Senior traditional owner Phyllis. Wiynjorroc says: 'Those people are .... are accepted by researchers, administrators and courts of law. In colonial modes of.
The Survival of Indigenous Cultures
Claire Smith 2008 La supervivencia de las comunidades indígenas / The survival of indigenous communities. In J. Salazar, I. Domingo, J. Azkárraga, and H. Bonet (eds) Mundos Tribales: una visión etnoarqueológica, pp. 92-107. Valencia, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Diputación de Valencia. This paper focuses on some of the ways in which anthropological and archaeological research can be used to assist the survival of Indigenous cultures. It considers how research can be conducted so that it supports the transmission of cultural knowledge, and considers the impact of globalisation on Indigenous cultural survival. My argument is based on the premise that continuity is the key to the survival of Indigenous cultures. Cultures are living entities that are transmitted from generation to generation. While they have material manifestations, they are much more than material objects.
Cultural
continuity depends on the social recognition of a community’s identity, and on the reproduction of cultural products, such as stories, dance, religious rituals, everyday ways of interacting, and on reproduction of the organization of society as a whole.
All of the
myriad of factors that make up the thing we call culture need to be reproduced, if culture is to continue—but this does not preclude cultural change. Human beings are intelligent, adaptive creatures and all cultures are in a constant state of ‘becoming’, of turning into the future manifestation of that culture. The disciplines that study Indigenous cultures have inherited a legacy that is deeply colonial. The colonial process was grounded in a desire to conquer unknown worlds. Artefacts became the material proof of a nation’s conquests, establishing what Said (1978) calls the ‘positional superiority’ of the colonisers. Encounters with a cultural ‘other’ was theorised as exotic’, and as such worthy of scholarly attention. The collections of colonisers represented the paradox of unknowable, yet known, worlds. When placed in museums, each new display was transformed by its context into a symbol of the European ability to know and control the uncharted worlds of the colonial exotic. An appropriation of Indigenous cultures, achieved through research and representation, was integral to this process. Little thought was given to how these cultures would survive the onslaught of colonialism. In fact, it was often assumed that they would die out and that the best the colonisers could do for Indigenous peoples was to smooth the dying pillow. 1
For some decades, the colonial invasion of various parts of the world by the Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Portuguese was interpreted as the beginning of the end of Indigenous cultures. Today, however, it is clear that these cultures have survived, though their outward shape may have changed and some are still under threat. The outcome of the process of contact has taken different shapes in different parts of the world, in the same way that Indigenous cultures had different shapes prior to contact with Europeans.
While they have undergone radical changes in many parts of the
world, Indigenous peoples have drawn upon the flexibility and strengths inherent in their cultures to ensure their survival. In this process, many Indigenous peoples have chosen to adopt the tools that were used to change, control and dispossess them, in order to ensure the survival of their own societies and cultural values. Anishinaabe scholar, Gerald Vizenor, coined the word ‘survivance’ to describe the process (see Vizenor 1999). In an interconnected world, Indigenous peoples face new challenges and new opportunities.
The challenges relate to their social and physical environments, with
concomitant pressures towards radical change, while the opportunities lie primarily in the potential for global alliancing with other Indigenous peoples and the development of niche economic enterprises. Indigenous and Western knowledge systems The challenge of supporting the survival of Indigenous cultures depends on a commitment to respecting the cultural values that inform Indigenous knowledge and belief systems.
While this may seem like a simple task, it is not.
Indigenous and
Western worldviews are very different. This means that we may not even be able to identify some important beliefs, much less respect them. We all interpret the world around us from the lens of our own experience, so it is no simple matter to understand the world from the viewpoint of another person’s experience—especially when that experience arises from a totally different cultural basis.
