The 1970s and 1980s meant an ethnic politicization of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, until this moment defined largely as a class-based movement of indigenous peasants. The indigenous organizations started to conceptualize indigenous peoples as nationalities with their own economic, social, cultural and legal structures and therefore with the right to autonomy and self-determination. Based on this conceptualization, the movement developed demands for a pluralist reform of state and society in order to install a plurinational state (...) with wide degrees of autonomy and participation for indigenous nationalities. A part of those demands was the double strategy to fight for legal pluralism while already installing it at the local level. Even if some degrees of legal pluralism have been recognized in Ecuador since the mid-1990s, in practice, the local de facto practice prevails until today. Another central part of the demand for plurinationality is the representation of indigenous peoples in the legislative organs of the state, developing since their first appearance in the 1940s in a complex way. This article will analyze the development of right-based demands within the discourse of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the visions of the implied state-reform and the organizational and political background and implication they have. Based on an analysis of the central texts of the indigenous organizations, conceptualizations of rights and laws and their appropriation within an autonomist discourse and a local practice will be highlighted. (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles. (...) In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

Whereas much of the literature in the social epistemology of scientific knowledge has focused either on scientific communities or research groups, we examine the epistemic significance of scientific/intellectual movements (SIMs). We argue that certain types of SIMs can play an important epistemic role in science: they can remedy epistemic injus- tices in scientific practices. SIMs can counteract epistemic injustices effectively because many forms of epistemic injustice require structural and not merely individual remedies. To illustrate our argument, we discuss the (...) case of indigenous studies. (shrink)

This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of US Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land (...) redistribution and indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination, and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories. (shrink)

The social science literature on identity politics around questions of race and ethnicity is profuse, prolix and contentious. Indigenous identity politics have seen a parallel growth and are equally complex. While there are analogies and overlaps, indigenous identities and social movements are neither conceptually nor empirically a sub-set of ethnic identities. The central issue of indigenous groups is the place of first peoples in relation to the nation-state system. This takes different forms in old world states (...) of Asia and Africa to those of new world settler states of the Americas and Australasia. While the major issues of the indigenous peoples have expanded beyond their national boundaries, their modes of participation in the national political arenas vary. They share a gradual nationalization of indigenous movements, including stronger links with socio-political forces of the respective countries in the region, a heightened consciousness of global processes and the broadening and enrichment of their socio-cultural and economic objectives. This paper looks at trans-national dimensions of indigenous social movements and identity politics in relation to nation-state policy regimes and examines the varying routes taken by indigenous peoples to achieve their goals. (shrink)

The struggle for the recognition of indigenous rights is one of the most important social movements in Mexico. Before the 1970s, existing peasant organizations did not represent indigenous concerns. Since 1975 there has been a resurgence of indigenous movements and have raised new demands and defense of their cultural values. However, indigenous social mobilization had been laid in local and regional peasant struggles across the 1970s and 1980s. Also the indigenous movement is not (...) homogeneous and does not include all ethnic groups in the country, but it has many different expressions and encompasses different entities at local, regional and national levels. This paper aims to analyze the historical social approach and under the frame of indigenous political ecology of social movements for recognition of indigenous rights in contemporary Mexico. (shrink)

Despite recent strides in the direction of achieving a more equitable and genuine place for Indigenous voices in the conservation conversation, the conservation movement must more deliberately and thoroughly grapple with the legacy of its deeply settler colonial history if it is to, in actuality and not merely in rhetoric, achieve the aim of being more equitable. In this article, we show how the conservation movement, historically and still largely today, traffics in certain ethical and political values that are, (...) in principle or in effect, anti-Indigenous. Through this examination, we hope to reveal how present-day conservation efforts, even if ‘well-meaning’ or nominally deferential regarding Indigenous peoples and perspectives, in fact reinforce settler colonial structures. In particular, we critique the notion of the uninhabited wilderness as a conservation ideal and the disavowal of originary violence (along with a parallel positing of settler nativism) in the articulation of conservation historicity and the founding of conservation movements. We conclude by offering some steps conservationists can take to alter their practices, methods, and values in ways that recognize, respect, and reciprocate with Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Seed rematriation is a rising movement within greater efforts to improve seed and food sovereignty for Native American communities in the United States. As a feminized reframing of repatriation, rematriation seeks to heal Indigenous relationships with food, seeds, and landscapes. Since first contact, Native agricultural practices have been systematically targeted by colonization, resulting in the diminished biodiversity of cultural gardening systems. Of this vast wealth, many varieties exist today solely under the stewardship of non-Native institutions. Seed rematriation is therefore (...) the process and movement by which Native nations reclaim their cultural seed heritages. Once seeds are returned to the hands and soils of their home communities, Indigenous Nations can reestablish healthy, diverse, and sustainable seed and foodways for generations to come. This article explores the history of the term rematriation within Indigenous sovereignty scholarship as well as its evolving interpretations and applications. Considering how the seed rematriation movement has been shaped by several seed keepers in the Midwest reveals the cultural understandings and significances that underpin this work across many aspects of Indigenous lifeways. The resulting discussion from ethnographic material demonstrates why seed reclamation and seed sovereignty movements in the Midwest uphold Native nationhood through both resurgence and refusal. The Indigenous processes of recognizing and reclaiming seeds work beyond recovering agricultural knowledge to also mend severed kin relationships, rejuvenate cultural knowledge, and reestablish authority over Indigenous food systems. (shrink)

