Trust, institutions, and indigenous self‐governance: An exploratory study

Abstract

Trust is important to the institutions that make societies successful. Globally, Indigenous peoples are actively building institutions for self‐governance, but there remains little empirical work on trust in this context. To address this gap, we use a mixed methods approach to explore three levels of trust among individual members from three related, but politically distinct First Nations (Indigenous peoples) in British Columbia, Canada. British Columbia offers a unique and dynamic context to explore trust and its relationship with the diverse institutional choices among First Nations. Survey results show that trust is low among respondents and individual variables predictive of trust in mainstream contexts, like education and employment, are not determinative. However, interpersonal trust and political trust were highest in the First Nation most active in institution building, and who linked this with a cultural revitalization narrative. Interviews suggested a bidirectional relationship between individual and collective drivers of trust in this context.

It takes a village to build illegality: Minorities' noncompliance as manifestation of distrust

“…Hence, governance arrangements in low-trust contexts address the collective action problem (Ostrom, 1990) by drawing on people's expectation for cooperative behavior (Fukuyama, 1996;Rothstein, 2005). Moreover, demonstrating that political distrust is compensated with interpersonal trust among the minority members, this article further unfolds recently identified links between low interpersonal trust and low political trust (Nikolakis & Nelson, 2019).…”

Social implications of Covid-19: Its impact on general trust, political trust, and trust in physicians in China

“…The only difference is the slopes and magnitudes of increase for different types of trust. Studies have shown that trust is the glue of societies, economics, and politics, and these outcomes can reciprocally boost the establishment of trust ( Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ; Watkins, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ). Thereby, the trend shown in Fig.…”

“…Trust has been theoretically and empirically evidenced as the glue of societies, economics, and politics ( Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ). Greater general trust helps generate higher cooperation, a practical contributing factor to social, institutional, and political stability and economic efficiency ( Abascal and Baldassarri, 2015 ; Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ; Uslaner). These outcomes reciprocally boost citizens' general, specific, and political trust ( Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ; Watkins, 2021 ).…”

“…Greater general trust helps generate higher cooperation, a practical contributing factor to social, institutional, and political stability and economic efficiency ( Abascal and Baldassarri, 2015 ; Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ; Uslaner). These outcomes reciprocally boost citizens' general, specific, and political trust ( Nikolakis and Nelson, 2019 ; Watkins, 2021 ). Besides general trust, political trust is a vital constituent of national governance and the foundation of legitimate governance ( Dellmuth and Tallberg, 2020 ; Watkins, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ); trust in physicians, given their role in mitigating Covid-19, is a validated form of special interpersonal trust that facilitates health production, support of the government, and social order ( Baicker and Finkelstein, 2019 ; Gilson, 2003 ).…”

Indigenous fire management: a conceptual model from literature

“…Institutional and policy context IFM was prohibited (and often displaced) over large areas (Ritchie 2009, Minor andBoyce 2018), particularly where Indigenous peoples were removed from their lands and resources, and forbidden from practicing their culture and language (Nikolakis 2019, Nikolakis and Nelson 2019). The emergence of IFM as a "legitimate" alternative to fire suppression involves a reactivation of Indigenous knowledge and enhanced participation in land governance (Whitehead et al 2008.…”