Therefore, a first step in
conducting research in such a way that it supports the survival of Indigenous cultures is to obtain an understanding of Indigenous worldviews. Indigenous worldviews and the Western scientific approach to research represent two quite different knowledge systems. Archaeology has its grounding in Western science
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and explains the Indigenous past within its own worldview. There are significant differences between Western and Indigenous knowledge, however: for example, while Western worldviews tend to emphasise bounded entities, discontinuities, and individualism, Indigenous worldviews tend to emphasise linkages, continuities, and relationships. One important core difference relates to notions of time (see Figures 1 and 2). In contrast to the Western notion of linear time, in which the present emerges from the past at a regular, quantifiable rate, from an Indigenous viewpoint the past remains embedded in the present, and, as such, is an on-going influence on present action. Figures 1 and 2 Indigenous and Western notions of time Archaeologists interpret Indigenous material culture in terms of the logics of Western typologies and classificatory systems. Grounded in Western knowledge systems, archaeological systems of classification often fail to see the potentially varying and different typological logics of Indigenous societies. However, Indigenous theory and logic has a place in broadening archaeological interpretations, and bringing them closer to whatever may have existed in the past. The incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into archaeological practice is a small but important trend in Australasia and North American archaeology, and it is evident that some systems of classification link, crosscut, or even contravene ‘normal’ archaeological classes and types. For example, archaeologist Tara Million uses her Cree heritage to guide her practice, from research design to excavation and analysis. Guided by Cree philosophy, Million developed a circular research model, with four quadrants: Native community, academics, the archaeological record and interpretation (Figure 3). Deriving from this model is an archaeological practice in which she undertakes excavation in circles, rather than squares. Million’s work demonstrates that developing an Aboriginal archaeology involves numerous challenges, and negotiations, as is evident in the following passage: My archaeological projects and publications are based on building a bridge between two conflicting and competing value systems: Aboriginal and mainstream Western academic … I am being pulled in several contradictory directions. Cultural values are being brought to the table and are informing the
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requests expressed by each individual, Aboriginal and academic …
I chose
instead to compromise and negotiate with these two specific cultures. (Million 2005:51). Figure 3 Tara Million’s Circular Research Model (after Million 2005:45) The survival of Indigenous cultural values also can be facilitated through drawing upon Indigenous cultural values to shape research practice. This centering of Indigenous knowledge involves substantive changes in research practice: In bringing to the center some of the concepts held by Indigenous people about the past, traditional ways of teaching about history, heritage and ancestral remains, and the role and responsibility of research knowledge for communities, we would be in a position to envisage a very different type of archaeological practice—one that emphasizes ethics and social justice for a wider, more diverse audience (Atalay 2006:295-96). This approach can make research more relevant to Indigenous communities, and strengthen the basis for Indigenous cultural survival. It is not enough for researchers to teach communities a Western version of how the world works, rather we need to provide community members with a platform from which to shape disciplinary practices that have meaning and are useful to them, in terms of the perpetration of their own knowledge systems. In this way, research can be incorporated into the Indigenous toolkit for cultural survival. Cultural and intellectual property The protection of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property is essential if Indigenous cultural values are to survive, but at times the protection of these property rights is at odds with the advancement of scientific knowledge. The debate over ‘who owns the past’ runs particularly ‘hot’ when it involves the cultural and intellectual property of Indigenous peoples (see Nicholas and Bannister 2004, Smith and Wobst 2005). Indigenous critiques of archaeological practice have opened up the discipline in constructive directions. These critiques, like the earlier critiques of Marxists and
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feminists, today set new accents and directions for an archaeological practice that is politically aware of, sensitive to, and harmonious with, the goals of Indigenous peoples. Core issues include: who benefits from archaeological research? Do archaeologists have a right to control the pasts of others? Is the Western, scientific approach to archaeological theory and method necessarily the ‘best’ way of interpreting the past? What are the practical ramifications of archaeological research for the Indigenous peoples with whom they work, for whom the ‘artefacts’ of archaeology are a living heritage? How can researchers transform their theory and practice so that they cease doing damage to Indigenous peoples? Archaeologists normally assume the answers to these kinds of questions. We often take it as self-evident that archaeology is useful, and that we have a responsibility, as well as a right, to control and create the pasts of others. It seems clear to us that this needs to be done and that it needs to be done in the scientific, rigorous manner that is archaeology. Rarely, do we seriously consider non-Western approaches to caring for cultural heritage, or question the agendas that are furthered by our work and how that work supports or impedes Indigenous cultural survival. While a number of international conventions, declarations and codes have been established (e.g. World Archaeological Congress 1991), in any given situation the success of cultural and intellectual property measures are dependent on the affected people being aware of their rights and then having the option to consent (or not) to the use of their material. This situation is often complicated by the fact that the ‘ownership’ of much knowledge is not an inalienable, individual property for Indigenous peoples, but instead a property of groups (e.g. families, clans or language groups). The repatriation of human remains is a major focus of concern for Indigenous peoples globally. While different Indigenous groups may have different views on human remains (for example, in some parts of Australia places holding these remains are to be avoided, but in many of the Pacific Islands this is not the case), there is a general concern that these remains be treated with respect, usually by the Indigenous groups themselves. In the United States a watershed in repatriation occurred with passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1991. This law governs the repatriation of Native American human remains and funerary objects, sacred objects