Indigenous peoples often embrace different versions of the concept of food sovereignty. Yet some of these concepts are seemingly based on impossible ideals of food self-sufficiency. I will suggest in this essay that for at least some North American Indigenous peoples, food sovereignty movements are not based on such ideals, even though they invoke concepts of cultural revitalization and political sovereignty. Instead, food sovereignty is a strategy of Indigenous resurgence that negotiates structures of settler colonialism that (...) erase the ecological value of certain foods for Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

South Korean cultivators share features with counterparts in both the global south and north. This combination of traits has produced a diversity of sources that underpin a food sovereignty movement. A case study of t’ojong, or native, seed activism illustrates how local systems of meaning and particular constellations of interests make food sovereignty appealing to a broad coalition of farmers, consumers, part-time cultivators, agricultural scientists, and activists for farmers and for women. The country’s experience demonstrates that responses to market encroachment (...) on food production provide only part of the force driving food sovereignty movements. (shrink)

Recent Decades Have Witnessed An Efflorescence Of Identity Construction And Activism Of Indigenous Peoples Throughout The World. In The Process, A Multiplicity Of Indigenous Actors Has Emerged With New Discourses And Strategies Seeking Transformative Changes To Their Inherent Rights And Representation. In Their Complex Projects Of Self-Affirmation To Overcome Political And Economic Marginalisation, The Indigenous Peoples Are Deploying Culture As An Important Resource. No Doubt, The Resultant Indigenous Activism And The Manner In Which It Is Played (...) Out Vary From Country To Country.Indigenous Identity And Activism Captures The Broad Contours Of The Resurgent Indigenous Movements In Select Countries Australia, Brazil, Canada And Mexico. Renowned Scholars On The Subject Offer Their Insightful Reflections On The Ways In Which The Activists And The Movements Have Created A Space For Promoting Indigenous Cultural Reproduction And Identity Reconstruction. (shrink)

It is the nature of the earth to lie ‘wholly spread out under the sky’: hapasê hê hupo tô kosmô keimenê (Isocrates); and the sky determines the World. Indeed it is the same as the World, as Plato states in the final words of Timaeus: ‘the World was born: it is the Sky, which is one and alone of its race’ (ho kosmos … gegonen heis ouranos hode monogenês ôn). What is thus clearly ‘one and alone of its race’ dominates (...) by its very nature what is subjected to it: the earth. With the coming of the age of modernity, and today more than ever, the West has indeed subjected the Earth and its peoples by imposing its World on them. But it is the nature of worlds, as it is of heavens, to be limited by a horizon; and there is no sky, nor world, that is not supported by an earth. By the Earth, we mean to say nature. This ancient certainty, this primary metaphor, has been inscribed in us since the first creatures to become human, standing with both feet on the ground and head turned towards the sky, first saw the horizon. As paleo-anthropology tells us, it is in effect in the same movement that they began to create technical and symbolic systems from which the ecumene would spring; and this prime metaphor that was the basis for the ecumene and its worlds has continued to work on the generation of secondary metaphors that govern the history of human thought through the unconscious - from Aristotle when, inventing the notion of subject, he called it hupokeimenon, ‘what lies below’ (as the earth lies below the sky), to Heidegger when he imagined The Origin of the Work of Art as a ‘dispute’ (Streit) between a world and the earth. Indeed there is Streit because the earth denies itself and withdraws into its interior, in the very exteriorization that opens it into a world. (shrink)

The modern environmental movement has a tradition of respect for indigenous cultures and many environmentalists believe that there are important ecological lessons to be learned from studying the traditional life styles of indigenous peoples. More recently, however, some environmentalists have become more sceptical. This scepticism has been sharpened by current concerns with the cause of indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly insisted on their rights to pursue traditional practices or to develop their lands, even when the (...) exercise of these rights has implications in conflict with environmentalist values. These conflicts highlight some important questions in environmental ethics, particularly about the degree to which global environmental justice should be constrained by therecognition of indigenous rights. I explore some of these issues and argue for the relevance of the “capability approach” to environmental justice. (shrink)

