Indigenous Concepts Research Articles

The Dialectics of Adat: Colonialism, the State, and Indigeneity in Indonesia

ABSTRACT In the wake of weakening leftist identities, indigeneity has become a promising political identity for economically marginalised people in rural areas worldwide. This is especially true for Indonesia with its anti-communist state ideology, but the roots of the Indonesian concept of indigeneity reach back at least into the late colonial era. The Dutch shaped the modern ideology of indigeneity in Indonesia through their conceptualisation of adat (custom), which is now deployed by indigenous activists to distinguish their indigeneity from other parts of society. Additionally, indigenous activists and communities in Indonesia have to distinguish themselves from other, also autochthonous parts of society due to the absence of settlers’ descendants. This contribution sheds light on how indigeneity is understood by indigenous activists in Indonesia. It draws on two cases, namely Dayakness as indigeneity in Kalimantan and the concept of masyarakat adat as the Indonesian translation of ‘indigenous peoples’ as it is used today by Indonesia’s largest indigenous organisation. Contrary to many contributions on indigeneity that stress relationality and post-structural approaches, this contribution suggests analysing indigeneity in a dialectical way and as a part of a social totality. This social totality, however, is not self-identical as it emerges through contradictions, for instance in the opposition of the state – indigenous peoples. Indigeneity thus appears to be an ideology that represents people’s relations to socio-economic conditions but also takes into account the relative autonomy of non-economic issues such as religion and culture.

From Indigenous private property to full dispossession – the peculiar case of Sápmi

The concept of dispossession has become ubiquitous in contemporary critical theory, including analyses of settler colonialism and Indigenous scholarship. It suggests that in addition to being colonised, Indigenous peoples have been deprived of their lands and the territorial foundations of their societies. Critics, however, allege that theories and arguments of Indigenous dispossession are inconsistent, arguing that Indigenous peoples did not have conceptions of land as property or possession. The critics’ question is as follows: how can there be an act of dispossession if there was no prior possession or Indigenous concept of ownership? This article examines a case where there was both prior possession and a concept of ownership adopted by and extended to an Indigenous people, the Sámi, and upheld by the colonial court system. What can the Sámi case of individual (family) land ownership tell us about the concept of dispossession and Indigenous conceptions of ownership and property? The objective is to demonstrate how the concept of dispossession has different histories in different contexts, and how individual land ownership has not historically been alien to Indigenous peoples.

“An Exhibit as Will Astonish the Civilized World”: Seeking Separate Statehood for Indian Territory at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

AbstractChickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, and Seminole citizens employed the Indian Territory exhibits at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition to advance the separate statehood movement. Increasingly shut out of the formal political realm, they adopted creative measures to exert their political will, including participating in the world’s fair. Employing insights from settler-colonial theory and public history, this paper argues that the politics of display expanded the agency of a group marginalized from political representation. The U.S. government, pressured by the territory’s growing population of non-Native settlers, had begun planning for statehood, passing the 1898 Curtis Act to force allotment and dissolve the Five Tribes’ governments by 1906. To protect their land and sovereignty, a cohort of Native citizens pursued statehood for Indian Territory separate from Oklahoma Territory. Although joint statehood won out, separate statehood advocates succeeded in creating exhibits that centered on the survival of Native nations. They also articulated an Indigenous conception of citizenship, developing an imaginative vision for a future in which self-determination and U.S. citizenship could converge in a Native state. This represented a novel contribution to ongoing debates over how to integrate remaining western territories into the United States and how to incorporate diverse peoples within the citizenry.

(De)Colonial historical geography and historical GIS

This article responds to a recent call from the journal’s editors to diversify the subjects of historical geography. It surveys Historical GIS (HGIS) and colonial cartography scholarship to offer a critique of existing GIS tools for the study of precolonial nonwestern histories. These tools, in the ways in which they turn Indigenous knowledge into computer-processed data, repeat the work of the colonial state. The article applies concepts from decolonial and design theory to address the problem, in particular Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s ideas about the decolonization of knowledge. If we think of cartography as as a language to communicate spatial information, then a decolonial map must be based in Indigenous mapmaking. To articulate what this might look like, the article explores Karl Weule’s work on Indigenous mapmaking in early-20th century mainland Tanzania (then the colony of German East Africa). It demonstrates that the most common means of applying GIS to historical maps distort the mapmakers’ original intentions and proposes an alternative design for a pluralistic decolonial map, based in Indigenous conceptions of space rather than just incorporating Indigenous knowledge.

