Indigenous Settlements Research Articles

Asymmetries and Climate Futures: Working with Waters in an Indigenous Australian Settlement

This paper focuses on a water management project in the remote Aboriginal community of Milingimbi, Northern Australia. Drawing on materials and experiences from two distinct stages of this project, we revisit a policy report and engage in ethnographic storytelling in order to highlight a series of sensing practices associated with water management. In the former, a working symmetry between Yolngu and Western water knowledges is actively sought through the practices of the project. However, in the latter, recurrent asymmetries in the research work continue to appear: a bilingual diagram of water usage is displayed but produces confusion; measuring a water hole for salinity, a member of the scientific team throws in a water meter, while a Yolngu elder prefers the telling of an ancestral story; a collaborative 3-D mapping exercise invites participation from community members but struggles to develop an outcome that differs from existing maps used by scientists and government staff. Focusing on these moments as subtle points of rupture, we suggest that attending to “seeing,” “telling,” and “mapping” in both stages of this water management project offers a way to explore the political work of crafting climate futures and beginning to interrogate differing means for “doing difference” within them.

Epistemological aspects of multilingualism in mathematics education: an inferentialist approach

ABSTRACTRecently the prevailing language-as-resource metaphor has been problematised and theorised. Using the philosophical theory of inferentialism, we trace an epistemological dimension of multilingualism in mathematics education and add it to the current language-as-resource discussions. With data from two different settings—a mathematics classroom in Sweden and a workshop in an indigenous settlement in Colombia—we show that in encounters between language practices and plural mathematics, the semantic and the epistemological are two sides of the same coin. Inferentialism captures such encounters without dichotomising either languages or mathematics. We contend that epistemological issues move beyond the scope of language-as-resource approaches, but they are not paths to improving school achievement. Neither are they matters of distinguishing between formal and informal language use. Rather, an epistemological dimension is about shaping meta-understandings of language diversity that are liberated from mathematics as fixed and pre-stablished knowledge.

The Historical Legacy of (Pre?)Colonial Indigenous Settlements in Mexico

What is the long-term impact of pre-colonial ethnic institutions? I examine the consequences of the fragmentation of local indigenous communities produced by Spanish rule in Mexico. To do this I make use of unique data from 18th century pueblos — the basis of modern-day counties — to study the institutional impact that the formation of these pueblos had on current development in Mexico. I find that after controlling for alternative mechanisms, counties encompassing more historical pueblos, are more developed, and have less poverty, but are more unequal today. The effects are more latent in places where pre-hispanic roots are deeper (historical Mesoamerica and high altitude areas), suggesting the institutional impact has a pre-colonial basis.

ECONOMIC INTERACTIVE SPACE: AN ADAPTATION OF COMMUNITY RESILIENCE MECHANISM IN AN ENCLAVE SETTLEMENT

Abstract The rapid urban growth at the periphery area developed by residential developers impacted on the socio-spatial segregation between new and pre-existing indigenous settlements. One phenomenon is that many indigenous settlements are enclaved in the new settlement area. Changes in landscape and environment around indigeneus settlement are occured as a result of a pressure. It is the main factor for suddened changes in the pattern of livelihood of enclaved settlement inhabitants. This article is intended to explain the findings on how the inhabitants of enclaved settlement respond and survive to these changes and pressures in the spatial context. The study employed descriptive analysis method by observing the characteristics of settlements by focusing on the quality of inhabitants’ life related to the spatial changes and segregations phenomena. The results of the study highlight that the spatial changes and the survival community are a form of adaptation procces to get economic benefit by making changes to their lands or buildings because of the residential development in its sorrounding. These phenomena resulted in the emergence of economic interactive space in the specific spatial arrangement. Keywords: enclaved settlements, economic interactive space, adaptation

Xenophon in a Black Sea Landscape: Settlement Models for the Iron Age on the Sinop Promontory (Turkey)

Research into the Iron Age of Anatolia has seldom paid sufficient attention to settlement patterns and the social organization of space. TheAnabasisby Xenophon records the observations of a Greek outsider who travelled across eastern Anatolia and along the Black Sea coast in 400bce, a time that was relatively early in the colonial process in this area. Xenophon's observations are used to establish a basic model for settlement in the Black Sea coastal region of Anatolia, which is then tested against the results of recent archaeological surveys and related research on the Sinop promontory. A fuller and richer model of indigenous Iron Age settlement and colonial engagement on the Sinop promontory is developed and considered in light of recent research on colonization in the western Mediterranean and northern Black Sea regions.