The original – and often continuing – sin of countries with a settler colonial past is their brutal treatment of indigenous peoples. This challenging legacy continues to confront modern liberal democracies ranging from the USA and Canada to Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Duncan Ivison’s book considers how these states can justly accommodate indigenous populations today. He shows how indigenous movements have gained prominence in the past decade, driving both domestic and international campaigns for change. He (...) examines how the claims made by these movements challenge liberal conceptions of the state, rights, political community, identity and legitimacy. Interweaving a lucid introduction to the debates with his own original argument, he contends that we need to move beyond complaints about the ‘politics of identity’ and towards a more historically and theoretically nuanced liberalism better suited to our times. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in political theory, historic injustice, Indigenous studies and the history of political thought. (shrink)

The food sovereignty movement calls for a reversal of the neoliberal globalization of food, toward an alternative development model that supports peasant production for local consumption. The movement holds an ambiguous stance on peasant production for export markets, and clearly prioritizes localized trade. Food sovereignty discourse often simplifies and romanticizes the peasantry—overlooking agrarian class categories and ignoring the interests of export-oriented peasants. Drawing on 8 months of participant observation in the Andean countryside and 85 interviews with indigenous peasant farmers, (...) this paper finds that export markets are viewed as more fair than local markets. The indigenous peasants in this study prefer export trade because it offers a more stable and viable livelihood. Feeding the national population through local market intermediaries, by contrast, is perceived as unfair because of oversupply and low, fluctuating prices. This perspective, from the ground, offers important insight to movement actors and scholars who risk oversimplifying peasant values, interests, and actions. (shrink)

Two-Spirit men's sexual conquest stories—or what I am calling sexual coup stories—narrated more than just the sexual encounter. In fact, actual sexual acts are often secondary to the circumstances producing the sexual encounter. In this study, coup stories serve as a form of data revealing the ways in which sexual conquest is a sociosexual practice thoroughly embedded in broader Native community values and cultural patterns for the movement of bodily desire across landscapes predating humanist intellectual and moral intervention. Thus, the (...) intra-acting agencies of Native sexual circulation provide the opportunity to enact a culturally specific form of material-discursive order that when viewed from the epistemological metropole look highly entropic . Yet, Native sexual ontology realizes itself in the phenomena of a sexual circulation whose material-discursive practices appear to be disordered from the highly ordered humanistic center. (shrink)

The legal and normative openness of human rights allows for the integration of new subjects, arenas, violators, and protectors of human rights. Indigenous movements manage to use this flexibility and implement their claims within the human rights system. Yet, indigenous rights cause manifold discussions and ambiguities, all of which are related to the question of the concept of indigeneity. In spite of the endeavor for pragmatic and flexible approaches, scopes and implications of concepts of indigeneity need to (...) be dealt with. This paper discusses both scope and implications, starting from hegemonic criteria for a working definition of indigeneity. It shows how indigenous identity is inextricably linked to its non-indigenous other. Subsequently, indigenous human rights entail specific repercussions in indigeneity being a resource and an imperative. Those repercussions stem from indigeneity being simultaneously a source and target of indigenous human rights claims and from the self-referential duplication of the right to indigeneity for indigenes, respectively. The provided tools for an analysis of the ambiguities of indigenous human rights contribute to their further and more just development, implementation, and monitoring. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Scholarship in the area of social movements points to the importance of inter-group collaboration and alliance building. In the case of Indigenous-led movements and the issue of solidarity with non-Indigenous movement participants, scholarship at the intersection of Native studies and social movements suggests that such alliances can be built and sustained but that unlearning colonial attitudes and behaviors is central to this process. Through in-depth interviews with non-Native solidarity participants, this article considers how engagement (...) with Indigenous thought and action re-shapes particpants’ conceptions of environment and place. Findings suggest that such involvement calls attention to histories of violence as well as ongoing practices of dispossession causing activists to grapple not only with their personal and family histories but also with their evolving relationship with environmentalism. (shrink)

As political theorists address the parochial foundations of their field, engagement with the Indigenous traditions of Turtle Island is overdue. This article argues that theorists should approach such engagement with caution. Indigenous nations’ politics of knowledge production may differ from those of de-parochializing political theorists. Some Indigenous communities, in response to violent histories of knowledge extraction, have developed practices of refusal. The contemporary movement of resurgence engages Indigenous traditions of political thought toward the end of promoting (...) Indigenous intellectual and political sovereignty and self-determination. These practices demonstrate a commitment to epistemic justice that is imperfectly aligned with, and potentially opposed to, inclusion-oriented projects like comparative political theory. If political theorists are to de-parochialize political theory by incorporating Indigenous traditions, they must do so in ways that are respectful of Indigenous peoples’ own struggles for epistemic justice. This can be achieved by drawing on and deepening practices of reflexivity exhibited in leading comparative political theory scholarship, and by allowing Indigenous treaty relationships to set the terms of the encounter. (shrink)

