in Switzerland and the Netherlands, it shows how what is conceptualized as ‘innocent whiteness’ sustains a violent appropriation of indigeneity claims and victimhood narratives. Racism and white supremacy are concealed behind conspiracy narratives and claims to indigeneity. This discourse of innocent whiteness allows sovereign citizens to distance themselves – at times quite successfully – from nativism, white supremacy and the far right. Notwithstanding these distancing attempts, the analysis reveals not only the racism and white supremacy embedded in ideas of European indigeneity, but also the ethnopluralism that underlies the Germanite worldview. The Germanites’ understanding of indigeneity, and the nativism underpinning it, reveals a deeply felt sense of ancestral entitlement and superiority. Beyond this case study, the Germanites’ entanglement with indigenous peoples and sovereign citizens across the globe redirects our attention to the very notions of indigeneity and sovereignty. When and how are indigeneity and sovereignty mobilized, in theory and in political practice; when are these invocations il/legitimate, and why? The Germanites – and even more so the ambiguous cases of their contractual partners worldwide – remind us that for any invocation of indigeneity and/or sovereignty, context matters and power matters: Who is claiming indigeneity, from what position within social hierarchies, and to what end? The analysis of the Germanites and their indigenous and sovereignist contractual partners offers some directions to answer these questions.