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and objects of cultural patrimony in museums and institutions in the United States that receive federal funding (see http://www.nps.gov/history/nagpra/). The implementation of this law is no easy matter, however, as valid repatriation revolves around whether tribes are federally recognised or not. Despite the best of intentions, NAGPRA has made it exponentially more difficult for museums to repatriate the remains of non-federallyrecognized tribes, and so some museums choose the most expedient, and most financially profitable route, of consulting with whoever can garner them the most federal funding, rather than whoever is most closely culturally connected to the remains in question. In this way, NAGPRA ties this aspect of cultural survival to whether a tribe is federally recognised—itself an artefact of colonialism administration. Major differences between the Australia and the United States are apparent when comparing the on-going controversy over the return of the 9,200 year old Ancient One from Kennewick with the much-publicized return to the Willandra Aboriginal community of Lady Mungo,, originally dated to 24,710±1270 years B.P and recently re-dated to around 40,000 years. While the remains of the Ancient One are still a focus of bitter dispute, the remains of Lady Mungo lie near the site of her original burial, held in a velvet-lined wooden safe that has two keys, one held by archaeologists, and the other by the Aboriginal community. Both the Ancient One and Lady Mungo are powerful symbols of relationships between many archaeologists and Indigenous peoples in each country. Differences in the control that can be exerted by Indigenous Australians and Native Americans is due partly to the fact that the former have a more pervasive presence in the national imagination than the latter. While colonisation has been equally destructive in both countries, in the USA, there are other calls upon the conscience of the nation, particularly from African Americans. The difference in attitudes is also be due to the influence of the different ethical codes that guide archaeological practice in each country. My final point in terms of repatriation is that there is a time lag in global trends: in colonised nations, such as Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, the quest for the repatriation of human remains from museum collections has been underway for the last two decades but in less economically advantaged nations, such as Chile, Argentina and India, this battle is only beginning. In all of these cases, however, the final issue is whether Indigenous peoples will have control over Indigenous culture.
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Living landscapes The incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems into archaeological practice produces a broadening of the interpretative lens. This can be seen in the notion of a ‘living landscape.’ From a European perspective, culture is clearly made by humans. For Indigenous peoples, however, culture can be nature, or an outcome of human interactions with nature. In fact, the landscape itself is a cultural artefact, not just in terms of human changes to the environment (e.g., regular burning by Aboriginal Australians) but also because ancestral beings and the spirits of those who have died in the recent past inhabit the landscape, and continue to monitor the management of their country in the present. The landscapes inhabited by Indigenous Australians are imbued with meaning, redolent with power—and sometimes treacherous. Natural signs, such as birds or floods, can act as signs from ancestral beings or individuals who have passed away. The landscape needs to be traversed with care, and there are many places that can only be accessed by people with particular rights or knowledge. When people from the Barunga region of the Northern Territory visit sites they have not been to for some time, they call out in Aboriginal language to the old people whose spirits still inhabit these places, telling the spirits that they don't wish to disturb them. If they wish to do something special, such as retouch rock paintings, they ask permission from their ancestors, making sure that they do not incur their wrath through showing disrespect. Senior traditional owner Phyllis Wiynjorroc says: ‘Those people are listening now. They're not deaf.’ Figure 4 Shaqkayla, Alana and Catina in front of a Women’s Dreaming site, Barunga, Northern Territory, Australia, 2004 Many of these places of significance cannot be identified by traditional archaeological methods, and knowledge concerning them is held in the hands of old people, and passed on to children as ‘background’ inheritance, part of the landscapes in which they grow up (Figure 4). In this way, the living heritage of the land is linked to the living heritage of oral traditions, rituals, and Indigenous knowledge systems. While elements of these traditions have been subjected to transformation as part of colonialism, others are directly linked to the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous peoples. For Indigenous peoples, cultural heritage is a living and evolving tradition, its continuity vital to their
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identity and cultural survival. As a living tradition, Indigenous cultural heritage is closely tied to oral histories and the process of re-creating those traditions: For a living culture based on spirit of place, the major part of maintaining culture and therefore caring for place is the continuation of the oral tradition that tells a story.
