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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. Both approaches disregard the fact that their universalist claims do not necessarily match the self-images of the populations usually labeled “indigenous.” They also tend to ignore that, like other people all over the world, these populations are extensively connected to, and deeply influenced by, transformative global socioeconomic and political rhetoric and realities (for more detail, see Cadena and Starn 2007; Clifford 2013). Mobility is a feature of the modern world as people, goods, and ideas move rapidly from one place to another. This fosters the emergence of new visions and aspirations for development that are embedded in the dynamics of local and global statecraft. While one should refrain from constructing indigenous people as clearly demarcated “groups” who exist “out there,” and even when one accepts that in general the world’s population struggles with the impact of neoliberal notions of economic formation and governmentality, it is also important to recognize that the label “indigenous” has recently become a powerful category that continues to inspire identity politics, emancipatory projects, and protectionist measures worldwide.
Even today, indigenous activists across the world to some extent tend to reproduce images of locally locked, culturally confined, socially egalitarian, economically self-sufficient, and politically independent “peoples” in international forums and indigenous peoples’ rights discourses in order to pursue particular claims. These images are particularly plausible and illustrative because they constitute a counter-narrative to modernization—a discourse frequently pursued by activists’ main opponent, the nation-state. Modernization, globalization, industrialization, and other forms of what we call “neoliberalism” are not projects “out there” that hang over people’s heads like a phantom, but strategies that are being pursued, and quite often actively protected and promoted, by the nation-state. Accordingly, indigenous activism mostly addresses state actors who are regarded as complicit in “selling out” indigenous rights to lands and natural resources without recognizing their way of life as being different to that of the majority population. This explanation, however, does not tell the entire story. It ignores the fact that the national imagination of many postcolonial states rests upon the ideal of a culturally homogenous society, for which minorities constitute a potential threat (Appadurai 2006). It also ignores the fact that within nation-states it is not only the so-called indigenous people who have been marginalized, but also often other segments of society who have not been able to gain recognition and influence. In contrast to explanations that tend to ignore the complexity of historical processes—that is, those acted out by a variety of protagonists at various global and local scales—this volume addresses the question of how indigeneity has manifested itself as a global discourse, feeding into very concrete policies and politics at different moments in time. It highlights that the concept itself is not a new invention, with a clearly defined meaning and scope, and related to a well-crafted set of rights, but rather that it has been used in many different ways by various actors. Accordingly, it has been used as an ascriptive and self-ascriptive category, as it is strategically employed by activists in order to pursue a particular set of claims, and by governments to defeat said claims or to make strategic concessions. Indigeneity has been appropriated by states and organizations exactly because it carries a particular meaning that is loaded with essentialist sentiments. However, it is not the validity of these sentiments over which activists continue to fight, but rather access to resources, rights, and dignity. This volume presents empirically grounded case studies from different parts of the world, which show that indigeneity is a contested concept and manifests itself in various ways.
Being concerned with “indigeneity on the move” indicates a keen interest in the question of how far, and under what conditions, the concept of indigeneity, which can be considered one of the key concepts of current social sciences, has the potential to change, alongside the rapidly changing lives and lifestyles of indigenous peoples across the world. And by extension, how these changes might reshape or at least modify our perspectives on established theories about social, economic, and political dynamics and their underlying factors. The concept of “indigeneity” and the various understandings of its meaning have had an impact not only on how social scientists think about the interconnections of identity, space, language, history, and culture, but also on how they describe the increasingly complex interplay of diverse players and agents within dynamic global socioeconomic, and political realities, and the rhetoric that accompanies it.
Indigeneity has become a resource in identity politics, a matter of “deep belonging,” desired more than discouraged, and proclaimed more than hidden as one’s attachment to a particular place, culture, and nation. It is woven together in an intricate web of concepts such as ethnicity, identity, hybridity, authenticity, autochthony, diaspora, nation, and homeland, and the ways in which these ideas are formed, developed, and “owned.” In so far as territoriality and ancestral rights over land are inscribed into the notion of indigeneity, the imagination of place, space, and time are central analytical dimensions that are highly relevant, particularly with regard to questions concerning the redistributive power of states and political (e.g., democratic) processes. Although indigeneity is primarily expressed as an attachment to land, locale, and nation, the relationship between indigeneity and belonging is reworked and modified in translocal and transnational communicative and interactive processes. Consequently, these concepts intersect with local, national, and global sociopolitical debates and are confronted with the challenges posed to indigenous aspirations by the neoliberal agenda of nation-states and their concerns with sovereignty. Therefore, apart from being of academic interest, the politics of indigeneity are significant in the context of nation-building, the accommodation of minority rights, neoliberal policy reforms, and political debates in growing rights activism at a global scale. Given these contexts, how should we address indigeneity on the move in its various manifestations at different levels? What are the challenges that indigenous peoples across the world face in the interface between local, nationalist rhetoric and global, political dynamics? How are these challenges crucial for indigenous people living in different regions across the globe? These are the leading questions, in relation to national and transnational indigenous activism, that this book seeks to address, with the aim of shaping a potential framework to better understand the various manifestations of indigeneity.
Apart from some very good ethnographies on indigenous issues published across the world, there exist various edited volumes on indigeneity, on the indigenous dynamics of translocal politics, and on indigenous cosmopolitanism (see, e.g., Cadena and Starn 2007; Dev, Kelkar, and Walter 2004; Forte 2010; Karlsson and Subba 2006; Rycroft and Dasgupta 2011; Venkateswar and Hughes 2011), which focus mainly on the present discourse on indigeneity and the struggles of indigenous people with the diverse issues they experience, in the context of a recurrent and rapidly transforming socioeconomic and political reality. These collections portray the present situation as a consequence of the past, where indigenous people were thought of as a “backward human race,” this category being produced in colonial scholarship on civilization in the mid nineteenth century. However, the situation has now considerably—though not completely—changed; indigenous peoples receive global attention, and their rights are acknowledged in different international forums. Indigenous people represent themselves at every level of society—locally, nationally, regionally, and globally—which gives birth to potentially new, as well as problematic, dimensions of the concept of both