Land use and management in Benin Republic: An evaluation of the effectiveness of Land Law 2013-01

Inefficient land use and management is rampant in developing countries. The most patent manifestation of this is the chaotic state of land use practices in cities. It’s also demonstrated that the success of public policies and strategies in land use, urban planning, protection of natural resources, housing, agriculture, industry, transport and tourism, depends largely on the land resource management by the State and the Local Communities. Unfortunately, in the Republic of Benin, the land management is characterized by the lack of land mastership and the growing of land insecurity which did not promote sustained policy of investments and increased the failure of many peoples in Benin population, both in rural and in urban areas at the benefit of a minority. With the increasing competition for it access due to the rapid urbanization occurred in the last two decades, the land issue has become a major concern for the population and for the political and administrative authorities.To regulate the land access all over the country, in the National Assembly in May 2013, the Benin government introduced a Land Law project which was adopted by the National Assembly of Benin on the 14th of August, 2013. The law is a common framework regarding all lands; it integrates land acquisition procedures, expropriation procedures, public utility land management, environment and natural resources preservation, land property rights, conflict management, and the administrative structure for land management. But after four years of the Land Law 2013-01 being implemented, land use in Benin remains a huge challenge for the government. Indigenous settlements can often be found in wetlands and flood-prone areas along the city where communities established many years ago are exposed to urban risks and a degraded living environment in Cotonou, a major city and economic pole of Benin. The situation is worsened by the many conflicts occurring among communities due to unsecured land transactions.This study examines Land Law 2013-01 and its impact on land use and land ownership across Benin Republic. More specifically, it discusses the effectiveness and limitations of the law since its implementation. The structure of this paper is organized into five sections as follows. Section 1 introduces the context and objectives of the study. Section 2 presents a chronological evolution of land policies and the major changes in the land use from the colonial period to the post-colonial period. Section 3 introduces Land Law 2013-01. Section 4 discusses effectiveness and limitations of the law. Section 5 gives conclusions and recommendations. The key shortcomings include: a clear understanding of the multiple land access modes which is a necessary tool for sustainable land development, the legal dualism created by the coexistence of customary laws and the modern registration system, the vulnerability of legal land security and the inadequate land information management system.

Toward sustainable development: Lessons from vernacular settlements of Sri Lanka

From modern urban perspectives, indigenous housing practices are regarded as undeveloped, backward, and require improvements. They may be valid for measuring on the basis of standards alien to the communities. However, these perceptions have obfuscated the appreciation and potential adoption of holistic, culturally relevant, and traditionally tested approaches to planning and housing that have sustained communities for centuries.Sri Lankan indigenous settlements have been founded on principles and understanding acquired through the wisdom of Buddhism. For the Sri Lankan indigenous, sustainability has been an intrinsic accompaniment to everyday life, unlike articulated modern discourses. However, these traditions exert minimal benefits to recent housing practices, and researchers are looking elsewhere to develop mechanisms to infuse sustainability as a recently discovered issue of significance.The present study examines the principles underlying several indigenous settlements in Sri Lanka through close observations supported by documented evidence and demonstrates their validity and appropriateness for contemporary planning practices. This study argues that approaches to sustainability should be generated holistically from within rather than from the outside and offers several propositions that can redirect the contemporary housing and planning practices.

Importance of Proactive Malaria Case Surveillance and Management in Malaysia.