The process of re-creation, rather than reproduction is essential to the
reality of Indigenous people. To them, reproduction is unreal, while re-creation is real. The [European] fixation on the written word has implications for the practice of cultural heritage (Department of Aboriginal Affairs, NSW, cited in Janke, 1999:8). The notion of a living heritage is grounded in the inter-relationships between place, ancestral beings, ancient and present peoples, and the manner in which the Dreaming era informs the present. This culminates in an understanding of the natural world as dynamic, responsive, and alive. Not only was the land created by ancestral beings, but these beings still inhabit specific places, sometimes several places simultaneously. For many Aboriginal people, both ancestral beings and human ancestors have an ability to impact directly upon people’s lives on a daily basis. Thus, the places associated with ancestral beings continue to be imbued with their potency, forming an important part of the living landscapes of Indigenous Australians. This Aboriginal notion of a living legacy is very different to the European Australian notion of a pristine or unchanging heritage, and this has implications in terms of heritage management philosophies. The European heritage management philosophy of conserving the past and maintaining original authenticity is based on a notion of linear time. On the other hand, the Indigenous notion of time, in which the past continues to exist in the present, underwrites a cultural heritage management philosophy in which the past is kept strong (and somehow alive) through appropriate and recurrent use of the land and sites in the present. The politics of language The survival of Indigenous cultures is entwined with an understanding of the manner in which language has been used to underwrite colonial stereotypes and power relations. People constitute each other and themselves through language, in the process establishing, normalising or challenging inequalities.
As Said (1978:5) says in terms of
‘Orientalism’, words are ideas, emerging from a history and tradition of thought, shaped
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by associated imagery and, in turn, shaping the realities of these concepts, and the worldviews of the people who use them. This point is well understood by Indigenous peoples, and the politics of language has been a focus of much scholarship by Indigenous researchersi.
These issues are pertinent to colonial domination in many
parts of the world, as articulated by the Kenyan scholar, Ngugi wa Thiong’o: But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process: the destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser. The domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 1986:16). While the use of language and images has been critiqued extensively by cultural theorists in regards to stereotypes, such as those of Indigenous peoples as “children of nature”, “primitive” or as "noble savages", it is only recently that we have given serious consideration of the manner in which the discourse of anthropology and archaeology reinforces the assumptions and inequities of colonialism. As many scholars have pointed out, colonial discourse served the purposes of the dominant state (L. Smith 1999; various papers in Wobst and Smith 2005). The British colonisation of Australia, for instance, used the term “Aboriginal” to collapse the cultural and geographic boundaries of more than 600 diverse Indigenous groups, each of which had its own political system, laws and language, into the single category of "Aboriginal”. This notion of Indigenous homogeneity masks not only the diversity of Indigenous cultures but also the political autonomy and processes of self-government that were in place in Indigenous societies prior to European. Through language, diversity and vitality was replaced with an imagined homogeneity and an implied stasis, a factor in the loss of identity that occurred as a result of invasion.
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The construction of identity through language is apparent in the language of apartheid in southern Africa1. As Ouzman (2005) points out, while the political doctrine of apartheid2 no longer exists officially, its effects reverberate in this region. Apartheid wrought a hierarchy of meanings from words such as ‘White’, ‘non-European’, ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘Bushman’. In this part of the world the term ‘native’ became a term of denigration, while in parts of South America the term ‘Indigenous’ is also considered perjorative. Identity under apartheid was measured against a central standard of whiteness, with the Bushmen3 of southern Africa fitting awkwardly into this racial classification, as a primordial people located somewhere between ‘nature’ and ‘culture.’ Another focus of concern is language that excludes Indigenous experiences and worldviews. This ‘racism of omission’ occurs when language overlooks Indigenous action.
