Summary
The UN estimates that there are currently around 370
million indigenous people living in over 70 countries. Most of us are aware of
the way in which our European ancestors exploited indigenous peoples in the
lands they conquered, but we also need to think about the new methods of social
and economic oppression which are happening right now. It is also the case that
indigenous people in many countries are not just passive victims of this
process and where possible are acting individually and collectively to preserve
their homes, communities and culture.
This process began with the Norse Greenland travellers Leif
Eriksson in the C10 and Thorfinn Karlsefni in the C11th who reached Vineland in
Newfoundland having been told of a land of boundless resources. They were soon
in contact with the local inhabitants, and although some trade took place, misunderstandings soon led to hostility and aggression with men killed on both
sides. The Norse withdrew back to Greenland realising the land was too well
defended to be settled at this time. The disparaging term Skraeling they used
to describe the inhabitants means barbarian although it could also refer to the
cries the people made and the animal pelts they wore.
Conquest
Even this early encounter illustrates the characteristics
which informed later interactions, including on the European side a sense of
superiority and entitlement based on their interpretation of the Christian
religion, superior technology in the shape of metal weapons and gunpowder and
political self-confidence. The urge to find useful economic resources for the
societies back home drove the exploration and they also brought European
notions of property and ownership to countries and societies where they did not
previously exist. The initial instinct to trade soon changed to occupation and
annexation. The Portuguese and Dutch took action to safeguard trade in the
Indonesian Spice Islands in the C16 and C17 which displaced and killed local
people who resisted.
The subsequent history in north, south and central America
from Columbus onwards was a depressing one of European economic exploitation
and settlement with the original First Nation peoples who were inconveniently
in possession of the land displaced, enslaved, killed, infected with disease,
or resettled in less favourable places. A similar trajectory was followed in
the Pacific in Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand affecting their people in the
C18-19. The Sami people, the oldest
indigenous people of northern Europe, were also on the receiving end of
Protestant missionary activity in the C17 which sought to replace their animist
and shamanic beliefs and practices with varying degrees of success. The San
people in South Africa - the oldest in Africa - suffered a similar experience
during the C19 colonial period with appropriation of land they inhabited by
European settlers. The inevitable sexual encounters between settlers and
indigenous people in all places provided an additional layer of social
stratification and exploitation of women.
Assimilation
By the end of the C19 and early C20 governments who no
longer felt under physical threat started to take stock of the condition of
their First Nation peoples. Although greatly reduced in numbers, people still
survived and in more enlightened times there was a desire to improve their
conditions. Anthropologists and folklorists began to appreciate the value of
their cultural beliefs, stories and practices and started to record them,
although hostile attitudes persisted among the general population.
A policy adopted in North America, Canada, Australia and a
lesser extent in New Zealand, was the establishment of residential schools from
the 1870s to 1950s designed to assimilate the children of First Nation people
into the dominant culture and provide them with the education which it was
hoped would give them greater opportunity in their countries. Many children of
mixed heritage were involved in this process on the grounds that they might be
better able to benefit from it and in many places, there was a degree of
compulsion with children forcibly removed from their communities. Children were
routinely forbidden to use their native language, their culture was generally
disparaged and discipline was strict. It has emerged that these residential
settings, as in other places, provided opportunities for sexual and physical
abuse of children and autobiographical accounts emerging speak of the profound
psychological dislocation of individuals who experienced them.
Although more people have managed to get the secondary and
university education which enabled them to serve their communities in a variety
of professional roles, too many others remained caught between two worlds
without the skills to survive in either a traditional subsistence economy, or
the modern world, with drug and alcohol use widespread.
The modern era
The 1970s probably started the sea change in the way in
which First Nation people were viewed by the people who now lived alongside
them. The organisation Survival International which campaigns for the rights of
indigenous people was founded in Britain in 1969. The general stew of new
political and spiritual ideas swirling about in the late 1960s and 70s in
Europe and North America became very sympathetic to First Nation cultural
beliefs and artefacts, something which has persisted to the present day. This does not necessarily mean however that
these were properly understood or reproduced by the enthusiastic new converts.