Making Connections: Leopold’s Land Health, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Social-Ecological Resilience, and One Health

Abstract Leopold’s land health concept provides a holistic view of the relationship between human health and ecosystem health. Significantly, a similar view is found in the traditional wisdom of Indigenous peoples, as exemplified by the concept of “healthy country, healthy people”. A contemporary formulation of land health is provided by social-ecological resilience, which refers to integrated complex adaptive systems that include social (human) and ecological (biophysical) subsystems in a two-way feedback relationship. Resilience is dynamic and provides the tools for dealing with change and disasters proactively. Building resilience and using social/institutional learning for adaptive governance are relevant to One Health, as are Indigenous concepts for the maintenance of healthy relationships between humans and the ecosystem. One Health Impact Statement The One Health approach centers on the interdependence between the health of humans, animals, and the ecosystem. However, relevant ecosystem concepts have not been developed sufficiently for a comprehensive One Health approach, as pointed out in the editorial by Zinsstag and Crump. The basic idea behind One Health not only goes back many decades in Western science but also to the environmental perception and wisdom of traditional societies. The consideration of these connections is relevant for the development of a solid theoretical basis for One Health.

Storied Geographies: Settler Extractivism and Sites of Indigenous Resurgence in Cherie Dimaline’s Empire of Wild

This article offers a reading of Cherie Dimaline’s Empire of Wild (2019) that focuses on the novel’s poetics of space, which contests settler colonial extractive geographies. Adopting a strong Métis- and women’s perspective, Dimaline’s narrative explores the contemporary Métis condition, which is marked by dispossession and displacement under settler colonialism, and the precarity connected with rampant resource extraction in Canada. In order to tackle the tensions between settler- and Indigenous conceptualizations of space, I provide a brief overview of settler Canadian land politics, and describe the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels applying the concepts of petrostate and petroculture. By incorporating a Rogarou figure, a lupine monster in Métis stories, Dimaline embeds her novel within the traditional stories of her people, demonstrating their potential to critique and contest settler colonial geographies marked by extraction. The analysis approaches Indigenous storytelling as a strategy that resists dispossession and tackles the representation of Métis bodies as sites of resurgence.

INDIGENOUS UNDERSTANDINGS AND APPROACHES TO SUCCESSFUL AGING

Abstract Indigenous peoples worldwide face unique challenges growing old. Many of these challenges are founded in historical colonization practices, present oppressive systems, racism, and underrepresentation in research, service provision, health education, and successful aging theories. The focus of this symposium is to discuss specific barriers and challenges related to Indigenous aging in rural and urban communities, as well as community strategies supporting aging well. The first presentation by Zayla Asquith-Heinz and colleagues will share the results of what successful aging or “Eldership” means in the Norton Sound southern subregion of Alaska. Results indicate that family plays a central role within the Norton Sound model of successful aging. The second presenter, Steffi Kim and Jordan Lewis, are discussing the role of cultural influences and Elder identity on successful aging in the context of Alaska Native Elders migrating from rural traditional communities to a western urban community. The third and fourth presentations by Sarah Russell and Rachel Quigley will share the results on what aging well means within Torres Strait Islander people. The results suggest that the availability and accessibility to traditional practices, language and foods can facilitate aging well within these communities. They will also describe the development and implementation of a toolbox of culturally appropriate screening tools and interventions. Lastly, Jordan Lewis will explore the Indigenous concept of “doing” successful aging rather than having good health. He will outline differences and similarities with BIPOC studies on successful aging.

Inclusion of Naturopaths in Northern Ontario Primary Care: A Proposed Solution for The Health Human Resources Shortage

The shortage of primary healthcare practitioners, such as physicians and nurses, in northern Ontario has persisted fordecades despite multiple strategies to address it. Poor health outcomes for people living in northern Ontario must be viewed through an equity lens that takes into account the multiple proximal, intermediate, and distal social determinants of health, including, but not limited to, the impact of colonization and continued colonialism on the health of Indigenous Peoples, challenges in housing, education and employment, as well as lack of food security. The increase in chronic health conditions in northern Ontario and the need for interprofessional healthcare teams that offer patient-centred care are key issues. Whole person care that takes into consideration the integration of body, mind, and spirit is central to Indigenous concepts of health and wellness, as well as being central to the foundations of naturopathic medical philosophy. Inclusion of naturopathic doctors in publicly funded multi-disciplinary primary healthcare settings is proposed as an achievable strategy to fill gaps in health human resources and advance the movement towards holistic care for Indigenous Peoples and others living in northern Ontario.

