Indigenous Peoples: Attempts to Define

51 Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 219, 2010

This paper is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity appears outside the law, before the law, and beyond the law – indeed, in Derrida’s terms, as an evocation of the unconditional. Whereas the law determines indigeneity in order to recognise it, I propose that its expression in Indigenous literature evokes a Derridean unconditional to which the law must perpetually, if momentarily, respond. This paper elaborates a conception of indigeneity, as expressed in Indigenous literature, as disruptive and deconstructive of non-Indigenous law, opening its narratives to transformation.

Yankwik Mexikayotl, 2014

This paper explores the issue of defining the term "indigeneity." The term has been used over the years by scholars and activists that work on indigenous issues, but it's precise meaning is rarely ever explained. There is merit in leaving the term undefined and allowing for open-ended interpretations; however, this application has its limitations, and those are the subject here. The author also takes a bold step and proposes a working definition of "indigeneity" - a definition that has been picked by scholars of indigeneity and decolonial studies, including Walter D. Mignolo.

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

Indigeneity is a much contested term, complicated by formal definitions under domestic and international law, the unlimited right to self-identification by indigenous people, conflicts and/or contradictions between these legal principles, and the political inequalities that result from variations in access to the processes and legal actions that invoke these terms. In particular, this generates a gap between legal definitions of indigeneity (framed, then and now, by hegemonic powers) and sociocultural practices of indigeneity (expressed and experienced, then as now, by cultures themselves). Reviewing the conceptual framing(s) of indigeneity both internationally and in a domestic (US) context, this article explores and offers a more flexible, resilient, and just understanding of indigeneity capable of closing the legal/sociocultural gap currently affecting indigenous people worldwide. At root, this less means asking what (or where) is indigeneity, and more instead when is indigeneity.

This article is based on indigenous research focusing on indigeneity and membership in indigenous group at the individual level. The position and rights of indigenous peoples gained a foothold at the political arenas of the world and in international agreements since the turn of the 1990s when indigenous peoples and minorities were started to be distinguished from each other. Indigenous peoples were considered to have collective rights regarding control over certain areas colonized by the mainstream population at a certain point of history. The aim is first to review the different membership criteria within different Indigenous groups in the world, and then to emphasize the definition of Sámi in Finland and its individual-level challenges. As a result of this paper, it seems that the individual-level indigenous identity does not necessarily correspond with the membership in indigenous group. When indigenous identity is not being accepted for one reason or another it violates the international declarations for indigenous peoples and may cause challenges both at individual and societal levels within indigenous communities.

The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society , 2021

The identities and identification of Indigenous peoples can encompass racial ideas and notions of biological inheritance or difference – and therefore be grounds for racist discourse – though indigeneity is not itself an exclusively racial discourse. However, while a modern discourse of indigeneity is often used to protest state and corporate incursions onto Indigenous soil and build transnational solidarity, it can also be used by states and political parties to exclude others and outsiders. But today, the discourse, of indigeneity emphasizes the survival and continuity of distinct identities despite colonial attempts to eliminate and dispossess Indigenous peoples. The contested politics of indigeneity demonstrate how deeply felt as well as indeterminate such a discourse is, one that is both 'other' to the west and also profoundly entangled within western thought.

Te kaharoa, 2019

Human Rights Quarterly, 2019

The goal of indigenous rights and recognition is best served by recognizing the social constructedness of indigeneity as a political tool to ground claims within nation states. An indigenous right to internal self-determination can be framed as a human right if understood as a bottom-up construction of self-assigning authors. This argument has four parts: (1) Various features of the social construction of indigeneity as well as (2) various ways in which it can be deployed politically (3) show why domestic law can advance the project more than international law can. (4) But the project does not exclude international law; rather, it offers an additional means of pursuing indigenous interests.

While popular images tend to depict indigenous people as having lived a " simple " and unspoiled lifestyle before they became threatened by the " evils " of modernity and (neo)colonial exploitation, there is evidence for the argument that, in many parts of the world, indigenous people were neither " locally locked " in the deep forest or remote hills, nor socioculturally " isolated, " dissociated from others and the outside world. Historians, political scientists, and anthropologists have shown that trade networks reached not only over great distances but also to remote places, and that, even though they may have been able to elude the power of state societies (Scott 2009), people living in those places were never completely isolated. This makes it even more astonishing that the notion of indigeneity has become a universalist concept that has gained global recognition for representing exactly this: a population that is economically " backward, " due to a lack of modern technology , and politically " independent, " due to the freedom from external forces and global capitalism, and therefore in need of protection. Such images tend to ignore the fact that it was colonialism itself that produced the well-known image of the noble or dangerous savage: simple, innocent, even childish, yet untamed and therefore threatening people, who lived in harmony with nature. But while colonial and postcolonial imaginations rested upon the idea that human progress is inevitably connected with a clearly defined path towards modernization, today's discourse on indigeneity considers the indigenous " way of life " as being endangered by the latter, and therefore as requiring protection. [See for details: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/GerharzIndigeneity]

In: Christoph Antons (ed.), "Routledge Handbook of Asian Law", pp. 362–377, 2017

The terms ‘indigenous people(s)’ and ‘indigeneity’ are multiply ambiguous. Their use without further qualification obscures key differences between the various real-world circumstances that they are typically applied to. This leads to confusion when the label ‘indigenous’ is employed in formal deliberations over political, cultural and land rights. To achieve clarity, some further distinctions need to be observed, most importantly between ‘indigeny’ and ‘indigenism’, between ‘tribal’ and ‘indigenous’, and between ‘indigeny’ and ‘exogeny’. Indigeny (the continued habitation of the same specific places that one’s familial ancestors always lived in) differs qualitatively in its cultural, economic and psychological consequences from all other circumstances that are labelled ‘indigenous’. Most of the latter arise within the tacitly exogenous context that underpins modernity, which is made possible by not living continuously where one’s ancestors lived. These usages are examples of ‘indigenism’ in its several varieties, rather than indigeny. The exogenous framework emphasises formal rationality and codified legal systems, which makes it difficult for the ‘native-title’ concerns of truly place-linked indigenous people to be argued for and judged fairly in court. Without due care, therefore, indigenist arguments may sometimes act against the interests of true place-linked indigenes. Further confusion results from the conventional use of ‘indigenous’ as a synonym of ‘tribal’, which brings together two distinct and sometimes antithetical social circumstances under a single label, since it is also authentically applicable to many peasant populations. Treating both tribespeople and peasants in an undifferentiated manner as simply ‘indigenous’ peoples misrepresents their distinct life-circumstances, especially with regard to matters of religion, language and mode of attachment to land. Examples drawn from several different Asian countries demonstrate the varying and sometimes antithetical ways in which the idea of ‘indigenous peoples’ has been applied – or ignored – and hence the necessity to employ it with more care than has usually been the case.

El presente documento tiene como finalidad el mostrar de manera general, cuales son los conceptos que desde el Derecho Internacional y los Derechos Humanos, se han expresado para tratar de definir a los grupos indígenas en el mundo. Dicha concpetualización se ha hecho con la finalidad de distinguir específicamente a estos grupos de otros grupos minoritarios y desarrollar e impulsar su desarrollo, dejando a un lado los obstáculos de caracter legal que los ha marginado durante mucho tiempo. Este documento se relacionará posteriormente con otro documento cuyo objetivo más específico es el relacionar estos derechos generales con los derechos de propiedad intelectual y como afecta a los grupos indígenas en el mundo.