Tracing the political origins of the Mexican indigenous rights movement, from the colonial encounter to the Zapatista uprising, and from Chiapas to Geneva, Courtney Jung locates indigenous identity in the history of Mexican state formation. She argues that indigenous identity is not an accident of birth but a political achievement that offers a new voice to many of the world's poorest and most dispossessed. The moral force of indigenous claims rests not on the existence of cultural (...) differences, or identity, but on the history of exclusion and selective inclusion that constitutes indigenous identity. As a result, the book shows that privatizing or protecting such groups is a mistake and develops a theory of critical liberalism that commits democratic government to active engagement with the claims of culture. This book will appeal to scholars and students of political theory, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology studying multiculturalism and the politics of culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Epistemic social oppressions such as ‘epistemic partiality’, ‘epistemic injustice’, ‘epistemic harms and wrongs’, ‘epistemic oppression’, ‘epistemic exploitation’, ‘epistemic violence’, or ‘epistemicide’ are terms with increasing theoretical importance and empirical applications. However, less literature is devoted to social strategies to overcome such oppressions. Here the Sorelian and Gramscian concept of social myth is considered in that sense. The empirical case is the myth of ‘The last Indigenous peoples of Europe’ present in the Basque Country, divided between France and Spain (...) and with a historical national culture under their statist powers. The myth has a renewal in a recent social movement, the Biltzarre platform and its Basque Cultural Instinct Team, currently followed through a Participatory Action Research. The results show how such social myth gives coherence and empowers the Basque identity against the loss of identity caused by the French and Spanish powers. Finally, progress is being made on how epistemic oppressons can end, ironically, because of the success of an epistemicide. Presumably, social myths counteract epistemic oppression, strengthening the social identity and self-esteem of the subject, as a form of empowerment in social and political issues. (shrink)

Although the universal human rights paradigm has been problematic for women and indigenous peoples, both groups have made advances by framing their demands within a human rights perspective. Indigenous women, however, have frequently found themselves marginalized by women’s movements and indigenous movements alike, particularly when they make demands for rights as indigenous women—not just as members of one group or the other. This article takes the case of Mapuche women in Chile to examine the (...) politics of gender and human rights for indigenous women. Their efforts to articulate their concerns, vis-à-vis Mapuche men, nonindigenous women, and the state, have entailed assertions of their own version of women’s rights, one that responds specifically to their reality as Mapuche women. (shrink)

This article reformulates Stephan Helmreich´s the ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the historiality of otherness in the foundations of human microbiome science. Through the lens of my ethnographic fieldwork of a transnational community of microbiome scientists that conducted a landmark human microbiome research on indigenous microbes and its affiliated and first personalised microbiome initiative, the American Gut Project, I follow and trace the key actors, experimental systems and onto-epistemic claims in the emergence of human microbiome science a decade ago. In (...) doing so, I show the links between the reinscription of race, comparative research on the microbial genetic variation of human populations and the remining of bioprospected data for personalised medicine. In these unpredictable research movements, the microbiome of non-Western peoples and territories is much more than a side project or a specific approach within the field: it constitutes the nucleus of its experimental system, opening towards subsequent and cumulative research processes and knowledge production in human microbiome science. The article demonstrates that while human microbiome science is articulated upon the microbial ‘makeup’ of non-wester(nised) communities, societies, and locales, its results and therapeutics are only applicable to medical conditions affecting rich nations (i.e., inflammatory, autoimmune, and metabolic diseases). My reformulation of ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the condition of possibility of human microbiome science reveals that its individual dimension is sustained by microbial DNA data from human populations through bioprospecting practices and gains meaning through personalised medicine initiatives, informal online networks of pseudoscientific and commodified microbial-related evidence. (shrink)

This paper offers a close reading of PAW Media animation My Name is Danny. Drawing across a growing body of recent Central and Western Desert experimental cinema, this paper asks what is at stake in the turn to animation. Rather than escapism or otherworldly fabrications which have little to do with lived experience of the “real,” animation in this context has potent everyday exigencies and politics. The capacity for bringing to life literally – animate – is here linked to the (...) primacy of a sentient landscape; an object world already alive and enlivened with motion, movement, sensation. The question for contemporary filmmaking is how to engage country and its viscera today. How to keep country/ancestor/story alive literally through sentient forms of affective exchange; a project which animation, as this paper will explore, uniquely provides. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, as well as the animation theory of Cholodenko, Lemarre and others, this paper argues for a radical reconsideration of animation not as incompatible with tradition but in fact as facilitating traditional ontologies of affect and sensation in a national context of remote Aboriginal Australia “under occupation.”. (shrink)

