{"content":[{"text":"Journal of Adivasi and Indigenous Studies, Vol. IX, No. 2, August 2019","bbox":{"left":0.24192,"top":0.038359,"width":0.51655,"height":0.017493}},{"text":"However, it must also be considered that ‗indigenous people‘ have no essential feature \n because indigeneity, like other identity categories, ‗is a contingent, interactive, and \n historical product‘ (319). To comprehend a specific identity, first, one needs to locate it \n within the discursive paradigm—the specific institutional and/or historical sites governed \n by certain ‗modalities of power‘—in which it has been produced; and second, one has to \n look at it in relation to the differences that emerge between itself and its ‗Other‘ (Hall \n and Gay 1996: 4). Therefore, the ‗indigenous‘ is best understood as an identity which is \n ‗at once historically contingent and encompassing of the nonindigenous‘: it has been \n derived from the French indigene and the Latin indigena meaning ‗natives‘ and first \n came into use in the late 16th century to differentiate between the European colonisers \n and the colonised people of Latin America (Cadena and Starn 2007: 4). In the 1970s, the \n United Nations (UN) emphatically expressed an apprehension of the forces of modernity \n (vis-à-vis the politics of globalisation) and upheld the manifold crises faced by \n indigenous communities in the Americas (Neizen 2003: 2; Kingsbury 1998: 421). Since \n then it has been particularly crucial in the struggles of the communities which were \n marginalised by the majoritarian populaces of European ancestry in the erstwhile settler \n colonies. \n The term gained currency in the African context from the 1990s, when the global \n indigenous peoples‘ movement incorporated few African movements thanks to the \n efforts of the leaders of certain marginalised communities in Africa (Hodgson 2009: 2; \n Ignoe 2006: 402). The definition of ‗indigenous people‘ expanded to include the \n subjugation of few African communities when the UN Working Group showed its \n willingness to address the claim that those African communities tend to share common \n histories and struggles within their nation-states with the ‗first peoples‘ from settler \n colonies in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere (Hodgson 2009: 2). \n However, this apparently inclusionist move spawned new struggles for ‗indigeneity‘; \n struggles for financial aid from the international NGOs: in Africa, small portions of \n marginalised people came to be known as ‗indigenous‘ in the UN-supported global fora, \n while the plight of others could not get such recognition, and this happened because of \n the varying degrees of accessibility of such communities to the global fora (Ignoe 2006: \n 403-404). Besides, this expansion of the definition of indigeneity elided a major \n difference between African nation-states and the settler colonies in the Americas, New \n Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. In most African nation-states, the elite minorities rule \n over the economically and politically marginal groups constituting majority citizenries; \n whereas in settler colonies, indigenous groups have not only been politically and \n economically marginalised but also constitute minority citizenries (404). On the other \n hand, when the leaders of few African communities such as Massai, Kung Sang, Batwa \n drew special attention of the UN and became a part of the international indigeneous \n people‘s movement, those communities faced hostility from most nation-states in Africa \n (Hodgson 2009: 3). The reason for this hostility can be linked with the claim of such \n states that all of their citizens were indigenous, and hence selective recognition of \n indigeneity would leverage political tribalism running counter to the unifying and \n modernising spirits of the nation-states (3). On the other hand, certain communities like \n Masaai have strategically employed their autochthony to gain the necessary symbolic \n capital in the global platforms, and thus have been considerably successful in obtaining \n political leverage in Tanzania (Ignoe 2006: 410). It is, therefore, evident that inclusion of \n certain oppressed communities in the UN-recognised category called ‗indigenous \n peoples‘ does not adequately address the issues of economic and political \n marginalisations of people in Africa. In some cases, it leads to ethnological antagonisms \n 26","bbox":{"left":0.151018,"top":0.086358,"width":0.69879,"height":0.8575339999999999}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}