A Comparative Ethnography of Alternative Spaces

Esther Fihl, J. Dahl

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349452804, 9781137299536
• eBook ISBN: 9781137299543
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Through ethnographical cases, this book examines the ways in which social groups position themselves between cultures, states, moralities, and local/state authorities, creating opportunities for agency. Alternative spaces designate in-between spaces rather than oppositional structures and are both inside and outside their constituent elements.

CHAPTER 1

THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE INDIGENOUS SPACE

Jens Dahl

Indigenous peoples from all parts of the world have learned to use the United Nations and the international legal system to promote their rights and interests. Observers agree that they have been able to achieve results far exceeding those of other groups. This ability and these results are strong indicators of the configuration of indigenous peoples as a category of people in their own right. To reach this stage has been a long process, and some people have been involved since the very beginning, when the United Nations first began considering indigenous issues around 30 years ago.

The argument in this chapter is that indigenous peoples have achieved these results because they have been able to create an alternative space, one that is nurtured within the confines of the UN system, though existing in relative independence. Indigenous peoples who come to the United Nations have decided to oppose their governments from a “neutral” place where those governments are, at least for the time being, unable to control them. In the United Nations, indigenous peoples have “freed” themselves from their governments, but are also able to operate without constant constraints from their communities, traditions, and the realities of their daily social and cultural life. They are in a position to “freely” negotiate and reconsider cultural, political and ideological attachments. Those who are unable to do so are unable to benefit from the UN process and are therefore easily marginalized.

Indigenous peoples convene within the physical and political framework of the United Nations but the Indigenous Space itself grew out of resistance, and alternative traditions developed in the form of an indigenous caucus and a number of networks kept alive and, increasingly, brought into play in between UN meetings. The result is an indigenous space that has gradually developed its own existence but with its roots still in the indigenous communities, societies, and nations. The process of creating this space was also a process by which indigenous groups from all corners of the world, in constant negotiations, created a shared global indigenousness. People the world over noticed the UN achievements of those claiming indigenousness, and people were increasingly attracted by the platform and process. The results are important but no less so are the processes through which indigenous peoples have been able to create consensus among themselves. This has been possible because of similar historical trajectories and shared visions of the future, and in spite of immense differences in culture, economy and political conditions.

The creation of the Indigenous Space is a story of how indigenous peoples turned a situation of oppression and discrimination into one of human rights and how, by sharing experiences with other peoples with different cultures and traditions, they developed a shared knowledge and traditions. Indigenous peoples knocked on the UN door, wanting to get in; once inside they fought for recognition of their fundamental rights as peoples but they also struggled to be considered not as stakeholders but as rights holders and equal participants, albeit different from the peoples that were represented by the states. In these efforts, they established a platform and a space within the United Nations from which they managed to move from being “on the menu to being at the table” as once expressed by an indigenous person from Asia. In this process, the global indigenous identity developed as a social category, disputed but also accepted by most governments and observers, although challenged by some.

For 20 years, since 1989, as director of the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA),¹ I followed this process, taking part in endless UN meetings as a nonindigenous participant, observer, and researcher and thus got to know many of the key players in the process, including their backgrounds and visions, also sharing their frustrations and hopes. Since 2007, I have continued to take part in many of these UN meetings, now as a researcher.

In order to understand the process that takes place within the United Nations, we must begin by looking at what brought indigenous peoples together in the first place.

Global Developments and the Indigenous Prelude

The need for new resources led transnational companies, farmers, miners, and loggers to search for oil, minerals, timber, and so on, in frontier regions such as the tropical rainforests and the Arctic. Decolonization and the creation of independent states from former colonies opened up new areas for expansion, areas that were often inhabited by ethnic minorities or different small cultural groups of little interest—and who were little known—to the world. Most often, the new states tried to assimilate or integrate such groups, resulting in the formation of marginalized and discriminated minorities. The policies of the postcolonial rulers created new frontiers of economic, strategic, and military importance, to the disadvantage of ethnic minorities. In some regions, such as Southeast Asia, the mountain areas became strongholds of Communist guerrilla movements. Anthropologist and, for many years, a key UN person in relation to indigenous issues, Julian Burger (1987) emphasized from a very early stage the importance of these economic, political, and military developments to the emerging indigenous movement. Indigenous peoples in poor countries as well as in the rich Euro-American states were being considered and treated as second-class citizens (if citizens at all). Decolonization and the war against Communism created a paradoxical position in which this global expansion not only affected indigenous peoples negatively, but simultaneously raised their hopes and resistance to oppression. The paradox is that this renewed expansion into areas where indigenous peoples had, until then, largely governed themselves also offered new opportunities for indigenous peoples, who had exhausted all domestic recourse for obtaining recognition of their rights. They were still suffering from ethnocide and even genocide but, toward the end of the 1970s, they gained the opportunity to appeal to the global world.