A central question in the history of American philosophy is that of the origin of the pragmatist movement, a school of thought that emphasized the importance of testing our ideas in practice. Scott Pratt identifies four Native American philosophical principles that he believes influenced Peirce's theory of pragmatism: interaction, pluralism, community, and growth. These principles belong to what he calls “the indigenous attitude” – represented in Avatar by the Na'vi – in contrast to “the colonial attitude” embraced by the (...) Resources Development Administration (RDA) corporation and its employees. Someone with a colonial attitude regards himself as an autonomous self who can know the one true world in the one right way. Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the RDA, is an excellent example of this colonial attitude. To better understand the object of Selfridge's scorn, this chapter looks closer at these four principles of interaction, pluralism, community, and growth. (shrink)

Many aquatic invasive species (AIS) management programs are doing important work on preventing non-indigenous species movement to our wild places. Attitudes and perspectives on aquatic non-indigenous species and their management by ecologists and the public are fundamentally a question of human values. Despite eloquent philosophical writings on treatment of non-indigenous species, management agency rhetoric on 'invasive' species usually degenerates to a good versus evil language, often with questionable results and lost conservation dollars. We assess and learn from (...) an established AIS program. We discuss an ethic framework and operational directives to minimise the trap of a binary classification of species into bad or good, and we advocate for a principled pragmatic approach to minimise conflicts. We make a case for not labelling species and instead focusing on managing nuisance conditions and protecting ecosystem health. (shrink)

As COVID-19 and its variants spread across Australia at differing paces and intensity, the country’s response to the risk of infection and contagion revealed an intensification of bordering practices as a form of risk mitigation with disparate impacts on different segments of the Australian community. Australia’s international border was closed for both inbound and outbound travel, with few exceptions, while states and territories, Indigenous communities, and local government areas were subject to a patchwork of varying restrictions. By focusing on (...) borders at various levels, our research traces how the logics of medico-legal bordering have filtered down from the international to the intra-national, and indeed, into hyper-local spaces. This is not just apparent in the COVID-19 moment but in previous pandemics of 1918 to 1919 influenza and smallpox, in which practices of quarantine and lockdowns were both unevenly distributed and implemented on multiple scales of social organization. An interdisciplinary approach between history and law reveals that human movement during pandemic times in Australia has been regulated in a manner that sees mobility as a risk to public health capable of mitigation through the strict enforcement of borders as a technology of both confinement and exclusion. (shrink)

This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of “tribalism,” regarding the language and laws of V. S. coh’ nialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U. S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper proceeds (...) to compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as “indigenous kinship” in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called “tribal nations” in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision which labeled them “domestic dependent nations.” This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as “patriarchal colonialism” and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a “trickle down patriarchy” that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for “Native Womanism” in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of "tribalism," regarding the language and laws of U. S. colonialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U. S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper proceeds to (...) compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as "indigenous kinship" in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called "tribal nations" in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision which labeled them "domestic dependent nations." This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as "patriarchal colonialism" and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a "trickle down patriarchy" that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for "Native Womanism" in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of "tribalism," regarding the language and laws of U. S. colonialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U. S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper proceeds to (...) compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as "indigenous kinship" in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called "tribal nations" in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision which labeled them "domestic dependent nations." This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as "patriarchal colonialism" and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a "trickle down patriarchy" that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for "Native Womanism" in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

Departing from Christian spiritualities, even those emerging from feminist theologians and Latin American eco feminist liberation theologies, the indigenous women´s movements started to propose their own “indigenous spirituality.” In some key meetings like the “First Summit of Indigenous Women of the Americas” and at other later meetings, their basic documents, final declarations, collective proposals have a spiritual component that departs from the influences of the largely Christian Catholic background of the country. Their discourses, demands, and live (...) presentations have also expressed this religious background. Through several years of interactions and sharing with women in the indigenous worlds of Mexico, the author has systematized a series of characteristics that emanate from a particular cosmovision and cosmogony. These religious references to an indigenous spirituality are inspired on ancestral references re-created today as the women struggle for social justice. The inspiration for their social justice fight is often anchored in these beliefs and practices. It is a reference to worlds of ritual, liturgy, and collective worship that—although being often attired in Catholic and Christian imagery—reveal a deep disjuncture with Christianity and affirm their epistemic particularity. Working from these “cracks of epistemic differences” (Mignolo 2006) the author presents them as a de-colonial effort. Women are actively proposing to recapture ancestral spiritualities to decolonize both the religious universes they were forced to adopt during the historical colonial invasion as well as from the influences of a neo-colonial feminist frame for gender equality. (shrink)

