Indigeneity, Identity Politics, and Nation-States
The idea of indigeneity as a political resource in identity politics, referring to individual and collective attachment to a particular place, culture, and nation, is not a new phenomenon. It intersects with local, national, and global sociopolitical debates following the framework of “us” versus “them” in various contexts. The politics of nationalism, and that of naming and categorizing in postcolonial states, along with developmental interventions and displacements and, more recently, certain states’ neoliberal agendas, have seen indigenous activists and those sympathetic to indigenous claims fight for legal and constitutional recognition within the political space of particular nation-states. Such recognition is usually framed in the language of rights (Cowan 2001; Gellner 2011) and relates to ideals of justice, equity, development, and democracy.
Ethnographies from all over the world have shown that the negotiations between indigenous activists and governments are framed within very different discourses, which differ from region to region and from one country to another. For instance, in the Americas, the discourse has been determined by images of indigenous people as the victims of settler colonialism, while in postcolonial states in South and Southeast Asia it involves cultural politics and the exclusionary policies of nation-building and state formation. In many countries, development programs directed towards economic growth at the cost of indigenous people and their habitats have given activists grounds to criticize development both as a discourse and as a set of practices (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994; Ziai 2013). Economic, political, and social marginalization have fostered the emergence of new, pioneering indigenous movements, which have been (partly) successful in introducing policy reforms and formulating alternative visions of society (e.g., Esteva and Prakash 1998; Laurie, Andolina, and Radcliffe 2005). Taking up a notion of indigeneity that is strongly linked with environmentalism and that line of activism, some movements have produced new visions for development, and new concrete versions thereof, such as the Buen Vivir initiative (see Ruttenberg 2013; Villalba 2013). Some of these activist movements have become particularly successful in claiming access to state resources, as the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador show (see Molyneux and Thomson 2011).
Whereas definitions of indigenous people in the Americas have been largely undisputed, activists in many parts of Africa and Asia, in contrast, have faced more difficulties because of different historical backgrounds or ethnic settings. Many Asian and African states refrain from acknowledging indigenous people as a category of citizens who are eligible for special rights and benefits on the basis of being oppressed (Gerharz 2014; Hodgson 2011; Pelican 2009). The arguments employed by these governments often rely on an interpretation of the notion of indigenous people that relates to specifics of the American populations—for example, the exposure to a colonialist force and its repercussions. At the same time, activists draw upon globalized notions of indigeneity to legitimize their claims. Paradoxically, both of these strategies can be interpreted as being directly related to globalization, in the sense of deterritorialization, which has opened up new avenues for denationalization and the permeability of boundaries, and therefore paves the way for universalist claims, such as human rights or collective rights pertaining to the specific conditions assigned to the indigenous “way of life.” In this sense, the emergence of indigenous activism can be regarded as a challenge to the modernization efforts of nation-states (Clifford 2013). However, the rising number of incidents of collective violence can also be traced back to growing pressure from globaliz-ing forces, which threatens nationalist ideals of cultural purity within nation-states and leads to the reassertion of us/them constructions in ethnic terms (Appadurai 2006). Minorities with cultural differences thus become a problem because they challenge, from the statist perspective, the national narratives of social cohesion, solidarity, and homogeneity. In stark contrast to the universalist claims that unfold in transnational social spaces, we witness the recurrence of nationalist claims to social and cultural homogeneity.
Indigeneity as a Subject of Global Policy
Whereas indigeneity remains a highly contested concept in many countries with respect to the ideas of modern nation-states, a global discourse with more or less transnationally standardized meanings and connotations has emerged, especially following the support of international organizations with measures such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, the definition by the World Bank, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). These imply the right to self-identification and self-definition, for example, but also offer guarantees such as freedom from oppression, as well as enshrining a special relationship between indigenous people and their land, and seeing mobility as a way of life. Debates on indigeneity and indigenous activism have shown a remarkable continuity throughout recent decades and have led to “place-making” at the level of the United Nations (Muehlebach 2001). In the early 1980s, the United Nations had already started to respond to the claims of indigenous activists, who highlighted the marginalization of so-called indigenous peoples. With the formation of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), in 1982, struggles for equality that had been taking place in several nation-states around the world gained global recognition, and regular meetings within the UN also encouraged local civil society groups and rights organizations to expand their networks beyond the national space by building connections with transnational indigenous activism. These alternate, global institutionalizations were accompanied by an increasing interest from the ILO, which adopted the first international legal mechanism for the protection of indigenous peoples in 1989, in the form of the ILO Convention 169.
Due to the continuous efforts of the WGIP to raise the concerns of indigenous people, the UN Human Rights Council proposed to the General Assembly that 1993 should be named as the “International Year of the World’s Indigenous People.”1 This was followed by the first “International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People” (1995–2004). Indigenous activists made use of these ten years to initiate a variety of activities, including resolving problems related to the rights to lands, the preservation of nature and protection of habitats, health and education issues, and the constitutional recognition of identity—in all parts of the world. The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was formed in 2000, and a UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People was appointed in 2001, although the impact of these measures on UN policies was limited.2 Consequently, the UN declared 2005–14 as a second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, making the “integrity and dignity” of indigenous peoples across the world a goal, which was in turn crucial for growing indigenous activism at both the global and local level, re-fueling as it did the rights movement of indigenous peoples working for cooperation, dignity, and integrity. Amidst this mounting indigenous activism, indigeneity became “a global ethnoscape” (Appadurai 1996), which now serves as a powerful tool for political negotiations because the international recognition of indigeneity has created a political space for indigenous people across the world to press their claims and demands (see Gerharz 2012; Ghosh 2006).
These international developments in creating and developing legal instruments were supplemented by the rights-based and promotional activities of transnationally organized initiatives such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Forest People’s Movement, Survival International, Cultural Survival, and Rainforest Action Network, among others.3 Much of this transnational activism relates to global debates on environmentalism, both in the 1980s when the Green Movement gained momentum and, more recently, in relation to the climate change discourse. At the same time, the relative success of indigenous activists in lobbying for their goals by relating them to environmental issues has convinced other activists that it is a strategy worth following (Baviskar 2006). Such a strategy therefore holds enormous potential for claims articulated in various political domains. While some