Indigenous Education in a Global Context

Teaching & Learning Guide for: A Review of the Study of the Political Status of Indigenous Peoples in the Global Context

Background: Postoperative pain management is crucial to patient care and recovery after surgery. Effective pain control not only alleviates suffering but also facilitates quicker recovery, reducing the risk of complications such as chronic pain syndromes. By identifying ethnic differences in pain perception, healthcare providers can tailor their pain management strategies better to meet the needs of patients from diverse cultural backgrounds. This study therefore sought to determine and compare baseline and serial postoperative pain scores using a visual analogue scale among non-indigenous (Fulani, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba) and Indigenous ethnic groups (Berom, Tarok, Ngas, and Mwagavul) in Plateau State, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This was a comparative cross-sectional study conducted among 88 adults of Indigenous and non-indigenous ethnic groups of Plateau State at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) recruited through stratified random sampling. The equal proportion allocation technique was employed for gender and ethnic groups. Ethical clearance, informed verbal and written consent were obtained before the commencement of the study. Baseline pain scores were determined by a pressure algometer. A pressure of 20N was applied bilaterally on the trapezius muscle between the C7 spinous process and the acromial process, and then the subjects were asked to rate the pain they felt on a numeric rating scale (NRS). The average NRS score was taken as the baseline pain score. Serial 2-hourly postoperative pain scores were also assessed in the immediate 24-hour postoperative period. All analyses were conducted using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 23 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Significance was set at the α = 0.05 level. Results: A total of 88 patients participated in this study with an equal number of gender and ethnic group representation. The median (IQR) age of study participants was 21 (19.2–35.6) years. No significant statistical difference in median baseline pain scores between the entire indigenous (21.5) and non-indigenous (21.0) ethnic groups, U = 0.64, p = 0.22. There was a statistically significant difference in baseline median pain scores between females (3.5) and males (2.0), U = 3.0, p = 0.036 in the indigenous and females (3.0) and males (2.0) in the non-indigenous ethnic groups, U = 3.9, p = 0.013. This study revealed a statistically significant difference in the median serial postoperative pain scores in the different specific Indigenous ethnic groups (H (2) = 24.2, p = 0.001) and the different specific non-indigenous ethnic groups (H (2) = 24.8, p = 0.001) as well. Conclusion: This study has demonstrated ethnic and gender variability in the perception of pressure and postoperative pain among different ethnic groups resident in Plateau State. Clinicians need to be aware of the fact that different ethnic groups in Plateau State perceive pain differently and put it into consideration when treating pain.

Natives on the Electronic Frontier

Enhancing Language Services to Native American Children: A Look From the Inside

Whither the Aborigine

Given the close link between indigenous territories and the survival of traditions, culture and identity, indigenous peoples have been negatively affected by dispossession and colonial arrangements. This historical injustice is probably at the origins of the current marginalisation of indigenous peoples in Africa. At the same time, the failure to re-establish pre-colonial indigenous titles on dispossessed lands has had a detrimental impact on the respect for indigenous rights. It is again this backdrop that this article aims to address the issue of the African decolonization process from the perspective of the rights of indigenous peoples. In particular, modern cases of dispossession are examined with a view, first, to understanding the crucial role of land rights for the cultural integrity of indigenous peoples (in Africa) and, second, to illustrating how international law can deal with such issues.

Prior to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) many African states held a unified and seemingly hostile position towards the UNDRIP exemplified by the concerns outlined in the African Group's Draft Aide Memoire. In order to gain a better understanding of the protections offered to indigenous peoples on the African continent, it is necessary to examine the concerns raised in the aforementioned Draft Aide Memoire and highlight how these concerns have been addressed at the regional level, effectively changing how the human rights norms contained within the UNDRIP are seen, understood and interpreted in the African context. The purpose of this article is to do just that: to examine in particular how the issue of defining indigenous peoples has been tackled on the African continent, how the right to self-determination has unfolded for indigenous peoples in Africa and how indigenous peoples' right to free, prior and informed consent has been interpreted at the regional level.