The classic example of this is the statement ‘Australia was discovered by
Captain James Cook in 1770’, which overlooks the occupation of Indigenous peoples for the previous 50,000 years. Similarly, the term ‘colonisation’ implies the relatively smooth settlement of unpopulated lands, rather than ‘invasion’ of previously settled lands. To transmit this message Aboriginal Australians have re-named Australia Day, the day that the first British settlers arrived, as Invasion Day or Survival Day, turning attention from a celebration to British settlement to commemoration of the survival of Indigenous Australians. Figure 5 Reversing colonial stereotypes through a focus on Indigenous worldviews Language can be used for the empowerment of Indigenous peoples, rather than for the empowerment of the status quo (e.g. Figure 5). Most importantly, it can be used to acknowledge and validate Indigenous authority, an essential component in the survival of Indigenous cultures. Written versus oral histories 1 `Southern Africa’ is comprised of the modern geopolities Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Moçambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. 2 Translating from the Afrikaans as `separate-ness', apartheid was South Africa’s National Party’s official domestic policy of racial segregation from 1948 to 1994.
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Indigenous cultural values also come under threat through the kinds of evidence that are accepted by researchers, administrators and courts of law. In colonial modes of thought written histories are characterised as detached, objective and reliable, while oral histories are viewed as emotional, subjective and changeable. The privileging of written histories over oral histories lies at the heart of recent controversy over the building of a bridge to Hindmarsh Island, in traditional lands of the Narrindjeri people, in South Australia (see Bell 1998). Some Ngarrindjeri women objected to the building of the bridge on the grounds that its construction would disturb an important women’s site but other Ngarrindjeri women were unaware of this knowledge. Construction of the bridge was stopped and a Royal Commission was called, with anthropologists supporting both sides of the debate.
In 1995, the South Australian Hindmarsh Bridge Royal
Commission concluded the claim of secret women’s business was fabricated. By interpreting the world from the Western perspective of relatively open access to knowledge, this decision failed to recognize that Indigenous knowledge often is segmented by qualities such as age, gender, creating a fine and intangible cultural web (Bell 1998). Embedded in a Western tradition of dichotomised hierarchies, the Commission consistently gave greater credence to historical and ethnographic records of European scholars than to Indigenous oral histories—the ranking of oral and literary traditions is so naturalized that it masks the Ethnocentrism on which these rankings are based. Ironically, deep antiquity can be demonstrated for oral histories in many Australian Aboriginal communities, including the Narrindjeri people, who have a Dreaming story of sea waters rising and cutting off land from the mainland, creating the island now known as Kangaroo Island, and scientists record that this event occurred around 8,000 years. Thus, the core of this oral history can be tied to a scientifically recorded event 8,000 years ago. In other parts of Australia, there are Aboriginal stories of megafauna—giant kangaroos, snakes, emus and other creatures—estimated to have died out between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago, depending on species.
The point here is that oral
histories can have demonstrable antiquity, even longer than that of written histories, and that the privileging of the latter over the former emerges from colonial systems of knowledge. Sharing the benefits
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The survival of Indigenous cultures can also be facilitated through fairly sharing the benefits that derive from research. The system inherited from colonial structures is one in which academics accrue the long-term benefits of research, while Indigenous people get no benefits, or only short-term benefits. Yet much archaeological research is informed by Indigenous knowledge, and a great deal of it could not be produced without the assistance of Indigenous people. While researchers bring skills to a project, often they do not provide the primary data.