Legal Indigeneities: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Taiwan’s Indigenous Courts

Abstract In this article I examine performances of Indigeneity in encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system. Studying displays of Indigenous identities reveals the processes through which individuals and communities draw upon histories and practices to fashion themselves as Indigenous and engage with wider publics through performances and performative acts. Focusing on three encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system, displays of Indigeneity in these encounters were multivalent and involved a repertoire of creative performative acts as Indigenous actors used court spaces, like the new ad hoc Chamber of Indigenous Courts, to perform identities that confounded essentialist conceptions of Indigeneity, introduced alternative ontological parameters, and assumed state governance responsibilities. These performances suggest a contextually situated engagement with the postcolonial state where Indigenous identities are anchored in the past and forward-looking, reinforce or challenge the category of Indigeneity, and themselves operate as techniques of power.

Re-orientating health and nursing care: a qualitative study on indigenous conceptualisations of wellbeing

BackgroundHealth systems often fail to address the wellbeing needs of older Indigenous populations; this is attributed to a lack of knowledge of Indigenous health systems arising from a privileging of dominant western biomedical epistemologies. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, there is a dearth of nursing knowledge relating to Māori, which negatively impacts on the provision of holistic nursing care. This research explores insights and perspectives of older Māori adult’s (pakeke) perceptions of wellbeing so nurses can provide culturally responsive care and support the wellbeing of Indigenous New Zealanders.MethodsAn Indigenous kaupapa Māori methodology underpinned and directed this research project. Audio-recorded interviews were conducted face to face in participants’ homes, marae (meeting house) and workplaces. Pakeke over the age of 55 participated in in-depth interviews. A total of 10 pakeke were interviewed and narratives were thematically analysed in accordance with meanings derived from Māori worldviews.ResultsWellbeing was attributed to the holistic interconnection and balancing of whānau (wider family), whanaungatanga (social connectedness), hinengaro (mental and emotional wellbeing), taha tinana (physical wellbeing) and wairua (spirituality).ConclusionThe findings offer unique insights into how wellbeing is constructed for pakeke; the results are unique but consistent with international accounts of older Indigenous peoples. Pakeke wellbeing can be supported by acknowledging existing cultural and spiritual beliefs and peer-support initiatives. Nursing models of care should prioritise Indigenous ways of knowing; this research offers nursing-focused recommendations to improve care.

Teach your children well: Adam Goodes, from unruly child to Indigenous statesman

ABSTRACT The ‘Goodes saga’ in Australian Football transformed Adam Goodes’ persona as a dutiful son of the sport into a polarising celebrity, most infamously through an encounter with a female teenage fan. In this article, we argue that the ‘Goodes saga’ exposed the contested nature of Indigenous celebrity stemming from settler anxieties about the unruly child and Indigenous statesman. Goodes transformed from a sports star, a dutiful ‘son’ of the sport to the national celebrity of a political statesman – a position of adulthood that might be described as characteristic of Eldership. Goodes’ self-manufactured celebrity persona, based in his concept of Indigeneity as ‘having a foot in both worlds’, was enacted through his mission to incorporate Indigenous cultural practices into the sport and wider settler-Australian culture. These actions were persistently disparaged through recourses to Euro-centric concept of the child and childhood as a state of innocence. We prompt readers to consider why the settler-public and its national institutions like the Australian Football League are so invested with surrounding Indigenous stars with a discourse of childhood. Why might the AFL and settler society more broadly consider the possibility that Aboriginal men might ascend to adulthood such a terrifying proposition?

International Whaling Commission as a Natural Resource Management Regime

Abstract Whaling as governed by the International Whaling Commission (iwc) is a global regime of natural resource management, which has experienced significant changes over time. Currently, the iwc regime constitutes a legal framework aiming at protection of both whales and the interests of traditional indigenous whaling populations. The aim of this paper is to examine how the international management of the whale resource has evolved, what kind of an indigenous market it is today and where it might be heading. Although the iwc as a whaling organisation is today geared essentially towards facilitating indigenous whaling, the regime is not indigenous in substance. It is not even a collaborative system. In essence, indigenous whaling within the iwc remains a colonial regime where indigenous interests are subordinate to nation states and Western science. The fundamental ontological mismatch of traditional indigenous conceptions of the world and those on which the iwc is based makes it difficult to introduce changes. Development of participatory rights of indigenous whaling communities within the iwc regime could constitute a procedural first step with potential to contribute to improving also the substantive rights of indigenous whalers. Relational values approach could help to achieve more pivotal ontological change of mindsets to allow indigenous people to gain real agency and organise their relationship with whales in accordance with their worldviews.