Indigenous peoples and ethnic minority groups often experience poor diet quality and poor health outcomes. Such inequities may be partially due to nutrition interventions not meeting the unique cultural and linguistic needs of these population groups, which could be achieved using co-creation and/or personalised approaches. Cultural adaptation or tailoring of nutrition interventions has shown promise in improving some aspects of dietary intake, but this requires careful consideration to ensure it does not inadvertently exacerbate dietary inequities. The aim of this narrative review was to examine examples of cultural adaptations and/or tailoring of public health nutrition interventions that improved the dietary intake and to consider implications for the optimal design and implementation of personalised and precision nutrition interventions. This review identified six examples of cultural adaptation and/or tailoring of public health nutrition intervention in Indigenous peoples and ethnic minority groups across Australia, Canada and the US. All studies used deep socio-cultural adaptations, such as the use of Indigenous storytelling, and many included surface-level adaptations, such as the use of culturally appropriate imagery in intervention materials. However, it was not possible to attribute any improvements in dietary intake to cultural adaptation and/or tailoring per se, and the minimal reporting on the nature of adaptations limited our ability to determine whether the interventions used true co-creation to design content or were adapted from existing interventions. Findings from this review outline opportunities for personalised nutrition interventions to use co-creation practices to design, deliver and implement interventions in collaboration with Indigenous and ethnic minority groups.

The rights of indigenous peoples under international law have evolved greatly since the late 1980s. Efforts by indigenous peoples to get their rights recognized under international law started during the League of Nations in the early 1920s, but it was only in 2007 that the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The adoption of the declaration not only marks an important moment in terms of lawmaking; it also represents the achievement of long decades of lobbying and advocacy from indigenous peoples’ representatives. The UN declared the decade 1994–2004 as the First International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and later 2005–2015 was declared the second such decade. The main objective was the strengthening of international cooperation for the solution of problems faced by indigenous people in such areas as human rights, the environment, education, and health. As a result, in 2002, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was established as an advisory body to the UN Economic and Social Council. But it was only in 2007 that the UN General Assembly adopted the UNDRIP, which universally proclaims and consolidates a specific international legal corpus of rights for indigenous peoples. The adoption of the declaration is representative of the significant legal developments of the rights of indigenous peoples under international law. The international legal framework concerns general human rights such as nondiscrimination and equality, as well as very specific collective rights such as self-determination, cultural rights, land rights, and control over natural resources. The establishment of a specific corpus of law dedicated to the rights of indigenous peoples, or sui generis rights, has also meant a proliferation of scholarly literature on the topic. This article does not propose to be exhaustive or comprehensive, but rather to offer a review of some of the texts that can guide the researcher or the reader through the vast and extensive existing literature. First, it focuses on some of the leading sources that provide a general overview on the rights of indigenous peoples. It then examines the institutional and regional approaches. And finally, it focuses on specific issues affecting indigenous peoples, namely historical claims, self-determination, land rights, natural resources, and development.

Moringe ole Parkipuny addressed the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (UNWGIP) in 1989 and, for the first time, opened up discussion of the idea that certain groups of hunter-gathers and pastoralists in Africa merited the status of indigenous peoples. Local activists and international organizations took up the cause in the following decades. Several international conferences resulted in new forms of activism, the reformulation of local identities, and a growing body of scholarship addressing African indigeneity. As NGOs built solidarity among relatively scattered groups of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, often skeptical state governments initially resisted what they saw as demands for recognition of status and claims to “special rights.” Disagreements between state interests and newly organized indigenous groups were expressed at the United Nations during the process of adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); but as the idea of indigeneity evolved through such discussions, African governments gradually came on board. International activism and work done by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights play significant roles in convincing African states to accept the concept of “indigenous peoples.” The issue of developing a definition of “indigenous peoples” appropriate for Africa remains unsettled and continues to present challenges. Mobilization among marginalized groups on the African continent itself, however, has presented NGOs, activists, states, and courts with the opportunity, through well-publicized struggles and several landmark legal cases, to refine the category to better fit with African contexts.

Freedom is not free: Examining health equity for racial and ethnic minoritized veterans.

