Indigenous Struggles Research Articles

Indigenous Politics of Emancipatory Education in Bolivia: The Role of the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata

This article analyzes how the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata in Bolivia challenged the feudal system known as gamonalismo in the 1930s-1940s within the broader context of Indigenous struggle. It demonstrates that distinct currents of Indigenous education, including indigenismo, Caciques-Apoderados’ Centro Educativo de Aborígenes “Bartolomé de las Casas,” and Alcaldes Mayores Particulares’ escuelas particulares, informed the Escuela-Ayllu’s community-led education. It argues that Warisata’s community members turned the Escuela-Ayllu into a political space of communal democracy that undermined the rural order structured by internal colonialism.

Land-based resistance: Enacting Indigenous self-determination and kai sovereignty

This article outlines the role of land relations in the advancement of food sovereignty in the settler colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand by exploring how land-based anti-colonial resistance movements, including the recent #ProtectIhumātao campaign, can inform food system transformation. First, this article draws on theories of Indigenous food sovereignty, land sovereignty, and critical property theory to argue that in settler colonial contexts, food sovereignty movements must take a critical approach to questions of the state and sovereignty, property relations, and Indigenous struggles for territorial authority and self-determination. Drawing on land-based resistance movements which have included food production as a method of reclamation, this article further proposes a need to understand food sovereignty in the Aotearoa context as firmly grounded in Māori land sovereignty and territorial authority. Finally, this article explores how the struggle to protect Ihumātao ruptured the seemingly settled nature of property relations and state sovereignty, opening space for the articulation of new modes of land governance and new constitutional arrangements more conducive to Māori aspirations for land management and stewardship—including food sovereignty.

The emergence of the non-Indigenous people: Confronting colonialism in the translation of Indigenous myths

What, to echo Walter Benjamin, is the task of the translator in interpreting an Indigenous myth? The author faced thorny issues of translation and colonial violence working with an Indigenous population in a Venezuelan rainforest. Renowned healer, storyteller, and political leader Santiago Rivera performed the myth of “The emergence of the non-Indigenous people”, framing it as not only addressed to the author but as being about him. The analysis begins with work by Indigenous scholars Chris Teuton, Cutcha Risling Baldy and Gerald Vizenor in interpreting an ironic section about how Indigenous people came to be poor and non-Indigenous people wealthy, interpreted by a missionary as evidence of an Indigenous inferiority complex. Rivera brilliantly posed fundamental questions for translating Indigenous myths, questioning who gets to determine what constitutes a myth and what a decolonial translation entails, by tying the myth’s action to struggles to confront non-Indigenous exploitation of their lands, coastal water, labour and women’s sexuality. Just as the performance challenged the author to participate in Indigenous struggles, it raises questions for the rich mythic analyses and decolonial ambitions of ‘ontological turn’ scholars Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Philippe Descola, extending questions posed by Descola’s Araweté interlocutors. A synopsis of this article can be found here.

‘Until the land title is in my hands, the land is not sold!’: land, violence, and Indigenous survivance in Michoacán, Mexico

ABSTRACT In this article, we use a settler capitalism framework that centers racialized gender violence in the pueblo of San Miguel Nocutzepo. We tell a story about how neoliberal policy in Mexico permitted the privatization of formerly collectively held Indigenous ejido land, which resulted in selloffs to outsiders who invested in avocado production and ended up being controlled by organized crime. Specifically, we point to the intersections between the regional agricultural recomposition and the social fabric of life in Nocutzepo as we attribute the land repurposing that the avocado-producing region of Michoacán has undergone with the encroachment of settler capitalism and organized crime. We also, however, highlight narratives of survivance in Nocutzepo that shed light on the various ways people faced violence to protect their family, pueblo, and land. Finally, we focus on a mothers-led struggle for youth and community empowerment and well-being or buen vivir that lobbied for a new Indigenous bilingual intercultural school in Nocutzepo to respond to the decline of subsistence agriculture. Our findings caution that while not all Indigenous struggles result in collective victories, everyday practices of resistance form an essential basis of survival.

Indigenously controlled tourism as struggle for autonomy: the Pataxó Jaqueira Reserve in Brazil

This study analyses the emblematic experience of an indigenous group in Brazil, the Pataxó, who was able to set up and exercise strong control over an indigenous tourism project: the Jaqueira Reserve. Based on document analysis, interviews, and observations, we show how the Jaqueira Reserve was consolidated not only as a strongly autonomous initiative but also as constituent of a greater quest for autonomy (to craft aspired livelihoods conducive to cultural revitalization and environmental protection). The Pataxó experience shows that indigenous tourism can be an instrument in greater indigenous struggles, and as such can develop not only despite marginalization but also against it.