It follows that both
Indigenous people and archaeologists have rights in the intellectual property that arises from such research, since both were essential to the outcome. One way to conceptualise this is to think of research as a kind of soup, in which different people provide essential ingredients. Though there may be a “chef” (the researcher, either non-Indigenous or not), that particular soup could not exist without the full range of ingredients (both Western and Indigenous knowledges), and all the people who provide those ingredients have rights in that soup. It seems logical, then, to assume that all people involved in the research should benefit from its outcomes. In the past, often researchers have not paid Indigenous people at all, partly on the assumption of scientific right to knowledge, but also due to an associated belief that all people have a responsibility to contribute to the ‘growth’ of knowledge. More recently, researchers are likely to recompense Indigenous people for their time, though there are still many instances when Indigenous people are interviewed without financial compensation. Moreover, even when Indigenous people share in the short-term benefits of research, they rarely share in the long-term benefits, even though they contribute essential ingredients to the academic soup. There are several factors that have contributed to this: the time delay between fieldwork, publication and promotion; that the benefits of scholarship are acquired indirectly; the distance between fieldwork locales and universities; and that the research product has a different shape to what is created in the field. The critical point here is that the benefits of research emerge some time after the fieldwork has been undertaken, sometimes many years afterwards, and that the financial benefits of research are accrued indirectly. The time lapse between fieldwork and research outcomes contributes to researchers forgetting or minimizing Indigenous contributions to the research. However, Indigenous peoples are fully aware that academic careers are built on their knowledge, and sometimes
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characterise anthropologists and archaeologists as ‘mining’ Indigenous knowledge. From this viewpoint, researchers extract knowledge from the community and take it back to the academy to turn it into something else, without further consultation with, or input from, the community. Often, the resulting product is not returned to the community, but has a life independent of them. For instance, the anthropological research conducted by Evans-Pritchard with the Nuer during the 1930s (EvansPritchard 1969[1940]), whilst renowned and highly esteemed within academic circles, was unfamiliar to community members only twenty years later.
In a sense, the
subjects of research are permanently commandeered into scholarly spheres, but the scholarly works are not integrated into Indigenous spheres. Disjunctions such as these are typical of the colonial process. A related trend is that of archaeologists choosing to share the financial benefits of research. Increasingly, royalties from books on Indigenous topics are being directed to funds that are dedicated to assist Indigenous scholars. For example, the royalties from Skull Wars (Thomas 2000) are directed to the Society for American Archaeology’s Native American fund.
Similarly, royalties from the Indigenous
Archaeologies Series published by Left Coast Press are used to support Indigenous attendance at meetings of the World Archaeological Congress.
While the sums
involved may be relatively small, the motivation behind such gestures is to share the financial benefits of archaeological research with people whose culture makes that research possible. Depending on the particular publication, this is being done in terms of individual communities, specific target groups, and the wider Indigenous community. Indigenous voices One important way of facilitating the survival of Indigenous cultures is through supporting Indigenous voices. There are Indigenous peoples living in 72 countries world-wide and in all of these countries these groups are in disadvantaged positions in comparison to dominant populations. Especially in economically disadvantaged countries, they are those people whose voices are the least likely to be heard in a global forum. The current increase in Indigenous voice in the literature of archaeology and related disciplines reflects two trends: firstly, an increase in copublication by archaeologists and the people with whom they work and, secondly, the increase Indigenous academics and researchers. The publications being put out
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by these researchers are playing an important role in having Indigenous knowledge shape contemporary archaeological practice. Related to this is an increased Indigenous participation in international forums. At one level, this is a natural outcome of the increased number of Indigenous scholars in economically advantaged countries, such as Canada and the USA. However, there is also a trend for researchers to share the benefits through ensuring that community members can travel to participate in archaeological meetings. Sometimes, this travel is undertaken at the behest of an Indigenous community which is seeking to enhance its knowledge in a particular area, and this can involve not only travel within that person’s country, but also overseas (Figure 6). Figure 6 Inuk Elder Luke Suluk with Ngadjuri and Narrunga Descendents Dance Group Burra, South Australia, December, 2006 The Indigenous scholars or community members who attend international forums obtain a deeper understanding of the research process and are better able to actively participate in the shaping of archaeology as a discipline. In addition, attendance at archaeological conferences has value for Indigenous people, not only through having their voices heard, but also with opportunities for alliancing, both nationally and globally. Such alliancing allows Indigenous peoples to share strategies for success, avoid pitfalls and develop both personal and group strength. All of these are important to the survival of Indigenous cultures. The challenges and opportunities of globalisation The second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People began in 2005, in a context where increasingly decisions that affect Indigenous peoples and their communities are made at the global level, far away from local realities. Throughout the world, Indigenous people are attempting to have their voices heard in the global decision-making that affects their lives, and at the national level, where their mobilisation can translate into political muscle. But many challenges remain in the fight for recognition of their rights. Indigenous people around the world are finding common cause in their struggles to
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retain their identities and their land. In some cases, Indigenous peoples find they have more in common with each other at a global level than they do with the other peoples who share the countries in which they live. Traditional communities are fighting for recognition and their land in many parts of the world.