“Indigenous” names an emergent, collective, globalizing and (increasingly) legally recognized sociopolitical identity, resulting from a social movement which became institutionalized from around 1980. Typically, those now termed “indigenous peoples” were formerly known by local, regional, or national category terms or ethnonyms applied to them by outsiders (e.g., “American Indians,” “Australian Aborigines,” Eskimo, or Aleuts), rather than by terms that they used among themselves. In many cases older terms have been replaced, also from ca. the 1980s by alternative terms emergent from social and political processes of liberalization within particular nation-states or regions (e.g., “First Nations,” “Native Americans,” Adivasi, or Inuit). “Indigenous” is increasingly used of, and by, these peoples in reference to themselves and others, even where other local and regional designations persist. Though forms of the word have a long history, “indigeneity” is relatively recent in internationalist usage. This use grew in relation to a range of circumstances: the interaction of indigenous activism with developing global institutions; Third World decolonization and civil rights activism; political and economic conditions that prompted reorganization by (especially liberal-democratic but also other) states of entitlements to land and resources; and diffusion of measures implicating indigeneity across levels of state and corporate administration. Given indigenous globalization, some authors write of “becoming” indigenous. The recency and selective participation of indigenous people and communities means that there is often a considerable gap between elite relationship to internationalist concepts and activism and more local forms of understanding on the part of indigenous people less engaged at that level. Some states continue to deny the applicability of “indigeneity” to their own situations, while affirming its relevance to states of settler colonial origin. Yet indigenous organizations are emerging even in such countries (e.g., Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, India). The League of Nations and, later, the United Nations, have centrally hosted and promoted globalization of the indigenous category. Concern with those now considered to be “indigenous” took shape after World War I as a matter of labor conditions and human rights affecting “disadvantaged” peoples in “underdeveloped” countries. In the post–World War II period there was concern with “discrimination” against disadvantaged and “indigenous” peoples. In 1982, a Working Group on Indigenous Populations was created within the United Nations. The main product of the working group over twenty-five years was the formulation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (cited under United Nations as a Center of Indigenous Globalization), adopted by the General Assembly in 2007.

This study explains chief causes of covert and overt conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous ethnic groups of Metekel zone, since 1991. For the sake of convenience, however, particular emphasis is given to the conflict between Agew and Gumuz. The study employs relational ethnography research design. The data collected through in-depth interview, observation, informal conversation, and review of available documents is analysed thematically. The conflict between the two ethnic groups in the period is explained based on the assumption of horizontal and longitudinal deprivation. The paper demonstrates that coincidence of relative deprivation with ethnic line is creating favourable conditions for violent conflicts in the study area. In the period, Agews felt deprived of political resources in contrast to their history and Gumuz. On the other hand, though Gumuz are politically empowered, the socio-economic status of the people is hardly comparable with the Agew and other non-indigenous ethnic groups. The salience of ethnicity in the period has also been providing opportunity for elites to mobilize the mass for violence. But, the study argues the transformation of dormant conflicts into violence is determined by cost and benefit analysis of the action rather than by a mere mobilization of elites. Accordingly, in the period instigating violence seems persuasive for Gumuz than Agew. The finding implies that when the underlying conditions of relative deprivation are eliminated, the motive to use violence as a political instrument can also be minimized. Key words: Ethnicity, ethnic conflict, relative deprivation, ethnic federalism, indigenous ethnic groups, non-indigenous ethnic groups.

With their article “Restoring indigenous names in taxonomy”, Gillman & Wright (2020) initiated a discussion that culminated in a set of proposals to amend theInternational Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants(ICN) by allowing the retroactive replacement of scientific names and/or epithets of plants and other organisms in favor of “indigenous names” (vernacular names used by Indigenous Peoples). Here I emphasize several main topics and questions critically important for the suggested implementation of the proposals by Wright and Gillman. My conclusions regarding the proposals by Wright and Gillman are as follows. The “definition” of Indigenous People proposed by Wright and Gillman for theICNis dramatically different from the working definitions and identification/self‐identification criteria of Indigenous Peoples provided in the UNDeclaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples(United Nations, 2007) and other relevant international documents. That “definition” is vague, potentially discriminatory, may bring unnecessary conflicts, and cannot be used in practice. Nomenclatural committees and the taxonomic community as a whole should not be involved in political debates about which peoples are indigenous and which are not, which bodies represent those peoples and which do not have that right. Giving special privileges in nomenclature to some groups of Indigenous Peoples but not to other peoples with comparable levels of traditional knowledge would be an act of unexplainable and unjustified discrimination. The argument of “demonstrable chronological priority” of vernacular “indigenous” names over scientific names used by Wright and Gillman is irrelevant in biological nomenclature and taxonomy and cannot be used in practice. The proposal to allow the use of “indigenous” diacritics in biological nomenclature would result in allowance of dozens diacritic signs actually used by various Indigenous ethnic groups, and should not be accepted. The replacement procedure proposed by Wright and Gillman will not work as they intended because they failed to outline workable rules for it. Science (the scientific nomenclature of organisms included) should not be biased or distorted politically, racially, ethnically, socially, genderly, religiously or otherwise. Any attempts or proposals aimed at granting preferences in biological nomenclature to any political, racial, ethnic, social, gender, religious or other group or groups should be rejected as discriminatory acts. Consequently, the “proposals” by Wright and Gillman should be rejected by the international community of taxonomists of plants, fungi, and algae.

Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa within the Context of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Environmental Management