Today, nearly half a billion people qualify as Indigenous. If they were a single country, it would be the world’s third most populous, behind China and India. Exactly who counts as Indigenous, however, is far from clear.
Identity evolves. Social categories shrink or expand, become stiffer or more elastic, more specific or more abstract. What it means to be white or Black, Indian or American, able-bodied or not shifts as we tussle over language, as new groups take on those labels and others strip them away.
“I stayed with them for two weeks, and then with the Hopi for two weeks,” he told Hodgson. “It was my first introduction to the indigenous world. I was struck by the similarities of our problems.” The disrepair of the roads reminded him of the poor condition of cattle trails in Maasailand. A video for the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues begins, “They were always here—the original inhabitants.” Yet many peoples who are now considered Indigenous don’t claim to be aboriginal—the Maasai among them. According to Maasai oral histories, their ancestors arrived in Tanzania several hundred years ago from a homeland they call Kerio, likely situated near South Sudan.
The conflation of indigeneity with primitiveness can be stifling. Indigenous intellectuals—including the Lenape scholar Joanne Barker and the Maori scholar Evan Poata-Smith—write about the pressure to adopt identities that are “primordial,” “naturalistic,” and “unchanging.” Fail to do so, they say, and you risk looking inauthentic.
The start of the trip was frustrating. Like a tourist visiting North Korea, Manuel was whisked from one exhibition to another, presented with a Shangri-La fantasy of the Maori experience. Yet he was determined to escape the spectacle and, when given a chance, he invited Maori politicians and a troupe of Maori entertainers to his hotel room for an honest chat.
The expansion of indigeneity is visible in the history of the World Council, and then in the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations, which was founded in 1982, and—in part because it benefitted from more regular meetings, the resources of the U.N., and the promise of drafting international law—effectively supplanted the council. Across two decades, the working group metamorphosed from an overwhelmingly American assemblage into an international one.
For decades, the Tanzanian government exploited this imagery. As tourism and big-game hunting flourished, photographs of the Maasai decorated brochures and guidebooks: human scenery garnishing Africa’s untamed wilderness. At the same time, government officials sought to justify the expropriation of Maasai land for more lucrative projects, like wildlife tourism.
A politics built around indigeneity, many organizers fear, can reify ethnic boundaries. It encourages people to justify why their ethnic group, and not another, deserves particular resources and accommodations. It weakens domestic ties, which are otherwise critical for oppressed minorities. But it also contributes to one of the stranger consequences arising from a rhetoric of indigeneity: its co-option by far-right nationalists.
Yet there is also what the anthropologist Alpa Shah calls a “dark side of indigeneity.” Between 1999 and 2008, she spent some thirty months living with Adivasis, mostly of the Munda ethnic group, in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Her book “In the Shadows of the State” offers a sobering picture of how activism organized around indigeneity can trap the communities it is supposed to liberate.
This isn’t to say that people who enact tribal caricatures necessarily chafe at doing so. In “Adivasi Art and Activism,” Alice Tilche, who worked with Adivasis at a “tribal museum” in Gujarat, reports that many took pride in primitivist performances. Others treated the dress-up as a kind of job, necessary for securing the benefits set aside for Scheduled Tribes.
“The Maasai is good for a tourist’s photograph, useful to carry your bags to the camp, or even to guide you to see the animals,” Parkipuny told theThe evictions, combined with government plans to seize fifteen hundred square kilometres of Maasai land for the Emiratis, sparked a new wave of activism. Twenty thousand Maasai—more than a quarter of the population of Loliondo—turned out to protest. Three thousand women gathered and met with traditional and elected leaders.
México Últimas Noticias, México Titulares
Similar News:También puedes leer noticias similares a ésta que hemos recopilado de otras fuentes de noticias.
Larry Hogan would rethink 2024 presidential run to keep Trump out of White HouseFormer Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he would rethink his candidacy if he thought it would inadvertently contribute to former President Donald Trump securing the White House in 2024.
Leer más »
Opinion: San Diego school board should rethink its classroom cellphone policyOpinion: San Diego school board should rethink its classroom cellphone policy [Opinion]
Leer más »
Successful Aging: Friends for 65 years, these women came together to reconnectSo, what do three long-time girlfriends talk about with days of unstructured time?
Leer más »
Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples starts job amid crisesGuajajara’s appointment was heralded, but after four years of Jair Bolsonaro, her task will be enormous. She insists she's up to the job.
Leer más »
Indigenous communities celebrate the return of a totem pole to Nuxalk Nation from Canadian museum | CNNA totem pole removed from an Indigenous burial site more than a century ago and kept on display in a Canadian museum has been repatriated to the Nuxalk Nation.
Leer más »