Against Latin American Regionalisms: The 1927 Brussels Congress and the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas

AbstractThis article examines the encounter of activists from the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA) with African, African American, and Asian anticolonial intellectuals through the League Against Imperialism (LAI), founded at the 1927 Brussels Congress. Drawing from LADLA’s newspaper El Libertador, letters from LADLA leaders, and speeches and resolutions in the LAI archive, it studies how exchanges begun in Brussels influenced debates in radical circles in the Americas. The article builds on extant scholarship and makes two primary interventions. First, it argues that a closer look at LADLA’s participation in the LAI shifts the traditional understanding of interwar Latin American regionalist ideologies, which LADLA rejected in favor of drawing connections to anti-imperialist movements around the world. Second, it argues that the exchange in Brussels influenced LADLA to eventually expand its initial focus on Indigenous struggles to think more critically about Black communities, including Black migrant labor, in political organizing.

Where is Palestine in the Anzacs’ Palestine Campaign? Israel and the Struggle for Indigeneity in Commemorative State Practice

At the end of the second decade of the twenty first century, Israel has sought to align itself with a range of Indigenous struggles both to conceal the ongoing nature of settler-colonialism and to attempt to position the Zionist-state project as an indigenous one. This article examines one instance of this trend, in the recent commemorative events surrounding the centenary of the Palestine Campaign, a military campaign fought by Australian soldiers during World War I. The article argues that official Israeli commemoration of this campaign, and the recent foregrounding of the role of Aboriginal servicemen in it, is an example of Israel’s indigenous diplomacy, which aims to occlude Palestinian presence and history in their ancestral lands. It argues that this practice ultimately does not serve the purpose it is intended to fulfil, but merely delays the work of imagining a just future in Israel/Palestine.

Kidnapped Water and Living Otherwise in a World of Drought, Fires, and Floods

This essay considers how the production of water as a resource that can be extracted and commodified is situated at the core of colonial capitalist economies. Water has become a volatile means to secure economic growth under conditions of accelerated aridification and scarcity. The focus of the analysis is the struggle of the United Front of Nahua Communities in Puebla, Mexico against the water bottling company Danone Bonafont. Like other Indigenous struggles, the significance of this case goes beyond water rights and environmental justice. Shifting the focus to relationships of water—the interactions between the human and non-human worlds, this paper demonstrates that conflicts over water, the life, and energy it represents reflects not only different value systems but also a disconnect about the place of humans in the wider world and in the current context of climate catastrophes, fires, and droughts. I develop a “confluence of plural bodies” approach to explore how “water as life” may offer us the language to envision alternative understandings of liberation.

A Critical Analyses on the History of Indigenous Resistance Movements: Lessons for Contemporary Struggles

The research paper, " A Critical Analyses on the History of Indigenous Resistance Movements: Lessons for Contemporary Struggles," comprehensively examines Indigenous resistance movements globally. The primary objectives of this study are to unearth historical narratives of Indigenous resistance, analyse their characteristics, and extract lessons applicable to contemporary struggles for Indigenous rights and social justice. The research employs a multi-faceted methodology to achieve these objectives, encompassing extensive literature review, archival research, and qualitative analysis of selected case studies. Ethical considerations in Indigenous research guide our data collection and analysis process. The key findings of this research illuminate a rich tapestry of Indigenous resistance movements spanning diverse regions and periods. These movements exhibit remarkable resilience, adaptability, and a commitment to cultural preservation in the face of colonial oppression. The study identifies commonalities in their strategies, including grassroots organising, cultural revitalisation, and alliances with sympathetic non-Indigenous groups. The implications of our research are profound. By revisiting the history of Indigenous resistance, we provide contemporary Indigenous communities and activists with valuable insights and inspiration. These historical lessons can inform present-day strategies, contribute to preserving Indigenous cultures, and bolster the pursuit of justice, equity, and self-determination for Indigenous peoples globally. In conclusion, this research underscores the enduring legacy of Indigenous resistance movements and their relevance in addressing the pressing challenges Indigenous communities face today. By mapping this history and distilling its lessons, we aim to promote a deeper understanding of Indigenous struggles and foster solidarity in pursuing a more just and inclusive world.