This article examines the confluence of extractivism, violence, and their resistance in the context of left governance – specifically the case of Ecuador – through an engagement with the concept of populism. Alongside Bolivia and Venezuela, Ecuador has long been associated with the rise of radical populism and with it an ‘autocratic turn’ in Latin America. Dispensing with overdetermined accounts of populism as either the anti-thesis or essence of democracy, this article proposes a third lens – dual populisms – to (...) better grapple with the neocolonial turn toward intensified natural resource extraction and violence. That this intensification took place in the context of a left-in-power in Ecuador was initially surprising given previous alliances between President Correa’s party and Indigenous and environmental movements, and its rejection of capitalist and neoliberal developmentalism. With the expansion of extractive industries, and its accompanying violence increasingly becoming a global phenomenon, dual populism posits a third position – one that is at once top-down, state centered, and also bottom-up and social movement focused – to better account for the complex dynamics at work within this turn. (shrink)

: This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of "tribalism," regarding the language and laws of U. S. colonialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U.S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper proceeds to (...) compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as "indigenous kinship" in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called "tribal nations" in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision (The Cherokee Cases, 1831-1882) which labeled them "domestic dependent nations." This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as "patriarchal colonialism"and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a "trickle down patriarchy" that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for "Native Womanism" in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

Finland is currently undergoing a fundamental structural transformation in the forestry sector, with factories closing in the Global North and production being shifted to the Global South (see also Carrere & Lohmann 1996; Cossalter & Pye-Smith 2003). This is accompanied by Finnish mass movements protesting unemployment and demanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) from theforest industry. The difficult domestic situation, however, seems to overshadow the circumstances of the new production regions in the South. What do we actually know about the (...) impacts of the Finnish forestry sector in those societies? The branches of global forest companies may be located in regions that are experiencing various societal conflicts – like in the case of indigenous communities in northeastern Brazil, where the question of land ownership remains unsolved. The aim of our paper is to bring out the perspective of these traditional communities and the legitimacy problems of the Finnish forest industry in Brazil. We also scrutinize the corporate tactics by which companies seek to gain societal acceptability in the region. These range from social programs and campaigns to violent confrontations, even to attempts to deconstruct the identities of indigenous communities. Our general argument is that while companies have outlined their CSR policies in theory, the situation in actual practice is quite different. Companies often fail to take into account the prevailing socioeconomic conditions in the region and some of the more marginal stakeholders like indigenous peoples, who obviously have no economic importance to the company. (shrink)

This article presents a broad analysis of the political economy and dynamics of social change during the first year of the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. It situates this analysis in the wider historical context of left-indigenous insurrection between 2000 and 2005, the changing character of contemporary capitalism imperialism, and the resurgence of anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism elsewhere in Latin America. It considers at a general level the overarching dilemmas of revolution and reform. Part III examines the complexities of the (...) politics of indigenous liberation and the political economy of the Movimiento al Socialismo government between January 2006 and January 2007. It pays special attention to the limits of reform in the hydrocarbons sector. Also explained in Part III is the formation of an autonomist right-wing movement in the eastern lowlands, and how the new Right has intervened in the process of the Constituent Assembly. The article shows how the actual Constituent Assembly set into motion by the Morales administration in 2006 differs in fundamental terms from the revolutionary assembly envisioned by leading left-indigenous forces during the cycle of revolt in the first five years of this century. (shrink)

Engaging feminist and queer of color theory as well as work emerging from social movements, this piece critically examines narratives of impasse between Black Studies and Native Studies in the US, particularly assertions of incommensurability between the goals of Black freedom and Native sovereignty. The article outlines some of the theoretical debates between Black and Indigenous Studies that have calcified into impasses, focusing particularly on Afropessimist and Settler Colonial Studies’ framings of either slavery/anti-Blackness or settler colonialism as the (...) foundational violence around which a racist/settler modernity is structured. This article argues that approaches that emphasize relationality and the co-determination of settler colonialism and anti-Black racism can help us to think beyond a Black/Native impasse and towards a mutual futurity for both Black and Indigenous people in living in the place we currently call the United States. (shrink)

