Invisible Indigenes

In the last few decades, as indigenous peoples have increasingly sought out and sometimes demanded sovereignty on a variety of fronts, their relationships with encompassing nation-states have become ever more complicated and troubled. The varying ways that today?s nation-states attempt to manage?and often render invisible?contemporary indigenous peoples is the subject of this global comparative study.øBeginning with his own work along the northwest coast of North America and drawing on contemporary examples from South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, Bruce Granville Miller examines how national governments classify, govern, and control the indigenous populations within their boundaries through administrative, judicial, and economic means. One telling consequence of such regulation strategies is that certain indigenous peoples become unrecognized?their ethnic identities and heritages fail to find legal register and thus empowerment within the very state organizations that manage other aspects of their lives. In the United States alone reside two hundred thousand unrecognized indigenous individuals, some members of indigenous communities that were dropped from the roster of tribes and others whose ancestors were overlooked. Miller also considers some important differences between the fluid nature of ethnic identity for some indigenous peoples and the more rigid notion of identity encoded in many state regulations.øInvisible Indigenes reveals a recurring issue integral to the formation and maintenance of nation-states today and highlights a common challenge facing indigenous peoples around the globe in the twenty-first century.

The community of Agua Blanca, deep within the Machalilla National Park on the coast of Ecuador, found itself facing the twenty-first century with a choice: embrace a booming tourist industry eager to experience a preconceived notion of indigeneity, or risk losing a battle against the encroaching forces of capitalism and development. The facts spoke for themselves, however, as tourism dollars became the most significant source of income in the community. Thus came a nearly inevitable shock, as the daily rhythms of life--rising before dawn to prepare for a long day of maintaining livestock and crops; returning for a late lunch and siesta; joining in a game of soccer followed by dinner in the evening--transformed forever in favor of a new tourist industry and the compromises required to support it. As Practically Invisible demonstrates, for Agua Blancans, becoming a supposedly "authentic" version of their own indigenous selves required performing their culture for outsiders, thus becoming these performances within the minds of these visitors. At the heart of this story, then, is a delicate balancing act between tradition and survival, a performance experienced by countless indigenous groups.

After the conquest of Mexico, colonial authorities attempted to enforce Christian beliefs among indigenous peoples—a project they envisioned as spiritual warfare. The Invisible War assesses this immense but dislocated project by examining all known efforts in Central Mexico to obliterate native devotions of Mesoamerican origin between the 1530s and the late eighteenth century. The author's innovative interpretation of these efforts is punctuated by three events: the creation of an Inquisition tribunal in Mexico in 1571; the native rebellion of Tehuantepec in 1660; and the emergence of eerily modern strategies for isolating idolaters, teaching Spanish to natives, and obtaining medical proof of sorcery from the 1720s onwards. Rather than depicting native devotions solely from the viewpoint of their colonial codifiers, this book rescues indigenous perspectives on their own beliefs. This is achieved by an analysis of previously unknown or rare ritual texts that circulated in secrecy in Nahua and Zapotec communities through an astute appropriation of European literacy. Tavárez contends that native responses gave rise to a colonial archipelago of faith in which local cosmologies merged insights from Mesoamerican and European beliefs. In the end, idolatry eradication inspired distinct reactions: while Nahua responses focused on epistemological dissent against Christianity, Zapotec strategies privileged confrontations in defense of native cosmologies.

Governor General award-winning historian Jean Barman describes how a family of mixed Indigenous and white descent faced prejudice in BC, a long-ignored aspect of the province's history.

Indigenous women and girls are more likely to suffer extreme violence than other women. They are more likely to disappear and never be seen again. And sadly, they are more likely to be murdered by a serial killer. For decades, it has been Canada's dirty little secret. Then in 2014, the horrific murders of Loretta Saunders and Tina Fontaine made headlines across Canada, ignited widespread outrage and exposed Canada's national shame. So why is the level of violence towards Indigenous women reaching crisis levels? Centuries of discrimination, long term effects of the dreadful residential school era, and many other appalling government-approved practices have resulted in widespread racism towards Indigenous people. Attempts at genocide didn't cease centuries ago like many believe. They just became more subtle. Invisible Victims is a shocking work that shines a spotlight on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women tragedy in Canada, its root causes and several cases. It also includes serial killers who specifically targeted Indigenous women as victims, as a direct result of indifference on the part of Canada's law enforcement, media and government.

Journalist Alexandra Shimo flew to the remote Northern Ontario reserve of Kashechewan, hoping to document its deplorable living conditions. Instead, she was faced with the dark side of Canadian history and the limits of her own mental stability.

In the past few decades, the narrow intellectual foundations of the university have come under serious scrutiny. Previously marginalized groups have called for improved access to the institution and full inclusion in the curriculum. Reshaping the University is a timely, thorough, and original interrogation of academic practices. It moves beyond current analyses of cultural conflicts and discrimination in academic institutions to provide an indigenous postcolonial critique of the modern university. Rauna Kuokkanen argues that attempts by universities to be inclusive are unsuccessful because they do not embrace indigenous worldviews. Programs established to act as bridges between mainstream and indigenous cultures ignore their ontological and epistemic differences and, while offering support and assistance, place the responsibility of adapting wholly on the student. Indigenous students and staff are expected to leave behind their cultural perspectives and epistemes in order to adopt Western values. Reshaping the University advocates a radical shift in the approach to cultural conflicts within the academy and proposes a new logic, grounded in principles central to indigenous philosophies.