Indigenous Peoples And Autonomy

The passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on the ways in which Indigenous peoples are adapting to the pressures of globalization and development. This volume extends the discussion by presenting case studies from around the world that explore how Indigenous peoples are engaging with and challenging globalization and Western views of autonomy. Taken together, these insightful studies reveal that concepts such as globalization and autonomy neither encapsulate nor explain Indigenous peoples' experiences.

This book presents a variety of perspectives on the complexities and subtleties of indigenous affairs in a number of countries, including Norway, Nicaragua, Greenland, India, the U.S., and Brazil. The collected essays look at how indigenous peoples are organizing themselves politically to overcome their lack of national and international representation, and at the ways in which sympathetic non-indigenous peoples and institutions can contribute to the struggle.

Contains 13 essays which discuss the experiences of indigenous peoples in their quest for municipal and regional indigenous autonomy. Includes discussion of the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169).

The 1980s and ‘90s saw Latin American governments recognizing the property rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities as part of a broader territorial policy shift. But the resulting reforms were not applied consistently, more often extending neoliberal governance than recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights. In Negotiating Autonomy, Kelly Bauer explores the inconsistencies by which the Chilean government transfers land in response to Mapuche territorial demands. Interviews with community and government leaders, statistical analysis of an original dataset of Mapuche mobilization and land transfers, and analysis of policy documents reveals that many assumptions about post-dictatorship Chilean politics as technocratic and depoliticized do not apply to Indigenous policy. Rather, state officials often work to preserve the hegemony of political and economic elites in the region, effectively protecting existing market interests over efforts to extend the neoliberal project to the governance of Mapuche territorial demands. In addition to complicating understandings of Chilean governance, these hidden patterns of policy implementation reveal the numerous ways these governance strategies threaten the recognition of Indigenous rights and create limited space for communities to negotiate autonomy.

The Canadian North is witness to some of the most innovative efforts by Aboriginal peoples to reshape their relations with "mainstream" political and economic structures. Northern Quebec and Labrador are particularly dynamic examples of these efforts, composed of First Nations territories that until the 1970s had never been subject to treaty but are subject to escalating industrial demands for natural resources. The essays in this volume illuminate key conditions for autonomy and development: the definition and redefinition of national territories as cultural orders clash and mix; control of resource bases upon which northern economies depend; and renewal and reworking of cultural identity.

"First peoples: new directions in ethnic studies"

Comprises four cases of indigenous groups' experiences to protect their land and resources from external threats using, among others, the ancestral titlling procedures of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act.

Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy: The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast and the process of autonomy that was initiated in 1987 as part of a wider conflict resolution process during the years of the Sandinista revolution and has continued through to the present day. Over its 30 year period of development, the autonomy process on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast can be seen as a crucible for the autonomous struggles of minority peoples throughout the Latin American continent. Autonomy on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast remains highly contested, being simultaneously characterized by progress, setbacks, and violent confrontation within a number of fields and involving a multiplicity of local, national, and global actors. This experience offers critical lessons for efforts around the world that seek to resolve long-established and deep-seated ethnic conflict by attempting to reconcile the need for development, usually fostered by national governments through neo-extractivist policies, with the protection of minority rights advocated by marginalized minorities living within nation states and, increasingly, by intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States. This book presents analyses that reveal the broad implications for the struggle for autonomy on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, conducted by scholars with expertise in an array of disciplines including sociology, globalization theory, anthropology, history, socio-linguistics, cultural and postcolonial studies, gender studies, and political science.