Abstract This paper reports the results obtained in an aid project designed to improve transport in the municipal area of Jocotán (Guatemala). The rural road network of an area occupied by indigenous people was analysed and a road chosen for repair using the labour-intensive method–something never done before in this area. The manpower required for the project was provided by the population that would benefit from the project; the involvement of outside contractors and businesses was avoided. All payment for (...) labour went into the pockets of the local people. The small earth movements made and the use of local materials guaranteed the project’s environmental sustainability, while the on-site training of the local community prepared its members for the continued maintenance of the road, thus investing the project with social sustainability. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-24 DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9290-2 Authors Rodrigo Ares, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain José-María Fuentes, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Eutiquio Gallego, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Francisco Ayuga, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Ana-Isabel García, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452. (shrink)

Seemingly distant practices of molecular biology and indigenous Xhosa healing have commonalities that I would like to bring into conversation in this article. The preclinical trial of an indigenous medicine brings them together in a research consortium. In this instance, both sets of experts are meant to collaborate in preparing a wild bush for it to pass the tests of the randomized clinical trial (RCT) and to potentially become a biopharmaceutical to counter the tuberculosis pandemic. I aim to (...) tease out how the two sets of actors and their respective practices converge and diverge in their healing hopes and ways of managing uncertainty. Ultimately, I am interested in understanding how the preferred process of making medicine “work” by each set of actors relies upon particular ways of knowing and not knowing life, bringing some ontologies into being, letting others wither away. The shared ways of knowing life as a movement of opening at the edges of the RCT are proposed as paths of recognition between one and the other practice. (shrink)

Historically, culture has been treated as an object in international documents. One consequence of this is that cultural rights in international law have been understood as rights of access and consumption. Recently, an alternative conception of culture, and of what cultural rights protect, has emerged from international documents treating indigenous peoples. Within these documents culture is treated as an activity rather than a good. This activity is ascribed to peoples as well as persons, and protecting the capacity of both (...) peoples and persons to engage in culture is taken to be as basic a component of human dignity as are freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and freedom from torture. It is not an accident that this treatment of culture has emerged from international documents treating indigenous peoples. However, the value of this treatment of culture extends beyond the human rights of indigenous peoples. Treating culture as an activity establishes an understanding of what cultural rights protect that clarifies the relationship between cultural rights and other mechanisms for protecting minorities and frames the role of cultural communities in the realization of human dignity as an important physical and political issue, not just a psychological one. For these reasons, the norms regarding cultural rights that are emerging from international documents treating indigenous peoples are a much-needed step forward for peoples' rights more generally. (shrink)

This article argues that Rancière’s paradoxical account of identity formation through political conflicts can highlight dilemmas facing indigenous political movements across the globe. The article first locates Rancière’s theory within the broader political theory of recognition and briefly describes some of Rancière’s key political concepts. The article then moves on to a description of several indigenous political movements with a particular emphasis on indigenous people from New Zealand, Chile and Mexico and highlights some key conceptual (...) differences in the political strategies and ideologies of these movements. I conclude by relating the differences between these indigenous political movements to Rancière’s key theoretical concepts and argue that Rancière’s theory allows political theorists to shed some light on the internal contradictions and struggles of indigenous people when these try to use indigenous identity with the goal to radically challenge the social order of colonial societies. (shrink)

This article explores the political role of rural and indigenous women in the context of the socio-environmental, health and political crises in Chile, where social movements have pressured the political establishment to decisively move towards a change in Chile’s constitutional foundations. The study analyses the historical political demands and strategies of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI) as a case of the women’s peasant movement with a relevant political role in shaping the social demands (...) in the face of the crises. Following the political ecology of food through the decolonial and ecofeminist perspective and the social movement theory, findings indicate the current relevance of rural and indigenous women as political actors of change, a relevance that has been neglected for most of Chile’s history. With their leadership and socially grounded demands, peasant and indigenous women are influencing the political agenda decisively using strategies that are shared with other peasant movements in Latin America. Rural and indigenous women are fundamental political actors that should undoubtedly be considered when studying struggles for social change in the 21st century. (shrink)

‘You mean to say we’re not the only people in the world with the problem of a national park?’ This question was raised during a focus group discussion held with an indigenous community whose ancestral domain overlaps entirely with a national park in the Philippine Cordillera. The question encapsulates an experience shared across the Philippines, particularly in spaces where both the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act and the National Integrated Protected Areas System are implemented. This paper examines recent developments (...) in indigenous leaders’ participation in, and critique of, the implementation of these two laws and the development of environmental policies. It follows an emerging, multi-sectoral movement calling for the recognition of Indigenous Communities Conserved Areas and Territories, which has led to the crafting of a draft law. The ICCA bill is envisioned as a law that will resolve indigenous peoples’ problems with national parks, while meeting biodiversity conservation targets. The authors direct attention to how indigenous leaders campaigning for the ICCA bill are asserting their right to delineate space and make decisions in the contexts of policy-making and implementation. It is argued here that their articulations are registers of indigenous critique. Taking these critiques seriously has the potential to drive conservation policy-making past the stewardship stalemate, where conservation goals are pursued at the cost of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and indigenous peoples are expected to perform harmony with nature. (shrink)

