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Indigeneity in Asia: Social Movements and Identity Categories in the Process of Becoming
Organizer: Ann-Elise Lewallen, Hokkaido University
Chair: Michael Hathaway, University of Michigan
Discussant: Celia Lowe, University of Washington
In contrast to Latin America, a number of states in Asia, including China and Indonesia, strongly argue that the category of “indigenous people” has no relevance within their territory. Recently, however, groups claiming indigenous identities have emerged throughout Asia, and are becoming a notable political force. We suggest that claims to being indigenous should not be merely glossed as a more positive term for existing social categories such as “ethnic minorities.” Instead, we argue that the category of “indigenous people” may be a critical means whereby ethnic groups can escape the constrictive bounds of the nation. By successfully claiming indigenous status, groups connect with a global social movement and network that actively promotes indigenous rights, and may offer important material and symbolic benefits. We avoid a legalistic approach to indigenous status, which attempts to arbitrate between who should and should not be accorded such status (Barnes, Gray and Kingsbury 1995). Rather, we examine indigeneity or the politics of indigenous status through a historically mediated ethnographic approach. As a whole, we examine the social process whereby particular groups attempt to gain a contingent acceptance as indigenous by specific audiences. Although our national contexts differ substantially, each paper shares an approach to indigeneity as a “process of becoming.” The panel examines the politics of indigeneity in Southwest China, debates between Asian ‘indigenous representatives’ and ‘state representatives’ at UN Forums, how Ainu women are expressing indigenous identities locally vis-à-vis cultural revival in Japan, and offers a historical, comparative approach to questions of indigeneity in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Being “Indigenous” in Indonesia and the Philippines: Contradictions and Pitfalls
Jacques Bertrand, University of Toronto
In recent years, a number of groups in Southeast Asia have tapped into the international discourse, networks, and instruments on “indigenous peoples” to gain leverage over their national governments and improve their political, social and economic status. Yet, in the context of Southeast Asia, such labels and categories create important contradictions, and even pitfalls. Who is indigenous? Who came first? Indonesia and Philippines are artificial constructs, as legacies of colonial boundaries that were later raised to the status of “nations” by post-independence political leaders. Who is an Indonesian or a Filipino has varied through time, as well as who is “indigenous.” Filipinos and Indonesians are constituted by a variety of regionally and linguistically distinct peoples for whom local identities have remained sometimes equal or more important that “national categories.”
Almost all of these groups claim long ancestral ties to their region. In this context, how can claims of “indigenity” be made and provide leverage for distinct political status? Even more so, in Indonesia, the category “indigenous” was long used to differentiate “non-indigenous” Chinese immigrants -- whether Indonesian citizens or not -- from all other Indonesians. The paper argues that efforts by groups such as Papuans in Indonesia and Igorot peoples in the Philippines for such recognition raise some unique problems. While being recognized as “indigenous” might help to build networks internationally, the “indigenous” prism creates contradictions, and perhaps even pitfalls, internally, as other groups dispute these claims to “indigeneity.”
“Our Tribal Brothers are Happy!”: The Asian States and Indigenous Activists at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Janak Rai, Tribhuvan University, Nepal
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has opened up an important transnational space for the politics of indigeneity. At the forum, indigenous people directly discuss their issues with representatives from state governments and transnational organizations. Although observers have argued the concept of ‘indigenous peoples’ is bankrupt in Asia, many Asian delegates positioning themselves as (or who identify as) ’indigenous’ attend the Forum every year. My paper focuses on the discursive encounters between ‘indigenous delegates’ from Asia who are striving for ‘indigenous’ status within domestic contexts, and representatives of Asian states who reject the applicability of the ‘indigenous’ frame in their countries. Drawing from my observations at two forum sessions and participants’ interventions on the Forum theme, ‘Redefining Millennium Development Goals,” this paper examines how the notion of ‘development’ mediates relationships between states, indigenous activists and transnational organizations. Indigenous delegates redefine ‘development’ in order to claim indigenous rights and identity. States narrowly define indigeneity as a ‘development category’ whereas transnational organizations promote ‘development’ as a middle-ground between ‘rights’ and services. I approach the Forum as a negotiated space to argue that we need to consider not only how transnational activism produces and circulates an ‘indigenous identity,’ but also how ‘state power’ and ‘sovereignty’ are discursively reproduced and imagined within this space. My paper employs a focus on indigeneity to contribute to contemporary efforts to rethink the ‘State,’ and contemporary articulations of ‘state sovereignty,’ in relation to transnational social movements and networks.
Ethnicity and Nature Conservation in Southwest China: The Politics of Indigeneity
Michael Hathaway, University of Michigan
Recently, much exciting work in anthropology examines the process whereby particular concerns (such as development, science, and modernity) and social categories (such as environmentalists, feminists, and indigenous peoples) are made transnational. Such ethnographic research has highlighted how these concerns and categories are not merely imposed upon and duplicated throughout the world. Instead, it has stressed the contingent ways in which these world-making projects are produced, circulated, mobilized, and transformed within particular socio-historical contexts.In this paper, I examine how the social category of “indigenous people” intersects with international nature conservation projects in Southwest China. My research explores the intersection between the global dimensions of indigeneity and the local dynamics of ethnic politics in China. Unlike in regions such as Latin America, where indigenous status is largely seen as unambiguous, China is fairly hostile to the emergence of indigenous status. Thus, rather than assuming the process of indigenous recognition to be a relatively straightforward process, the Chinese situation highlights the diverse forms of work that are necessary to create these global and local links, and to create the possibility of indigeneity in China. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research in Southwest China, I focus on the contributions of cosmopolitan Chinese urbanites who advocate the new creation of an indigenous frame within China. I argue that, through the work of “filling-in,” they mediate between international foundations and environmental NGOs, the Chinese state, and rural villages largely unfamiliar with the possibilities engendered by this global category.
Embroidering an Indigenous Aesthetic: Ainu Women’s Innovations and Cultural Revival in Japan
Ann-Elise Lewallen, University of Michigan
Within official and popular discourse, the population of Japan is still largely seen as “homogeneous,” despite the historic presence of ethnic minorities and a burgeoning immigrant population. Until recently, Ainu people were often described as “former natives” who have been “assimilated.” In response, Ainu organizations became conversant in global indigeneity and have re-positioned themselves as “indigenous peoples” since the 1980s. Although the government now acknowledges “a few minorities,” they refuse to accord “indigenous rights” to Ainu. Through the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act of 1997 (CPA), state officials aimed to resolve the “Ainu Problem” by subsidizing ‘traditional Ainu culture.’ However, this law has been criticized as co-opting ‘Ainu culture’ because state-appointed committees control the evaluation of ‘tradition,’ leading to the ‘fossilization’ of cultural practice. Under the CPA, cultural practice has become a proxy for other forms of indigeneity. Ainu women see themselves as the social and biological reproducers of Ainu indigeneity. In this capacity, they understand “women’s labor” to be the continuation of inter-generational linkages, through the production of textiles and embroidered cloth. In this paper I examine Ainu women’s interventions in crafting an indigenous aesthetic, signifying ancestral values vis-à-vis clothing and thereby articulating their connection to a global indigeneity. I argue that, instead of being constrained by the CPA’s reifying effects, Ainu women amplify the discursive space created by the law, and turn it in their favor, both by interrogating state constructions of the ‘traditional’ and introducing innovation in the interest of cultural sustainability.