Although Plasmodium vivax infections in Malaysia are usually imported, a significant autochthonous outbreak of vivax malaria was detected in a remote indigenous (Orang Asli) settlement located in northern peninsular Malaysia. Between November 2016 and April 2017, 164 cases of P. vivax infection were detected. Although 83.5% of the vivax cases were identified through passive case detection and contact screening during the first 7 weeks, subsequent mass blood screening (combination of rapid diagnostic tests, blood films, and polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) of the entire settlement (N = 3,757) revealed another 27 P. vivax infections, 19 of which were asymptomatic. The mapped data from this active case detection program was used to direct control efforts resulting in the successful control of the outbreak in this region. This report highlights the importance of proactive case surveillance and timely management of malaria control in Malaysia as it nears malaria elimination.

Iberian amphorae beyond the mainland: imports in southwestern Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain)

This paper offers an integrated archaeological and geochemical study of Iberian amphora found at the indigenous settlement of Puig de Sa Morisca, in southwestern Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain). The results of the chemical characterisation and its comparison with a large database for this type of ceramic materials provide a first insight into trade of foodstuffs between the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands during the Iron Age. The results of this study show a considerable complexity in the Iberian amphorae arriving in the Balearic Islands. On the one hand, the study supports a previous hypothesis that certain amphora from eastern and southern Cossetania (current area of Tarragona and the Valles) arrived in the Islands; and on the other hand, it also demonstrates for the first time the arrival of some Laietanian (current area of Maresme -Mataro) products.

The urban grid and entangled planning cultures in Senegal

ABSTRACTIn Western (Eurocentric) research traditions of urban and planning histories, sub-Saharan Africa is generally denied an urban past, an urban settlement design culture, and especially an indigenous practice of grid planning. It is against this historiographic background that indigenous grid pattern settlements in Senegal are analysed, with relation to the gridded tradition of colonial settlement design. In light of both cultural sensitivities inherited in African studies and the diffusionist paradigm which seeks a supposed singular ‘origin’ for the grid plan – it is demonstrated that urban grid planning emerges independently in Senegal, before European colonization. In shifting the discussion from morphological essentialism regarding the genealogy of the grid towards a more interactive and processual approach of ‘entangled histories’, this article also provides insights into the dynamic criss-crossings between top-down and bottom-up cultures of urban planning. This Western-cum-indigenous formalistic entanglement is exemplified by analysing how such important contemporary Senegalese cities as Dakar, Touba, and Diourbel have been built. On the methodological level, we utilize a variety of secondary and primary sources, including archival material, an analysis of recent maps, satellite imagery, and direct observation.

A survey of beetles (Coleoptera) from the tundra surrounding the Nunalleq archaeological site, Quinhagak, southwestern Alaska.

This paper presents the results of a survey of beetles conducted in the vicinity of the archaeological site of Nunalleq, a pre-contact (16th-17th century AD) indigenous forager settlement located near the modern Yup’ik village of Quinhagak, in the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, southwestern Alaska. Records and habitat data are reported for 74 beetle taxa collected in tundra, riparian, aquatic and anthropogenic environments from a region of Alaska that has been poorly studied by entomologists. This includes the first mainland Alaskan record for the byrrhid Simplocaria metallica (Sturm). Beyond improving our knowledge of the local beetle fauna’s diversity and ecology, this survey provides the basis for comparisons between modern and sub-fossil beetle assemblages from Nunalleq and Quinhagak.

Finding Mid-19th Century Native Settlements: Cartographic and Archaeological Evidence from Central California

ABSTRACTHistorical maps have the potential to aid archaeological investigations into the persistence of Native American settlements during the mid-19th century, a time when many Native communities disappear from archaeological view. Focusing on Tomales Bay in central California, we evaluate the usefulness of historical maps as a way to discover and interpret archaeological deposits dating to the period, with the aim of better understanding indigenous patterns of residence at the transition from missionary to settler colonialism. In particular, we focus on diseños and plats created to document Mexican-era land grants as well as early maps produced by the General Land Office and United States Coast Survey. Although we note inconsistencies regarding the inclusion of indigenous settlements on historical maps, our case study offers an example of how archaeologists can employ historical maps and targeted archaeological ground-truthing to discover sites that are poorly represented in the historical and archaeological records.