Namibia, for
example, recognises only three out of six San Traditional Authorities. These are the Ju│hoansi, Kung and the Hai││om Traditional Authorities. The !Xoo and, ≠Au││gesi of Omaheke as well as the Khwe of Western Caprivi are yet to be recognised. Throughout the world, Indigenous identity is closely linked to land.
"A Mapuche
person without land can’t be a Mapuche," said Cristian Qechupán Huenuñir, a Mapuche activist from Chile, at a plenary session on Indigenous Struggles and Resistance at the Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum. Displacement from their traditional lands is devastating outcome of globalisation in many parts of the world—though Indigenous peoples actively fight this. In Botswana, for example, the /Gwii and //Gana Bushmen took the State to court following their eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. In the early 1990s, the mass settlement of Javanese people on the island of Kalimantan, formerly known as Borneo, precipitated a successful jungle warfare campaign by local Indigenous peoples, and in Sri Lanka, a recent planned mass resettlement of more than 100,000 people was displaced by fierce battles between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil rebels in the eastern Batticaloa district. In some cases, displacement is caused by the deterioration of local environments, due to economic exploitation of natural resources. Communities that lived off fishing and forest produce on the Chiloe archipelago in the south of Chile for centuries have now begun to leave. They could deal with the difficult conditions, but the deteriorating environment cannot sustain them all any more. Other communities in this part of the world are under threat from mining activities that have damaged the quality of water, and hence the ability of herder communities to keep animals: while people can boil water for their own use, animals are dependent on the quality of water in streams and rivers. While the situation is better in economically advantaged countries, these countries still have their problems. In Canada, for example, there appears to be no quick resolution to the long-running land rights battle between First Nations groups and mining and logging interests that have been granted concessions to exploit the resources in a vast boreal forest known as Grassy Narrows. The World Bank is implicated in some of these controversies and in the Democratic Republic of Congo it has been accused of breaking
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its own rules to support commercial logging at the expense of Pygmy lands and livelihoods. In South America, Indigenous peoples hailed the election of Bolivia's leftwing indigenous President Evo Morales. Morales has a strong agenda for Indigenous people in his nation and, indeed, in the region as a whole. Representatives of the foreign oil companies active in Bolivia recently ceded control over their operations, and agreed to pay a higher proportion in royalties and taxes. Recently, Indigenous leaders held a regional congress in Bolivia to discuss strategies to oblige governments to make state policy the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13th September, 2007. The congress was described by Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú as a way of demonstrating support for the work of President Morales, who convened a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution to recognise Indigenous peoples' cultural values, customs and right to land and self-determination. Positive developments include growing recognition of the key role played by Indigenous peoples living across Asia and the Pacific in forest conservation, and the increasing use of Indigenous knowledge to enable the commercialization of innovative biomedical technologies that improve human health. Around 62 percent of all cancer drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States have been developed from products in which the active ingredients have been identified by Indigenous peoples.
