2009/04/24 by Francesca Merlan, Francésca Merlan · 303 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · #Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Declaration #Democracy #Indigenous #Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights #Indigenous rights #Law #Notice #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1086/597667
published in Current Anthropology 50(3), 303-333 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2009/04/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The term indigenous, long used to distinguish between those who are "native" and their "others" in specific locales, has also become a term for a geocultural category, presupposing a world collectivity of "indigenous peoples" in contrast to their various "others." Many observers have noted that the stimuli for internationalization of the indigenous category originated principally from particular nation-states-Anglo-American settler colonies and Scandinavia. All, I argue, are relevantly political cultures of liberal democracy and weighty (in different ways) in international institutional affairs. However, international indigeneity has not been supported in any unqualified way by actions taken in the name of several nation-states that were among its main points of origin. In fact, staunch resistance to the international indigenous project has recently come from four of them. In 2007, the only four voting countries to reject the main product of international indigenist activity over the past 30 years, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, were Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. In these locations, forms of "indigenous relationship" emerged that launched international indigeneity and that strongly influenced international perceptions of what "indigeneity" is and who "indigenous peoples" may be. Some other countries say the model of indigenous relationship that they see represented by the "establishing" set is inapplicable to themselves (but have nonetheless had to take notice of expanding internationalist indigenism). The apparently paradoxical rejection of the draft declaration by the establishing countries is consistent with the combination of enabling and constraining forces that liberal democratic political cultures offer.