Sociedades indígenas de la Alta Amazonía: Fortunas y adversidades (siglos XVII–XX)

“Until a few decades ago,” begins María Susana Cipolletti in her fascinating book, “it was generally assumed that cultural change came late to lowland South America, during the Rubber Boom [1875–1930]. Thus native societies had supposedly lived in a sort of historical limbo for extended periods. . . . We now know that the emergence, revitalization and decline of indigenous cultures during the colonial period compel us to give up this idea forever.” Historians and anthropologists of a certain age will recall that Amazonia was where you went to study native people who were unspoiled by Western civilization. The turning point came in 1978, when John Hemming published Red Gold: The Conquest of Brazilian Indians, 1500–1760. For the next twenty years, researchers in many disciplines brought Amazonian history sharply into focus. Favorite tropes—about “lost tribes” and “the last of this-or-that”—still hang on as a mainstay of freelance writers, but in scholarship they have mostly gone extinct.Cipolletti is an anthropologist and ethnohistorian whose careful research on far western Amazonia (in this case, modern Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) fills in our heretofore uncertain knowledge of colonial Spanish Amazonia (the Provincia de Maynas). Historical writing about Maynas has often been overshadowed by scholarship on nearby Brazil. Even the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, a separate and relatively insignificant part of the Spanish Empire, remain better known to most readers. Yet between 1638 and 1767, most of Spain’s immense Amazonian territory (roughly 320,000 square kilometers) was ruled by Jesuit missionaries from their base in Borja on the Marañón River. Jesuit authority stretched from Brazil to the Andean foothills. By 1767, when they were expelled from Ecuador and Peru, they had founded seventy-four missions.Sociedades indígenas de la Alta Amazonía brings together nine essays that appeared in European journals between 1988 and 2011 (Cipolletti taught in Germany), as well as three others that were originally published in Ecuador and Peru. I was particularly impressed by her painstaking reconstruction of the domino effect triggered by eighteenth-century slave trading, when Indians allied with Portuguese slave hunters pushed their prey westward into Spanish territory. In turn, these groups displaced others farther up the Napo and Putumayo Rivers almost to the Andes—reshaping the entire region’s social and economic configuration. At another point, she writes about Omagua people who made their peace with the priests and then mounted slaving expeditions from a major Jesuit outpost.Cipolletti takes on a foundational belief that persists today among many anthropologists and travel writers: timelessness. Researchers often have suggested that indigenous settlement in Amazonia followed a predictable pattern: stronger groups controlled the major rivers and their relatively abundant resources. Weaker ones were pushed into resource-poor hinterlands, where they scratched out a living and remained unchanged for centuries. Cipolletti stands this argument on its head. “It was precisely among the hinterland groups,” she writes, “that profound changes took place, because they were forced to adopt new forms of subsistence and livelihood that were traditionally foreign to them.” Surviving in isolation required “plasticity,” not blind adherence to the past. Her book is loaded with such gems.Cipolletti’s research reminds us that historical analysis, incomplete as it may often be, remains essential to our understanding of modern societies. This is especially true in “shatter zones” (James Scott’s phrase) like the Amazon. Her book shines a new light on the enduring mystery of native survival in the face of almost overwhelming odds.

Spatial Typo-morphology of Residential House in Supporting to the Resilience of the Indigenous Settlement in the Sub-urban Area, Case: Enclave Settlement in the New Town of Gading Serpong

Spatial Typo-morphology of Residential House in Supporting to the Resilience of the Indigenous Settlement in the Sub-urban Area, Case: Enclave Settlement in the New Town of Gading Serpong