The habit continued of non-indigenous people wanting something from these
people, be it culture, spirituality, artefacts or land. Having been disparaged for generations as
backward, primitive and savage, North American Indians started to find that
Americans with the smallest sliver of First Nation blood were anxious to
reclaim their heritage and take place in cultural activities from pow wow
gatherings to drug taking ceremonies, having found their own European culture
increasingly unsatisfying. However, this can be seen in some cases as
perpetuating different ways of exploitation. For example, once a market emerged
for First Nation art and artefacts in places like North America and Australia,
many examples were acquired by collectors and their agents in the early days
for comparatively small sums, where the retail value increased considerably on
resale with little benefit to the original producers.
An important part of the reconciliation process began by
documenting the history of First Nation people in the Americas “Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown (1971) and “The Conquest of the Incas”(1970) and
“Red Gold” (1978) by John Hemming, all
had an impact.
New economic exploitation
Despite this new support, traditional economic exploitation
of land and resources occupied by First Nation people persisted. Fracking, mineral extraction, coal mining and
oil extraction, ranching and palm oil are all new factors affecting their lives
in North and South America and Indonesia.
In the same way that animal species are being affected, habitats are
shrinking to levels which may become unsustainable to support groups such as
Indians in South America and the Penan in Borneo. Although people who resist
are still being murdered for their activism, 44 killings in Brazil alone in
2017 (Observer 21.01.18), from the 1990s onwards new political groupings and
networks in countries and continents are now emerging in which indigenous
people can band together to lobby and agitate their governments for the right
to control economic activity on their lands. These include the 2007 UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and the Indigenous Environmental
Network. While this won new recognition of rights for Sami, Inuit, Aborigines
and North and South American Indians, the onslaught from multinational
companies continued. The following are some illustrations of the new economic
front line.
Sami people in the
upper reaches of Finnish Lapland fear plans to build a £2.9 billion railroad to
the EU's first Arctic port in Norway will provide mining and logging companies
with the infrastructure to venture further into wilder untouched parts of
Lapland – disturbance of reindeer pastures could undermine traditional ways of
life. Prospectors in Finnish Lapland are already finding new sources of
minerals. (Guardian Weekend 25 February 2019).
The Peruvian government passed a law in 2014 that weakened
the country's environmental regulations and made it easier for mining companies
to enter the lands of indigenous people and rural farmers. In Brazil, the new
President Jair Bolsonaro who wants to weaken some of his country's protection
of indigenous people for the benefit of economic growth, sparked protest and
marches on the capital by Indians in full traditional dress.
The Indonesian government is sanctioning coal mining in
Indonesian Borneo where the regional Friends of the Earth is working to get
mining permits revoked where companies break the law. In Colombia where the El
Cerrejon opencast mine in north east Colombia is located, the Wayuu people have
spent many years negotiating over resettlement and have secured the right to
new houses, but the mine's huge water use is putting too much pressure on the
region's only water resource.
Biopiracy
In modern times pharmaceutical companies have realised the
potential value of plants used by indigenous people to cure various diseases. As a result of sustained investigation in
developing countries and lab work they have identified molecules and elements
which have subsequently been synthesised into valuable drugs mostly benefiting
western populations, such as treatment for malaria which originated in French
Guyana. Companies then file patents on the drugs which enable them to retain
ownership with little or no benefit received by the community or country which
supplied the knowledge. The Convention on Biological Diversity ratified by 193
nations in 1993 and subsequently the Nagoya Protocol of 2014 aims to provide
some safeguards for local communities involved in these activities and some
legal recompense where necessary, but many loopholes still exist.
Unsurprisingly the US is not signed up to either protocol. (The Exploitation
Game Biopiracy, Mark Rowe, Geographical Magazine, March 2018).
Some indigenous people have taken the view that total
separation from the modern world is the only way of protecting their
communities, cultures and habitat from the unwanted effects of modern life.
Many small Indian groups in the Amazon remain uncontacted, (Brazilian estimates
of around 100), only emerging when forced to do so.
One tragic outcome of this practice was the killing of John
Allen Chau, an American missionary in November 2018 who made contact with the
inhabitants of North Sentinal Island in the Andaman Islands. The Indian
government had enforced a no contact zone around the island to protect the
inhabitants who are hostile to visitors as a result of previous experiences,
which was disregarded in this case. Missionaries, Indigenous People and
Cultural Exchange (2018 University of Sussex) documents the variable
outcomes of historic and current missionary work.