Gender-marked heritage and intersectionality: women’s singing as heritage

ABSTRACT This article charts a yet unsuccessful attempt to have a gender-marked musical expression legally recognised as heritage: ‘women’s singing’ of Potosí, Bolivia. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivian contexts, the authors read the gender-marked status of this initiative as a symbolic site of intercultural disjunctures. Conflicting gender politics sit at the crux of this difficulty to assemble ‘women’s singing’ as a heritage object, contradictions between Bolivia’s persistent neoliberal state in which feminist discourses of gender equality reign within a development apparatus, and a plurinational state that originally emerged from social movements that brought Indigenous concepts into governing practices. Expanding on the topic of gender in heritage studies, this work points to critical applications of intersectionality, and uncovers useful openings that this concept lends to heritage studies in general. Through an intersectional lens, key inconsistencies are revealed between a liberal feminist agenda that focusses on empowering stand-alone women and Indigenous working class women’s mobilisation politics that cannot address gender inequalities without also engaging class and ethnic marginalisation. The case study shows how social justice mobilisations, central to political intersectionality, productively disrupt the compartmentalised approaches to rights that usually operate in bureaucratised governing entities.

Implementing indigenous paradigms: the paradoxes of actualizing Sumak Kawsay

In this paper, I use the Quechan indigenous concept of sumak kawsay and its effects on the politics and policy of the South American nation of Ecuador to aid public administration in its efforts toward developing knowledge that can foster improvements in human wellbeing. The concept of sumak kawsay, which seeks to define the “good life” for human beings, can provide value for public administration as it seeks new ways to conceptualize and actualize human wellbeing in the processes of governance and public policy. But implementing sumak kawsay and similar alternative paradigms may require governments and jurisdictions to grapple with certain paradoxes of governance, especially the tension between the value of public participation and the need for administrative autonomy for the achievement of key policy objectives.

Music, Seduction, and New Beginnings: The Ikorodo Maiden Dance of Nsukka

AbstractWhy are conversations about seduction, the female body, and choosing partners central at a funeral during the Ikorodo music performance? How does Ikorodo enact the act of seduction? How has the act of seduction and Ikorodo performance practice evolved? How do Ikorodo performances express the indigenous conceptions of seductions? These are the questions this article addresses to reveal—how Ikorodo dance provides a platform for new beginnings and enactments of Nsukka Igbo societal gender ideologies. Drawing from indigenous conceptions of seduction, histories, practitioners’ and audiences’ narratives, archival materials, existing scholarship, and Ikorodu performance practice as experienced and collected during fieldwork, this article explores how Ikorodo dance—a traditional musical genre well known and performed in Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria—maintains its primary function of providing a space where maiden dancers utilize music to find life partners even when performed at a funeral. Emphasis on the male gaze interrogates the dominant idea that music gives African women agency.

From the Editor

From the Editor

Indigenising Informal Financial Mechanism (IFM) of Rural Women in the Northern Region of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

There is little documentation of umholiswano from local people’s perspective, as local knowledge has evolved with time. A phenomenology research design outlined the attributes and their meaningful value as perceived by local communities. 65 participants participated in a series of focus group discussions and complemented six key informant interviews. Umholiswano (stokvel) is an indigenous concept that has been part of the life of many indigenous communities before the money era. It was used as a mechanism to achieve social justice, establish peace and create socio-economic balance toward improved well-being. In this study, umholiswano is a household financial planning and management tool, saving/investment system, a social-cohesion-nurturing and therapeutic mechanism founded on six core value principles (6CVPs), such as ubuntu, trust, solidarity, dignity preservation of social wealth and ukudlala (fun). Most key players are women, and umholiswano is regarded as the 21st livestock for women. The majority are in the economically active age group but lack the skills to enter the formal economy. They rely on social grants and entrepreneurship activities. Umholiswano is undervalued as an economic strategy, nevertheless, its significant contribution to the quality of life of rural women is observable. But, there is an existing gap for a quantifiable tool to assess the umholiswano’s contribution, as the measurability should start by identifying indicators designed “with people and for the people” and the above six core value principles identified in the study could be set as a guiding framework towards indicators development.

Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts'íib as Recorded Knowledge by M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios

Reviewed by: Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts'íib as Recorded Knowledge by M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios Paula L. Karger Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts'íib as Recorded Knowledge. By Paul M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019, p. 232, $29.95. The infamous example of Fray Diego de Landa's burning of Maya cultural products is, in many ways, an example of reading in terms of an external culture's norms: looking at Maya texts and objects through a Franciscan and Eurocentric lens, de Landa deemed them purveyors of superstition and falsities and ordered them destroyed. Given his sixteenth-century religious and social context, reading differently may have entailed an enormous leap for de Landa. In the twenty-first century, however, that leap is a step made traversable by greater awareness of cultural relativity combined with research that is slowly making Indigenous ways of understanding, recording, and transmitting knowledge more accessible to non-Indigenous audiences. Paul Worley and Rita Palacios's Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts'íib as Recorded Knowledge propels this push to approach Indigenous cultural production according to its own terms, that is, not by traditionally Western standards and methodologies of reading and interpretation, but rather by those of the groups that produce the cultural products. To that end, they introduce ts'íib, a Maya concept that helps them decolonize readings of Maya works, opening interpretation and understanding up to the radical moves that are actively and intentionally happening in Maya cultural spheres but often going unrecognized in their Western counterparts. Worley and Palacios carefully read their chosen examples as parts of a longer narrative and cosmology that exist in their own right, demonstrating the cultural items' participation in an intimately connected network which situates the Maya authors of these works, and from which said authors oppose historical and ongoing colonization. The book thus not only introduces readers to ts'íib and related concepts, but also models the decolonizing of works produced by Maya people. In chapter 1, Worley and Palacios corral the many descriptions of ts'íib stemming from both Maya and non-Maya sources to elaborate on its varied conceptualizations and implications, among them the shift away from the limiting term "literature." Ts'íib, they explain, is not writing in the sense of rendering meaning via alphabetic or glyphic script, although it includes such production, but rather a variety of ways of recording knowledge. Ts'íib includes alphabetic, Western-style writing, but also much more; as Worley and Palacios state, it is "a fluid 'both/and'" (6). In explaining the much broader scope of ts'íib, Worley and Palacios emphasize the importance of performance in ts'íib, ultimately showing that Maya cultural production is active, social, relational, and reiterative: whether it be in the form of the planting of milpa, the weaving of a huipil, or the alphabetic writing of story, ts'íib works to build relationships [End Page 371] between the self, the other, and the cosmos; records knowledge in a manner that reflects upon the past, present, and future; and creates spaces of learning, community, and interaction. Worley and Palacios mobilize the indigenous concepts cholel, k'anel, and cha'anil to explain that "the heavy performatic character (cha'anil) of Maya writing (ts'íib) helps (re) create and sustain the social networks and interactions (k'anel) of its public in spaces real and imagined (cholel)" (27). These concepts, along with ts'íib, are the framework by which the cultural products featured in the subsequent chapters are read. The three following chapters deal with weaving and embroidery, moving from an analysis of textiles themselves to their broader relationships and significations in other contexts. Chapter 2 focuses on textiles to examine the significations woven or embroidered into the designs. Worley and Palacios show that these materials embody their creators as well as their current contexts, recent and generational histories, and social relations in a performance (cha'anil) that creates relationships (k'anel) in relation to space (cholel). The meanings worked into the fabric speak to the individual author of the piece and express the contemporary realities in which this author lives, making statements that counter popular narratives and express Maya cosmologies. This...

Bequeathing a World

In recent debates about climate change, a transmission model of ecological inheritance has apportioned responsibility for ecological damage to generations portrayed as locked in conflict, while depicting Earth as a worldly possession capable of being assigned to a set of heirs. With a focus on North America, this article examines assumptions about ownership, possession, dispositional authority, and succession embedded in the trope of bequeathing an ecologically compromised world to a receiving generation that worries it might be the last. Many of these assumptions create exclusions for those who already apprehend themselves as dispossessed. Indigenous conceptions of responsibility, temporality, and place suggest ways to begin to decolonise the rhetoric of ecological inheritance, allowing humans to inhabit the everyday under signs other than extinction, regardless of how things turn out.

Chinese Attitudes toward Intellectual Property Rights-Change and Continuity

Intellectual property has been central to Sino-US disputes in the past decades. The US government has taken various measures to compel China to enforce IP rights (IPR) protection in conformity with what would be acceptable by US standards, only to find differences persisting and these IPR disputes far from resolved. To better understand the tension between China and the US over IPR protection, this note provides a historical analysis of China’s IPR development from Late Qing to today, focusing on the changes and continuities in Chinese attitudes toward IPR across different periods. Without indigenous concepts of IPR, China was forced to accept western standards at a time of military and political weakness and has consequently remained vigilant against foreign domination in this field. However, China also gradually developed a genuine appreciation for modern IPR to the degree that would benefit China's economic development and status in the global community. A normative judgment on China's IPR protection would frustrate efforts at dispute resolution by assuming US standards of IPR protection as universally ideal. As China and the US continue to cooperate in trade and technology, mutual understanding and appreciation of a shared set of IP standards would be essential.