This article explores the politics of digital protest and emergent forms of sociality in the #NoDAPL movement using Elizabeth Povinelli’s concept of geontopower. I begin by situating the concept of geontopower in relation to a range of biopolitical, decolonial, and ecocritical theory in order to show its importance in conceptualizing the interconnectedness of decolonial and environmental interests. I use this theoretical framework to analyze several instances of what I call ‘digital decoloniality’ in the #NoDAPL movement, cases where the particular affordances (...) of social media technologies and the efforts of Indigenous activists and non-Indigenous allies disrupted normative assumptions regarding the boundaries of the digital and ‘analog’ worlds and resisted the geontopolitical structuring of life and nonlife. I argue that the #NoDAPL hashtag works to enact the prerogatives of Western science-based environmentalism and Indigenous epistemological tenets in common, performatively generating new possibilities for conceptualizing social struggle and shared history. (shrink)

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, burst into that turbulent time with passion, anger, and radical acts of resistance. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Native people began to protest the decades--centuries--of corruption, racism, and abuse they had endured. They argued for political, social, and cultural change, and they got attention. The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to 1981. (...) Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images. The words of Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, Pat Bellanger, Elaine Salinas, Winona LaDuke, Bill Means, Ken Tilsen, Larry Leventhal, Jose Barreiro, and others tell the stories: the takeovers of federal buildings and the Winter Dam in Wisconsin, the founding of survival schools in the Twin Cities, the Wounded Knee trials, international conferences for indigenous rights, the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan and the Longest Walk for Survival, powwows and camps and United Nations actions. This is the inside record of a movement that began to change a nation. Dick Bancroft has been the unofficial photographer for the American Indian Movement since 1970. He has traveled the world to take these photographs. Laura Waterman Wittstock, a writer and media consultant, covered the early years of the American Indian Movement as a journalist. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, is an activist for indigenous rights in Guatemala. (shrink)

A lot has happened in Indian Country recently: water protectors and the NoDAPL movement brought international attention to Native sovereignty and ongoing resistance to settler forms of violence against Indigenous ways of being; a settler public became aware of the MMIW movement and the ongoing assault on the lives of Indigenous women; an apology was given by executive order for a genocide that occurred in California and a Truth and Healing Council was created to investigate the historical relations (...) between California Indians and the state of California; and Native identity is "complex" and certain people seek to profit from that complexity by duplicitously or erroneously claiming Native identity, to name a few. To... (shrink)

The article examines the social dimensions of poverty in the context of gender, dalit, tribal and Muslim minorities in the country. Reviewing the process of globalisation in the country, it notes that the largest section of workers continue to work in the unorganised sector. The shifting of global capital to the South and particularly to India has increased opportunities for women to work in the garment export industry. Characterised by low pay and poor working conditions, the industry exploits women. The (...) fear of job loss has led to new forms of resistance by women workers not only at the workplace but within the community linking with social movements for protection and advancement. Small and marginal farmers including women agricultural workers are impacted by global markets leading to destruction of rural livelihoods. Dalit women have demonstrated how to create household food security by internalising inputs and creating alternative markets. Policy planners need to learn from these experiences and upscale at a national level. Regenerating commons and promoting non-chemical agriculture are other means to restore ecological balance and economic health of the agriculture sector. Tribal, dalit and Muslim minority socio-economic rights are eroded further due to the process of globalisation. To move towards more inclusive growth, public spending on education and health has to increase. Responding to people's movements the state needs to implement pro-people policies and programmes. Mobilising women into SHGs is seen as a panacea to ensure women's development. Currently, it has created a debt burden on women. An alternative agenda for empowerment is outlined for action. (shrink)

Indigenous-led activism against proposed oil pipelines has relied heavily on social media, as in the #NoDAPL campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline. This paper explores affective engagement in online activism, including the Standing Rock ‘check-in’ campaign on Facebook. Moving beyond dichotomous understandings of embodied vs digital activism, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Mirror Shields Project employs digital media in order to support direct action at Standing Rock. Patricia Clough draws a direct link between affect and technoscientific understandings of the body in (...) her concept of biomediated bodies. This helps explain how physical and digital activism are linked: the digital and the physical cannot be understood as independent of each other, since online engagement always has an embodied aspect as well. Luger’s Mirror Shields Project functions as a form of alterlife, in resistance to biopower, recognizing historical and ongoing harms while also creating new possibilities for resistance. (shrink)