Markets and monarchs: indigenous urbanism in postcolonial Kampala

ABSTRACTAlthough small in number, indigenous urban settlements were of substantial social, cultural and political significance in precolonial Africa. However, many studies of urbanisation on the continent begin with colonisation. As a result, scholars have tended to overemphasise the influence of the colonisers, precluding an analysis of the ability of indigenous populations to resist, reimagine and remake colonial visions of urban life. This paper examines the historical relationship between the Baganda people and the Ugandan capital. Kampala was planned as the commercial centre of British colonial enterprise in Uganda; however, it developed in a region with an indigenous history of urban settlement. The Kibuga – the capital of Buganda and seat of the king – was once the most populous urban agglomeration in the East African interior. Drawing upon a combination of archival research, life history interviews and an ethnographic study of a central marketplace, I argue that while many of the categories and divisions of colonial rule are still visible in Kampala, the Baganda have engaged in collective subjective practices to reimagine and remake urban life, centered on the role of the monarchy. These practices illustrate both the opportunities and limitations of ‘indigenous urbanism’ as a response to the historical subjugation of indigenous populations.

Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data

Satellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates. Only slight topographic modifications remain, typically associated with middens. Nonetheless, surface scatters, as well as the soil characteristics they produce, can serve as quantifiable indicators of an archaeological site, detectable by analyzing remote sensing imagery. A variety of pre-processed, very diverse data sets went through a process of image registration, with the intention to combine multispectral bands to feed two different semi-automatic direct detection algorithms: a posterior probability, and a frequentist approach. Two 5 × 5 km2 areas in the northwestern Dominican Republic with diverse environments, having sufficient imagery coverage, and a representative number of known indigenous site locations, served each for one approach. Buffers around the locations of known sites, as well as areas with no likely archaeological evidence were used as samples. The resulting maps offer quantifiable statistical outcomes of locations with similar pixel value combinations as the identified sites, indicating higher probability of archaeological evidence. These still very experimental and rather unvalidated trials, as they have not been subsequently groundtruthed, show variable potential of this method in diverse environments.

Comparison of Gas Emission Crater Geomorphodynamics on Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas (Russia), Based on Repeat Very-High-Resolution Stereopairs

Gas Emission Craters (GEC) represent a new phenomenon in permafrost regions discovered in the north of West Siberia. In this study we use very-high-resolution Worldview satellite stereopairs and Resurs-P images to reveal and measure the geomorphic features that preceded and followed GEC formation on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas. Analysis of DEMs allowed us to: (1) distinguish different terrain positions of the GEC, at the foot of a gentle slope (Yamal), and on an upper edge of a terrace slope; (2) notice that the formation of both Yamal and Gydan GECs were preceded by mound development; (3) measure a funnel-shaped upper part and a cylindrical lower part for each crater; (4) and measure the expansion and plan form modification of GECs. Although the general characteristics of both craters are similar, there are differences when comparing both key sites in detail. The height of the mound and diameter of the resulting GEC in Yamal exceeds that in Gydan; GEC-1 was surrounded by a well-developed parapet, while AntGEC did not show any considerable accumulative body. Thus, using very-high-resolution remote sensing data allowed us to discriminate geomorphic features and relief positions characteristic for GEC formation. GECs are a potential threat to commercial facilities in permafrost and indigenous settlements, especially because at present there is no statistically significant number of study objects to identify the local environmental conditions in which the formation of new GEC is possible.

Solid waste management during monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Ibadan municipality Nigeria

