01 June 2009
Indigenous People in the 21st Century
By Wilma Mankiller
Wilma Mankiller is the former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, the first female to hold that position. A published author and long-time Native rights activist, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.
What does the future hold for indigenous people across the globe and what does it mean to be an indigenous person in the 21st century?
The response to these questions will vary greatly among the 250 to 300 million indigenous people in virtually every region of the world. There is enormous diversity among the approximately 5,000 distinct groups of indigenous peoples, each of which has a unique history, language, culture, system of governance, and way of life. While some indigenous people continue to subsist on fishing, hunting, and gathering food, others manage multi-faceted enterprises.
Indigenous groups across the globe do face some common challenges in their fight to protect their lands, natural resources, and cultural practices. The battle to protect the human and land rights of indigenous people is made immeasurably more difficult by the fact that so few people know much about either the history or contemporary lives of indigenous people. And without any historical or cultural context, it is almost impossible to understand current indigenous issues.
Problems Rooted in Colonialism
When contemplating the challenges faced by indigenous people worldwide, it is important to remember that the roots of many social, economic, and political problems can be found in colonial policies. The world’s indigenous peoples are bound by the common experience of being “discovered” and subjected to colonial expansion into their territories that led to the loss of an incalculable number of lives and millions of hectares of land and resources. The most basic rights of indigenous people were disregarded, and they were subjected to a series of policies designed to assimilate them into colonial society and culture. Too often the legacy of these policies was poverty, high infant mortality, rampant unemployment, and substance abuse with all its attendant problems.
As a result of the work of many indigenous people and advocacy groups, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13, 2007. While the great majority voted for the declaration, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia voted against it. But the position of these four countries is changing. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, recently announced that Australia will endorse the declaration, an important step for the Aboriginal people of that country as well as indigenous people everywhere. With the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, many hope the United States will reconsider its vote against the resolution.
The U.N. Declaration protects the self-determination and treaty rights of indigenous people as well as their right to “freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.” As they pursue these rights, access to and control of their ancestral land is central to the self-determination efforts of indigenous people from the Manipuri tribals in India to the Andean people in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
As indigenous people regain control over more of their own lands and resources, they are working to develop their economies and rebuild their communities and nations. While there are many individual indigenous entrepreneurs, there are also a remarkable number of businesses commonly owned by tribal governments or communities. These businesses range from a women’s weaving cooperative on the banks of the Rio Negro in Brazil to the fish-trading businesses of the Luo people in Kenya. Annual trade shows for indigenous products and businesses are held in Winnipeg, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. In the United States many social and cultural programs are funded with revenue from tribally owned enterprises such as book publishing, shopping malls, and gaming casinos.
As they develop the economy and address social issues, indigenous people place a high premium on preserving tribal culture, languages, healing arts, songs, and ceremonies. It is miraculous that, in the face of enormous adversity, many indigenous people have retained traditional knowledge, core values that have sustained them over time, and a sense of cohesion as a tribal people.
Shared Issues
Despite their many differences, the world’s indigenous peoples share some common values, including a sometimes fragmented but still very present sense of reciprocity and a clear understanding that their lives are part of and inseparable from the land. This deeply felt sense of interdependence with each other and all other living things fuels a duty and responsibility to conserve and protect the natural world that is a sacred provider of food, medicine, and spiritual sustenance.
Values matter in indigenous communities, where the most respected people are not those who have amassed material wealth or achieved great personal success. The greatest respect is reserved for those who help other people, those who understand that their lives play themselves out within a set of reciprocal relationships.
The manner in which tribal people govern themselves also differs from region to region. In the United States there are more than 560 tribal governments with a direct government-to-government relationship with the federal government. These governments exercise a range of sovereign rights, including administering their own judicial systems and police forces, operating schools and hospitals, and managing a wide range of business enterprises. Tribal governments create tens of thousands of jobs and add millions of dollars to the economies of the states in which they reside. All these advancements benefit everyone in the community, not just tribal people. The history, contemporary lives, and future of tribal governments in the United States is intertwined with that of their neighbors.
The land base of tribal governments varies from some who control millions of hectares to others who possess less than 25 hectares of land. And the population ranges from the Navajo and Cherokee Nations, each with an enrolled membership of more then 250,000 to Tribal some governments with less than 100 members. It is important to note that the population or land base of a sovereign tribal government does not determine the degree to which it enjoys the rights to self-government. Just as the tiny principality of Monaco enjoys some of the same international rights as China and the United States, tribal governments with a tiny land base and small population are sovereign entities with the same powers as tribes with a large population or land base.
As they move further into the 21st century, indigenous people face many critical political, social, economic, and cultural challenges. One of the greatest challenges will be to develop practical models to capture, maintain, and pass on traditional knowledge systems and values to future generations. Nothing can replace the sense of continuity that a genuine understanding of traditional tribal knowledge brings. There is no doubt that in some indigenous communities, the original languages, ceremonies, and knowledge systems have been irretrievably lost, but in many others the culture is vibrant, the language is still spoken, and hundreds of ceremonies are conducted to commemorate seasonal changes in the natural world and in the lives of human beings. Each year indigenous people are developing more projects to preserve discrete aspects of culture such as language and medicinal plants.
To view the future of indigenous people, one needs to look at the past. If indigenous people were tenacious enough to survive a staggering loss of lives, land, rights, and resources, they seem well-equipped to survive whatever challenges lie ahead of them. In many parts of the world, indigenous people are not only surviving, they are thriving. In South America, where there are approximately 40 million indigenous people, visionary indigenous leaders like Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, and Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu are leading both a cultural and political renaissance.
In the United States the future looks somewhat better for tribal people due in large part to the self-governance and self-determination efforts of tribal governments. There are many inspiring stories of tribal governments and people rebuilding and revitalizing their communities and nations.
Harvard University recently completed more than a decade of comprehensive research that has been published in a guardedly hopeful book entitled The State of Native Nations. The research indicates that most of the social and economic indicators are moving in a positive direction; many tribal governments are strong, educational attainment levels are improving, and there is a cultural renaissance occurring in many tribal communities.
Within indigenous communities there are many conversations about what it means to be a traditional indigenous person now and what it will mean in the future.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means being part of a community that has faced devastating poverty and oppression, yet finds many moments of grace and comfort in traditional stories, language, ceremonies, and culture.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means being a member of a group that possesses some of the most valuable and ancient knowledge on the planet, a people who still have a direct relationship with and sense of responsibility to the land.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means trusting one’s own thinking again and not only articulating one’s own vision of the future but having within communities the skill sets and leadership ability to make that vision a reality.
To be an indigenous person means, despite everything, still being able to dream of a future in which the people all over the world will support the human rights and self-determination of indigenous people. Land and resources can be colonized but dreams can never be colonized.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means networking and sharing traditional knowledge and best practices with indigenous communities all over the planet, using the iPhone, BlackBerry, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and every other technological tool that becomes available.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means being an entrepreneur, physician, scientist, or even an astronaut who will leave her footprints on the moon and then return home to participate in ceremonies her people have conducted since the beginning of time.
I am an indigenous woman of the 21st century and, as was the case with my ancestors, my life has played itself out within a set of reciprocal relationships with members of my community, the Cherokee Nation, my biological family, and my chosen family.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means honoring our ancestors who kept their vision fixed firmly on the future, no matter what was going on in the present.
To be an indigenous person of the 21st century means acknowledging past injustice but never allowing ourselves to be paralyzed into inaction by anger about the past or the totality of present-day challenges.
It means heeding the advice of our relatives, the Mohawk, who remind us that it is hard to see the future with tears in our eyes.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
