Dialogical decoloniality and Tibetan conceptions of indigeneity

Abstract

Current discourse on entrenched differences within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is defined in terms of evolving concepts of nationality and ethnicity. Tibetans are recognised as one of the 55 ethnic minorities distinct from the dominant Han Chinese (who comprise over 91% of the total population). This majority-minority framework has been cemented in China’s normative thinking as a multi-ethnic nation-state. Political movements among Tibetan exiles based in India advocate for greater autonomy within the framework of the constitution of the PRC and the Law on Regional National Autonomy (LRNA). Based on ‘patchwork ethnographic’ work, this paper seeks to investigate the refusal among Tibetan exiles to associate Tibet’s collective self with the concept of indigeneity. The PRC does not recognise the existence of indigenous peoples, although it voted in support of the 2007 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples. These two divergent conceptions of indigeneity preclude the possibility of staking greater claims to indigenous sovereignty within China. By wading into debates in the Global South on decoloniality, this article is a call to revisit assumptions that have caused a reductive reading of indigeneity either exclusively as a derivative right or through the outright refusal to recognise it. I propose the notion of ‘dialogical decoloniality’ as opposed to selective osmosis in the uptake of theoretical concepts among states-in-waiting.