When third-party nonviolent intervention is undertaken by people with relative privilege, it runs the risk of failing to empower the local movements they aim to assist. They may indeed disempower to some extent those they seek to support by injecting racist or classist dynamics, however subtly, into the struggle itself.

This study investigates the emerging field of third-party nonviolent intervention, in which activists who are not involved in a particular conflict enter into that conflict to support and empower local individuals and movements in struggles for social change, justice and democracy. Utilizing theoretical developments in the nature of power, the structure of social movements and the role of advocacy, interventionists have the potential to aid indigenous social movements in achieving their aims without dictating to them the paths the movement should take. This is only possible if interventionists commit to an explicit and unequivocal training in their own rank and privilege, learning ways to employ that rank without reinforcing hegemonic oppression and structural racism.