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the management of solid waste during monthly environmental sanitation exercise in different residential areas of Ibadan municipality, Nigeria. The study also examined how the government performed its responsibility during the exercise. This is expected to assist in improving the conduct of sanitation exercise in one of Africa’s populous indigenous settlement, Ibadan.Design/methodology/approachCollection of data for the study was through participant observation, administration of questionnaire, and interview. As a way of participating and observing, the authors were involved in the conduct of the exercise in the different residential areas of Ibadan municipality. Questionnaire was administered on respondents drawn from one of every ten buildings (10 percent) in the study area using systematic sampling technique. A respondent (preferably a household head) was surveyed from a floor of selected residential building. A total of 367 copies of questionnaire were completed and returned for analysis. Information provided in the questionnaire was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Interview was conducted to collect information from the head of environmental sanitation unit in each of the five local government areas of Ibadan municipality.FindingsThe most widely used medium of storing solid waste was the polythene bag, which accounted for 22.8 percent of all the storage receptacles and was employed by 50.4 percent of the residents. Similarly, residents employed a combination of waste disposal methods which included burning, and dumping in the drains, river banks and on vacant plots. Methods of solid waste storage and disposal varied across the different residential areas of Ibadan municipality. It was established that despite the huge amount of money expended on the collection of solid waste during the exercise, only government-owned vans constituted less environmental health hazard.Practical implicationsIt would assist in evaluating the success and failure of the monthly environmental sanitation exercise. It would also reveal to policy makers’ direction to which policy initiative should focus. Findings of the study could serve as a guide for the management of solid waste from similar exercises in countries of the developing world with similar socio-economic and environmental sanitation practices.Originality/valuePresented in this paper are results of an investigation into solid waste management during monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Ibadan municipality, Nigeria. The study was an attempt at examining the different storage and disposal methods employed by households in the management of solid waste during the exercise. It also revealed what is committed financially into the collection and transportation of solid waste for final disposal during the exercise by government.

Ecodegradation and Indigenous Livelihoods:

El pueblo indígena Cucapá ha enfrentado uno de los más grandes ejemplos de la dominación sobre los recursos hídricos: la colonización del delta del río Colorado. Se utilizan sistemas social-ecológicos para analizar la influencia que la degradación ambiental tiene en los modos de vida indígenas, particularmente, los eventos de degradación ambiental que han afectado a El Mayor Cucapá desde 1940. Se utilizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas, observación participante y compilación bibliográfica para identificar factores de degradación; dicha información fue ligada cronológicamente a los cambios en los modos de vida descritos por la comunidad: 1) la inundación de 1980; 2) el flujo de aguas residuales desde 2007; y 3) el terremoto de 2010, los cuales fueron los factores que, se encontró, han reestructurado los procesos de retroalimentación dentro de El Mayor, lo que ha desconectado a la población con el río Hardy y ha afectado su bienestar. Además, la percepción negativa que la población tiene sobre la calidad del agua limita el éxito de proyectos de restauración y la participación de la población en ellos. Mejores condiciones ambientales podrían incrementar las oportunidades de bienestar para El Mayor y reforzar la conexión con el territorio, sin embargo, políticas públicas integrales también son necesarias.

A 200-year archaeozoological record of Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) life history as revealed through ion microprobe oxygen isotope ratios in otoliths

We measured δ18O values in modern and archaeological Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) otoliths recovered from Aialik Bay on the Pacific coast of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, using a high precision ion microprobe. Values of δ18O were measured in as many as sixty 10-μm spots along 2–3mm transects from the otolith core to its margin with high spot-to-spot analytical precision (δ18O±0.3‰). We obtained sample densities along a linear transect that were at least 2 to 3 times greater than micromilling/conventional mass spectrometry techniques. From modern Pacific cod otoliths (using in situ temperatures from electronic archive tags) we calibrated an empirical fractionation equation of aragonite δ18O to sea water temperature (r2=0.75, p<0.001, δ18OA=2.13–0.25T°C) and from which we predicted the thermography of fish life history and historic nearshore water temperature in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). Sinuous variability of δ18O values along core-to-margin transects likely reflect seasonal temperature changes and suggest similar longevity between modern and archaeological cod. Generally increasing δ18O values from the otolith core region to the margin revealed an ontogenetic migration from warmer nearshore habitat during the first year of life to cooler deeper waters at later ages, a behavior that has not changed over the past 200years. A decline in the average δ18O of otolith cores from archaeological (~200+, ~100+ years before present, YBP) to modern otoliths suggest increasing sea surface temperatures from the late Little Ice Age to present. Temperatures calculated from the δ18O in aragonite suggest a 2–3°C rise in coastal marine sea surface temperatures in the GOA over the last 200years. Implications of indigenous subsistence resource use and settlement patterns are discussed in light of major shifts in GOA water temperatures and biological regimes.