An Open Pit of Procedural Violence: Insights From an Indigenous Struggle Against Coal Mining in Jharkhand, India

An Open Pit of Procedural Violence: Insights From an Indigenous Struggle Against Coal Mining in Jharkhand, India

Unsettling the Conversation on Trans Rights

This article argues that trans rights are trapped within settler frameworks of gender and rights, therefore making them incompatible with and in opposition to Indigenous lifeways. Starting with the premise that engagement with the settler state is not benign, the authors argue that trans rights-based organizing diverts and thwarts the potential for solidarity work with Indigenous struggles for freedom and is inherently limited in its potential to secure Indigenous futurity. The authors hope that trans studies and collective struggles organized around gender embrace anti-colonial and anti-racist praxis to result in tangible and discursive outcomes to bolster Indigenous cultural continuity and land-based connections. The authors use this article to call for a collective movement toward gender self-determination that is sensitive and reflexive of settler colonialism and produces tangible decolonial actions that will benefit the lives of Indigenous Two-Spirit, trans, and nonbinary people and align with movements for Indigenous self-determination. Queer and trans settlers are urged to begin a process of accountability and to engage a decolonial praxis to support Indigenous decolonization in all its forms—fighting for land claims, defending water and land rights, and supporting the resurgence of Indigenous erotics and gender formations. To be truly decolonial we suggest that trans political organizing moves beyond the settler framework of rights and toward Indigenous solidarity in politics, practices, and shared struggles, foregrounding anti-colonial, anti-racist, and pro-Indigenous values.

Conquistador Settler-colonialism & the Crises of Migrant Muslim Complicity

ABSTRACT Many migrant Muslims to “conquistador settler-colonial” U.S./Canada are driven to become good – settlers because of the devastating imperialist conditions reaped upon our original homelands. However, no Muslim political-theological works address Indigenous struggles or seriously engage settler-colonial studies. Migrant Muslims assume that the U.S./Canada are democratic-secular despite their animation by white-supremacist religious doctrines as Manifest Destiny. This contribution addresses the Qur’anic bases for a globally applicable decolonial, anti-statist/capitalist, social justice, Islam or what I refer to as Anarcha-Islam Drawing on the Qur’anic perspective of ethical-political responsibilities of Muslim hijra (migration), I argue how non-Black migrant Muslims in exile must seriously re-examine their ethical-political commitments and construct mutual alliances with Indigenous and Black peoples in their demands for land’s repatriation as well as reparations.

Ungovernable Counter-Conduct: Ivan Illich’s Critique of Governmentality

Within Michel Foucault’s own conceptualization of governmentality, there is little room for something like ‘ungovernable life’. The latter seems to hint at a form of social conduct beyond power-relations, which would offend Foucault’s basic philosophical postulates. I argue that this identification between governmentality and power as such demonstrates a one-sided focus on the history of Western power-relations. By opposing Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality to Ivan Illich’s critical history of government, I delineate indigenous struggles against governmentalization as a form of ungovernable counter-conduct. Throughout his books from the 1970s to 1990s, Illich wrote a critical history of government surprisingly similar to Foucault’s, from the pastorate to modern political economy. However, rather than merely describing this history, Illich argued governmentalization alienated human beings from their autonomy. As a former missionary priest, he criticized the Church’s and modern governments’ attempts to subsume populations under a conduct of conducts. He advocated anticolonial resistance to subsumption under Western governmental regimes. In Illich’s appreciation of decolonized life, an ungovernable form of life can be discovered, which I defend with the example of Zapatismo and indigenous self-government through mandar obedeciendo.

Indigenous collective land titling and the creation of leftovers: Insights from Paraguay and Cambodia

AbstractCollective land titling often drags on for decades, while private land concessions and holdings do not face the same problem, creating ‘leftovers’ of land available for Indigenous peoples to attempt to collectively title. In two ethnographic case studies in Cambodia and Paraguay, we analyse community‐based Indigenous land titling by focusing on the on‐the‐ground dynamics of property relations, Indigenous livelihood shifts and ecological change. In both countries, large agricultural players implemented a staggering change in local landscapes through deforestation, configuring new realities that in turn feed into local environments and titling processes. Adapting their livelihoods to living in the leftovers, in Cambodia, the Indigenous Bunong shifted from rice to rubber as they navigated the slow titling process. In Paraguay, some Indigenous Guarani shifted from corn to cattle by renting out their collectively titled land. The case studies show that the liberal titling approach to secure Indigenous lands overestimates the ability of title to remove land from capitalist logics such as the push to rent or sell, while some spaces of autonomy are opened. We critique the liberal approaches to formalising title, where Indigenous struggles for their ways of life are funnelled into fighting for collective property.