Tourism
With the new enthusiasm for all things tribal, shamanic and
indigenous, tourists and film crews are beating a path to the remotest places
in the world to record ways of life notionally still in harmony with the
environment and authentic. This has uncovered new battlegrounds with issues
arising about the payment of communities who act as hosts to these western visitors
and how much of the modern world and a few of its benefits can be permitted to
impinge on these groups, while still claiming an authentic way of life. Through
documentaries, the internet and books, more knowledge is being transmitted
about a South American drug called Ayahuasca with special properties which can
induce self-knowledge and out of body experiences. This would only normally be
used in controlled circumstances by the groups who knew it best but more
Europeans and Americans are being drawn to find these groups and take part in
the experience, with a subsequent loosening of access controls and unpredictable
and sometimes tragic results.
Groups such as the Sami in Lapland and the Maasai in Kenya
now demand more control over the way in which their lifestyle is presented to
the outside world. Not all can claim the same benefit. Chris Packham was
distressed to find that a girl he met in the Sumatran rainforest from the Orang
Rimba tribe in 1998 had been displaced by loggers and faced an uncertain future
as a mother with children when he went back to look for her in 2018.
The San people, although increasingly in demand by
anthropologists and researchers into human origins for their hunting and
gathering knowledge, have found that independent African governments are no
more supportive of their lifestyle than British and South African ones
were. Their land can yield more revenue
from wildlife tourism and they are being “encouraged” to adopt a more sedentary
farming lifestyle away from their traditional hunting grounds. Something that
betrays their entire reason for being.
Reconciliation
A recent development has been the official apologies by
states and religious figures for their historic abuse of indigenous peoples. In 2008 both Australia and
Canada apologised for the harm caused to individuals and communities by the
introduction of residential schools and the forceable removal of their
children. In February 2015 the American government finally apologised to the
American Indian tribes for ill-conceived policies and acts of violence towards
them and in July of the same year Pope Francis apologised and asked forgiveness
from indigenous people of Latin America for crimes committed by the Catholic
church and others during the conquest. An indigenous person's response to this
might well be what about the present day?
In the countries where an historic responsibility for
undesirable actions against indigenous people has been acknowledged, well organised groups are now
starting to demand that museums who hold artefacts and human remains of
indigenous people, collected often during the colonial era, repatriate them to
the groups claiming ownership, for disposal in appropriate cultural ways. While
this has sparked considerable debate and discussion it is starting to happen.
Resilient and resourceful First Nation people are continuing
to protect and transmit their culture by preserving languages, making films,
creating art and music, writing books and using every opportunity to act in
solidarity and pass on their knowledge to their descendants. In Central and
South America they have also managed a skilful fusion between their traditional
beliefs and ceremonies and the Catholicism, originally forced upon them, but
now an accepted part of their culture.
Environmental future
As we stare ahead into an uncertain environmental future,
indigenous people are starting to take the lead in warning about the
consequences of unlimited carbon emissions, through their detailed
understanding of the lands they have inhabited for many centuries. Inuit
peoples in the Arctic still living a traditional life, provided the first
warnings about the erosion of sea ice. The Kogi people who have preserved a Pre
Columbian way of life, living far up in the Sierra Nevenda de Santa Marta
region in north east Columbia, made contact with the journalist Alan Ereira in
1990 to warn about the environmental changes they had observed in their land
including the melting of glaciers and drying up of rivers. It was a warning
from the people called the Elder Brothers to the Younger Brothers to change
their ways as the survival of the earth was being imperilled. They re-emerged in 2013 to make a film
“Alluna” to highlight the same issues with even more urgency.
The climate change
campaigner Naomi Klein has drawn inspiration from the campaigns of First Nation
peoples in her native Canada to protect their land from fracking and oil
pipelines and their cultural understanding that the earth cannot be owned but
is under our stewardship.
The survival wisdom of people who have endured so much must
give us hope that we too may find a way through the looming crisis.
References
Survival International
Tribal Peoples for
tomorrow's world Stephen Corry
Freeman Press, 2011
The
Heart of the World Alan Ereira
Jonathan
Cape, 1990
Account
of the beliefs and message of the Kogi Indians of Colombia.
Documentary “From the Heart of the World” available on
Youtube
Alluna, (2014)
Documentary initiated by the
Kogi Indians of Colombia highlighting the growing and continuing impact of
climate change on their land. This sequel is also available on Youtube.
Rabbit Proof Fence (2002)
Film about the escape of 3
Aboriginal female children who had been
forcibly sent to a residential school in
1931 and their return to their families.
Tawai (2017)
Bruce Parry documentary
featuring the Penan of Borneo and his reflections on the special quality of
life in indigenous communities.
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