Latin American nations, especially those nations along the
Amazon, have extremely rich and diverse flora, so the potential for commercial applications in these regions is particularly rich. While only about one in 10,000 is worth commercial development, the few that are developed can produce lucrative returns. Southern Africa is another region in which biotechnology is reaping economic benefits for Indigenous peoples. In 2006 the application of San Traditional Knowledge (IK), Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) produced an historic offer from the South African Hoodia Growers to pay 6% of all their Hoodia sales to Working group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA). This agreement holds huge benefits for the San, out of the huge and booming hoodia market, and brings benefits not only growers but also to the harvester of hoodia. Discussion
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The Indigenous societies encountered by European colonisers contained complex and refined social structures. However, these colonisers judged sophistication in terms of the presence of absence of an elaborate material culture, such as palaces and pyramids, and because Indigenous societies had produced no monuments of this kind, Europeans assumed that these peoples were ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’. In fact, the opposite was the case: the human intellect and energy that Europeans had put into building sophisticated and elegant material edifices were used by Indigenous peoples to build sophisticated and elegant social and intellectual edifices. The survival of these rich and diverse Indigenous cultures is dependent on continuity in cultural practices, which itself depends on Indigenous control over Indigenous cultures. If Indigenous cultural values are to withstand the onslaught of globalisation, Indigenous peoples need to have control over their lives. The United Nations’ Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Part Six, Article 29) affirms that: Indigenous peoples are entitled to the recognition of the full ownership, control and protection of their cultural and intellectual property. They have the right to special measures to control, develop and protect their sciences, technologies and cultural manifestations, including human and other genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs and visual and performing arts. Cultural continuity is threatened when Indigenous people lose control over their cultural and intellectual property, and facilitated when non-Indigenous people work within a framework of Indigenous control, subject to Indigenous cultural rules. Given that differential access to power is at the core of colonial relations, it follows that conducting research that facilitates the survival of Indigenous cultures involves a rethinking of power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. It involves moving from the colonial assumption of a right to acquire knowledge, to recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights to protect their cultural and intellectual property and to share knowledge on their own terms. This process moves Indigenous concerns and values from the ‘outside’ to the ‘centre’, and is dependent on a commitment to the strengthening of Indigenous knowledge systems. The practices outlined in this paper do not ‘empower’ Indigenous peoples, they simply
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refrain from disempowering them, and allows them the space they need to ensure the survival of their diverse cultures. Acknowledgements My field research is undertaken with Gary Jackson and Jim Smith, and I thank them for a myriad of intellectual challenges, both in the field and out. This paper would not have been written without the gentle insistence of Ines Domingo Sanz. List of Figures FIGURES 1 & 2: Indigenous and Western notions of time FIGURE 3: Shaqkayla, Alana and Catina in front of a Women’s Dreaming site, Barunga, Northern Territory, Australia, 2004 (Photo: Claire Smith) FIGURE 4: Tara Million’s Circular Research Model FIGURE 5: Reversing colonial stereotypes through a focus on Indigenous worldviews, © Didjshop.com FIGURE 6: Inuk Elder Luke Suluk with Ngadjuri and Narrunga Descendents Dance Group Burra, South Australia, December, 2006 (Photo by Daniel Puletama) FIGURE 7: Aboriginal Elder Phyllis Wiynjorroc, showing photos on a computer to her great-grandchildren, Teighan and Joel (Photo: Claire Smith) References Atalay, S. (editor) 2006 Decolonizing Archaeology. Special issue, American Indian Quarterly, Volume 30, Spring/Fall, Number 3. Bell, D. 1998 Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World that is, was and will be. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1969[1940]. The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Janke, Terri 1999 Our Culture. Our Future. Proposals for the Recognition of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Canberra. Million, Tara 2005 Developing an Aboriginal Archaeology: Receiving Gifts from the White Buffalo Calf Woman. In Indigenous Archaeologies. Decolonizing Theory and Practice, edited by C. Smith and H.M. Wobst, pp. 43-55. Routledge, London. Nicholas, George P. and Kelly Bannister 2004 Copyrighting the Past? Current Anthropology 45:327-350 Ngugi wa Thiong'o 1998 Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa. Clarendon, Oxford. Ouzman, Sven 2005 Silencing and Sharing Southern African Indigenous and Embedded Knowledge. In Indigenous Archaeologies. Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Routledge, London. Said, Edward 1978 Orientalism. Vintage Books, London. Smith, Claire and H. Martin Wobst (eds) 2005 Indigenous Archaeologies. Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Routledge, London. Smith, Linda Tuhawai 1999 Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples. Second edition. London: Zed Books. Thomas, David Hurst 2000 Skull Wars. Vizenor, Gerald 1999 Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE. World Archaeological Congress 1991 “First Code of Ethics,” http://www.wac.uct.ac.za/archive/content/ethics.html
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