The international community had by then developed a new understanding of human rights such that states could no longer deal with such issues as purely internal matters (Sverre 1985; Dahl 2009; Dahl 2012). For indigenous peoples, a key process took place in 1971 when the United Nations authorized José Martínez Cobo, an expert from Ecuador, to conduct a “Study on the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples”; this was not, however, completed until 1986. No less important was a 1977 “NGO Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas,” which became a turning point in the indigenous struggle to gain entrance to the corridors of the United Nations.

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist bloc gave a new global understanding to human rights issues. Democratic developments in Latin America and in countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nepal were moving in the same direction. Indigenous peoples had their moment of opportunity (Li 2000), and some groups used this to enhance existing rights within their respective states, while others, including those in poor countries, used it to follow trajectories established by international donor-aid relations. Such “unsettled periods” (Swidler 1986) or “cracks” offer room for social transformation (for good or bad) and strategies of action based upon the selection and reformulation of cultural platforms. Examples of such strategies are diverse: Indians in the United States established casinos and gaming on Indian territory, using legal gaps between Indian sovereignty and federal and state laws; ethnic groups in Russia, in the early 1990s, reclaimed indigenousness after the collapse of the Communist system; and the indigenous East Timorese took the opportunity of the uncertain period following the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia to establish their own state. In the United Nations, indigenous peoples found such a crack where they could establish their own alternative space.

Finally, it should be emphasized that when indigenous peoples from all over the world took advantage of the new stage of globalization, their efforts were conditioned, or at least nurtured, by new technologies that enabled communication outside the control of those holding power. Without cheap airfares and the Internet, the indigenous movement would not have developed as it did.

If we look at the indigenous global movement as a kind of resistance, it took place in response to a number of serious and spectacular conflicts between indigenous groups and their respective states. To name but a few of the most important: the Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969–1971); the Aboriginals who set up their own tent embassy in front of the Australian Parliament in 1972; the James Bay hydroelectric controversy, in Quebec, Canada; and the Alta conflict in Norway from 1979–1981. These conflicts turned community matters first into ethnic conflicts, then into a matter of rights and, finally, into indigenous peoples’ issues, in cooperation with urban-based organizations and local protesters (Minde 2005; Sissons 2005). When indigenous groups all over the world felt that all legal remedy had been exhausted, the creation of indigenous organizations became a tool by which to internationalize the struggle and turn to the international community for support (Sanders 1977).

Getting into the United Nations

One of the first things I noticed when listening to the seemingly endless number of statements given by indigenous peoples in the United Nations before the end of the millennium was that they considered themselves as victims: victims of colonialism, racism, capitalism, and globalization. With limited knowledge of the UN system and with experiences that highlighted the precariousness of their position, which they brought with them, they sometimes used hard words against governments. The other thing, which struck me, was the drive to learn from other indigenous peoples and to reach consensus in the demands put forward to governments. In spite of the differences in backgrounds and aspirations, and in spite of the often heated discussions among indigenous peoples, they always respected opposing viewpoints, and after the turn of the millennium, indigenous peoples had turned from victims to being in control of some of the institutions developed for dealing with indigenous issues within the United Nations.