A People’s Sea: Palestine and Popular Thalassopolitics in the Mediterranean Sea

This article draws on fieldwork, interviews, and archival research on the maritime campaign of the International Palestine Solidarity Movement to challenge the embargo on Gaza. I make three main arguments: first, in addressing the Mediterranean Sea as a platform for international solidarity, the Ships to Gaza inadvertently contrived a novel and largely understudied instance of popular politics at sea, which I coin ‘popular thalassopolitics’. I theorize this emergence in its own right and not solely within state-centric analyses or as a mere expansion of the terrestrial plane. This article urges us to read the sea through the lens of internationalist solidarity and the popular politics it invokes. Second, the popular thalassopolitics of the Ships charts and navigates an ‘insurgent terrain’, creatively assembling the well-established activist practice of solidarity vis-à-vis a decades-long indigenous struggle in Palestine with an emerging perception of the sea as a common and shared but dissimilar space for action. Thirdly, I argue that this history of the popular thalassopolitics of the Ships allows us to reread the scholarship on refugee rescue boats and civil activism at sea. This reading inadvertently challenges a Eurocentric bias in the emerging politicization of the sea as a humanitarianism space in which western saviors come to the aid of agentless refugees. La mer des peuples : La Palestine et la thalassopolitique populaire en mer Méditerranée

Academic-community solidarities in land occupation as an Indigenous claim to health: culturally centered solidarity through voice infrastructures

In this work, we explore the role of land in Indigenous theorizing about health, embodied in a land occupation that resisted a climate-adaptive development project imposed on the community from the top down by the local government. The proposed development project of building a stop bank on the Oroua River sought to alienate Māori from the remnants of the land. Embedded in and emerging from a culture-centered academic-community-activist partnership, an advisory group of Māori community members om the “margins of the margins” came together to participate in the occupation of the land to claim it as the basis for securing their health. This study describes the occupation and the role of our academic-activist intervention in it, theorizing land occupation as the root of decolonizing health emerging from Indigenous struggles for sovereignty (Tino rangatiratanga). The community advisory group members brought together in a culture-centered intervention, collaborated in partnership with the academic team, generated video narratives that resisted and dismantled the communicative inversions produced by the settler colonial state to perpetuate its extractive interests and produced communicative resources that supported the land occupation led by the broader Whānau. This study concludes by arguing that the culture-centered approach offers a meta-theory for decolonizing health communication by building voice infrastructures that support Indigenous land struggles.

The Indigenous Struggle against ‘New’ Extractivism in the Peruvian Amazon

At the root of much of the deforestation, land rights violations, human rights abuses and ultimately the continuation of unequal, neocolonial North-South relations are the two-fold phenomena of global market pressures for extractivism and mass production of resources and the militarization of response to social conflicts created by these activities. We will investigate the ‘new’ extractivism economic activities from the perspective of the violence perpetrated by assemblages of power against indigenous protest movements in the Peruvian Amazon region. Specifically, we will probe a grassroots’ response to the way Peru’s elites have integrated the country within the global economic system: we focus on Indigenous peoples’ protests in 2008-9 against the new regulation to open the Amazon for development of resources by private companies carried out by Peru’s President Alan García, on the grounds that it represented a threat to their natural resources and livelihood.

Interpreting spatial struggles in the historical record: Indigenous urbanism and erasure in 20th-century Mexico

This article explores a historical struggle for a right to the city in Oaxaca, Mexico, when a mostly Indigenous-run street market resisted an elite-led urban renewal campaign centered on removing the market from city center. Bringing this case of Indigenous urbanism from Latin America in conversation with work on Indigenous productions of space and the settler colonial city mainly produced in Anglophone contexts, it demonstrates the utility of concepts central to settler colonial theory “dispossession and erasure” for the Latin American urban context. It does so through an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of discourse analysis as an interpretive strategy for uncovering the racial dynamics of such socio-spatial struggles using state archives in Mexico during a time period for which racial identifiers were rarely used. The article shows the dispossession of Indigenous lands and lifeways as not only foundational to the colonial city but also ongoing, produced through different mechanisms in different historical moments. At the same time, by foregrounding an Indigenous struggle against peripheralization and erasure, the project is shown to be perpetually incomplete.

How Far Does the Diverse Economies Approach Take Us?

How Far Does the Diverse Economies Approach Take Us?

From Reconciliation to ‘Idle No More’: ‘Articulation’ and Indigenous Struggle in Canada

How do different discourses lead to changes in understandings of the world, identity, meaning and practice in Indigenous politics in Canada? This article introduces the poststructuralist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Canadian Indigenous studies and demonstrates that it is a unique and effective theory for understanding this question. It finds that in the last few decades, two principal discourses regarding Indigenous peoples and colonialism have circulated in the Canadian body politic—namely, (1) “reconciliation” and (2) “Idle No More.” These discourses shape the identities of both Indigenous peoples and settlers, construct understandings of the world, and determine the meaning of related political struggle, leading to real world practice and politics. The reconciliation discourse has at times been effective at becoming a dominant discourse and has often been able to constitute the meaning of important terms such as ‘decolonization.’ It serves to pacify Indigenous resistance to colonialism. Counter-hegemonic discourses on reconciliation such as ‘Idle No More’ have been able to challenge that discourse. Academic literature, newspaper articles, YouTube videos, podcasts developed by Indigenous scholars, public letters and speeches delivered by Canadian politicians are analyzed to examine the utterances and enunciations of the two discourses.