I am here in this Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP)because extra-judicial killing of my people and my fellow indigenous brothers and sisters continues. To me, each piece of paper bringing a new case of atrocity committed is not a piece of paper but is a human life. A human life, which is desperate for solidarity, for help, for support. (Statement by Suhas Chakma)

The strong indigenous presence in the United Nations began in 1982 with the establishment of a WGIP. This remained in existence under the Sub-Commission of the Commission on Human Rights until 2006, when this latter body was replaced by the Human Rights Council. The above short extract is from a statement by Suhas Chakma from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, to the WGIP in 1995. As the citation demonstrates, indigenous peoples will often turn to the United Nations as a last resort to raise concerns with the international community and put pressure on their national governments, as explained to me by another indigenous representative, Mrinal Khanti Tripura, whom I have known since he came to the United Nations for the first time in 1999 as representative of the indigenous movement of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and whom I have visited in Bangladesh:

At the end of the colonial era, the mountainous and mainly Buddhist region bordering Burma became part of the mainly Muslim East Pakistan (after 1971 Bangladesh). The indigenous peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts came under severe pressure, including forced integration and eviction from their lands. The indigenous peoples (Jhumma) then turned to guerrilla warfare, the region became heavily militarized and many of our people took refuge in India. Myself, I grew up in a displaced village under difficult conditions and the armed conflict made me join the political wing of the resistance movement. A peace agreement from 1997 stopped the armed conflict but the violent oppression continued, and this was the main reason for me to come to the UN in order to have governments and donor agencies to put pressure on Bangladesh.

In the UN, I experienced how governments listened to me and other representatives from the Hill Tracts, and realized that indigenous peoples from other parts of the world told similar stories and shared our experiences. Across language barriers we saw that other indigenous peoples “spoke the same language,” and a common understanding developed between us and other indigenous peoples, specifically from Asia. This fact gave us new hope and we joined the work to draft a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. When I got the opportunity to join a fellowship program in the UN, it increased my knowledge about the UN system, about its opportunities and limitations.²

Similar reports were given by indigenous peoples from all corners of the world and reiterated year after year in the WGIP. As the years passed, the content of these statements became predictable, which reflected the lack of progress on indigenous peoples’ human rights in many countries. However, the amount of reports and their seriousness made a lasting impact on the international community, and showed that the indigenous peoples were skilled in playing the politics of shame.

The five-member WGIP was at the bottom of the UN hierarchy, but it did establish an unprecedented procedure within the United Nations that allowed nongovernmental observers to attend and make presentations.³ The result was that not only did up to 1,000 people take part in these meetings, but also that a participatory process otherwise completely unknown to the United Nations was instigated.⁴ Moreover, indigenous peoples were able to take these traditions, as they developed in the WGIP, upward into the higher echelons of the organization. This included a working group that, for more than 10 years, worked on drafting a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007. Another major achievement was the establishment of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (Permanent Forum) in 2000, at a high level under ECOSOC (UN Economic and Social Council) as the first UN body at such a level to consist of both state and nonstate members (see also Malezer 2008). With eight members appointed by governments and eight indigenous members appointed by the ECOSOC president, at the suggestion of indigenous peoples worldwide, the Permanent Forum has a mandate to provide advice and recommendations to the UN agencies, to integrate and coordinate activities related to indigenous issues within the UN system and to prepare and disseminate information.⁵ Every year now, more than 1,000 indigenous peoples convene in New York for the two-week meeting of the Permanent Forum within the United Nations. Two other bodies also deal specifically with indigenous issues: a Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people and an Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The existence of these institutional bodies and arrangements is a strong signal of the unprecedented position of indigenous peoples, something that no other group has been able to achieve.

In the ear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• About the Cover Illustration
• An Introduction to Alternative Spaces
• 1   The United Nations and the Indigenous Space
• 2   The Legitimacy of South Indian Caste Councils
• 3   “Gambling is Gambling”: Creating Decontextualized Space at an Indian Racecourse
• 4   Frontier Zones of Diaspora-Making: Circassian Organizations in Turkey
• 5   A Politics of Place: The Scaling and Rescaling of Events in Young Muslims’ Internet Use
• 6   Voices and Exits in Oaxacalifornia: The Reconfigurations of Political Spaces in the US-Mexican Context
• 7   An Alternative National-Religious Space: The Danish Seamen’s Church in Singapore
• 8   A Space to Gaze from Hence to Thence: Chechens in Exile
• 9   States of Exception: Effects and Affects of Authoritarianism among Christian Arabs in Damascus
• 10   Escalations: Spying and Totalitarianism in Western China and Beyond
• Notes on Contributors
• Index