Modern Indigenous People Research Articles

Márkomeannu#2118, the Future is Already Here: Imagining a Sámi Future at the Intersection of Art and Activism

The 2018 edition of the Sámi festival Márkomeannu elaborated a narrative about the future of both the environment and society by articulating fears of an oncoming apocalypse and hopes for Indigenous Sámi futures through a concept presented to festivalgoers via site-specific scenography, visual narratives, and performances. This essay, addressing the festival as a site of artistic activism, reveals the conceptual bases and cultural significance of the festival-plot in relation to Indigenous Sámi cosmologies, the past and the possible future(s) in our time marked by escalating climate change. I argue that Márkomeannu-2018, providing a narrative about the future in which, amidst the Western societies’ dystopic colonial implosion, Indigenous people thrive, can be regarded as an expression of Indigenous Futurism. Counterpointing 19th-century theories predicting the imminent vanishing of Indigenous peoples while positioning the Sámi as modern Indigenous peoples with both a past and a future, this narrative constitutes an act of empowerment. Sámi history and intangible cultural heritage constituted repositories of meaning whereas a folktale constituted a framework for the festival-plot while providing an allegorical tool to read the present.

Weaving Baduy Identity in Media Sign of Weaving Baduy Identity in “Desa Kanekes” Website (Spatial Semiotic Discourse Analysis

This paper explores the contribution of media in changing the image of an indigenous community by controlling some information of the tribal values possessed by the Baduy tribe in the media. The media that represent Baduy Tribe to public is called "Desa Kanekes" which invite readers to see the transformation from isolate tribe to tolerate tribe y. Framing in commodification spaces are identified in this media so that by using discourse framing by Foucault, Barthes's semiology, and commodification by Christ Ryan, this paper will describe and interpret the hidden sign in the website. Baduy’sidentity has unknowingly changed direction from farmers to craftsmen. The website contains articles that certainly support the government program to increase the production of weaving that can support the economic life of the Baduy community. The view point of Baduy life principle which is living a simple and spiritual life is changing through this website. Baduy tribe is directed to become modern indigenous people. This process can be seen on this website that is classified into two spatial codes, i.e. public space and private space. Public spaces are represented in Baduy festival columns and Meretas Mimpi. The private spaces are represented in writing about ritual cultivation and weaving. Ambiguity occurs in most articles because the unexplained division of custom territory that is the basis of the Baduy interaction boundaries . The identity of the actual Baduy (Inner Baduy) does not receive any portion in this website. This could impact to their existence in the future. There is an indication that the Baduy Luar is Baduy thoroughly. This is certainly contrary to reality.

Shigir idol: Origin of monumental sculpture and ideas about the ways of preservation of the representational tradition

The article presents some new ideas about the Big Shigir Idol erection, ways of positioning and fixing the wooden sculpture on a Mansy sanctuary in trans-Uralian taiga. According to art study criteria, the Shigir Idol can be referred to monumental sculpture. Its Mesolithic age allows to put it at the beginning of the pre-literate period monumental sculpture range in Eurasian history – sculptures of Yamnaya, Chemurchek and Okunevo cultures, Scythian deer stones and Middle Age stone idols. The Big Shigir Idol's anthropomorphic iconographic characteristics, synthesis with its decorative features demonstrate a fully formed representational tradition. In spite of the idea of Ural Mesolithic Age origin, the author believes that the Shigir Idol's representational tradition could have been formed in the local Taiga environment unlike the art and craft tradition. The discussion concerning the problem of the long existence of this tradition follows the part about the spreading of anthropomorphic representations in cultures of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages in Northern Europe, the part about the representational traditions trends. As for the problem of Mesolithic representational tradition preservation in wooden sculpture up to modern and contemporary times in modern indigenous peoples in Western Siberia, it is not possible to solve it with archaeological sources yet. The author justifies this idea and suggests an original way to solve it.

Памятники Наньгуаньли и Наньгуаньли Дун в контексте реконструкции хозяйственного уклада ранненеолитического населения острова Тайвань.

In the 1960s, K.C. Chang proposed that Tapenkeng (Dabenkeng) inhabitants could be migrants from mainland China to the island and the ancestors of modern indigenous peoples. The first settlers could be characterized by corded pottery, a wide range of fishing tools, polished stone axes and adzes, marine economy and shell ornaments. The article presents the results of investigations of archaeological sites in Tainan County – Nankuanli (Nanguangli) and Nankuanli Tung (Nanguangli Dong) which provide essential and detailed information regarding the question of the peopling of Taiwan approximately 6000 years ago. The article focuses on publications that discuss the economy and way of life of the first settlers of the Taiwanese seaside who strongly relied on marine food resources. Faunal data played an important role in the reconstruction of resource use. A big amount of shell remains indicate their significant role in the diet of ancient inhabitants. About 21 families and 49 species of gastropods and bivalves were identified by Taiwanese scientists. Remnants of dogs, deer, wild boar and muntjac were also found. Fish bones was the most abundant food resource in the Nankuanli region – 17 fish families can be identified. Analyses of the excavated materials indicate a gradual shift of these settlements from temporary to places of permanent habitation and intensive exploration of nearby environments. Taiwanese archaeologists also conclude that the inhabitants of this area were not isolated and had strong long-distance connections with Penghu archipelago and the eastern coast of Taiwan (Pinglin in Hualien) from where they sourced raw materials such as jade and olivine basalt. Therefore, they had sailing crafts suitable for open sea voyaging. Also, according to the finds of carbonized rice and millet remains these settlers had learned advanced farming technology.

Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity

Recent genomic studies of both ancient and modern indigenous people of the Americas have shed light on the demographic processes involved during the first peopling. The Pacific Northwest Coast proves an intriguing focus for these studies because of its association with coastal migration models and genetic ancestral patterns that are difficult to reconcile with modern DNA alone. Here, we report the low-coverage genome sequence of an ancient individual known as "Shuká Káa" ("Man Ahead of Us") recovered from the On Your Knees Cave (OYKC) in southeastern Alaska (archaeological site 49-PET-408). The human remains date to ∼10,300 calendar (cal) y B.P. We also analyze low-coverage genomes of three more recent individuals from the nearby coast of British Columbia dating from ∼6,075 to 1,750 cal y B.P. From the resulting time series of genetic data, we show that the Pacific Northwest Coast exhibits genetic continuity for at least the past 10,300 cal y B.P. We also infer that population structure existed in the late Pleistocene of North America with Shuká Káa on a different ancestral line compared with other North American individuals from the late Pleistocene or early Holocene (i.e., Anzick-1 and Kennewick Man). Despite regional shifts in mtDNA haplogroups, we conclude from individuals sampled through time that people of the northern Northwest Coast belong to an early genetic lineage that may stem from a late Pleistocene coastal migration into the Americas.

ANCESTRAL O'ODHAM: AKIMEL O'ODHAM CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD

Archaeologists have long used the prehistoric inhabitants of the Phoenix Basin in south-central Arizona as an example of a failed or collapsed society, and most prehistorians still assert that Hohokam material culture patterns ended at the close of the Classic period (circa A.D. 1150–1450). Although researchers are increasingly recognizing connections between prehistoric and modern indigenous people, little consensus exists regarding the cause or causes of the dramatic alterations in material culture patterns that occurred in the region. Most archaeologists who have studied the changes at the end of the Classic period, however, have not fully considered the implications of previous and subsequent conditions, including similar and seemingly abrupt shifts in cultural practices that occurred both before and after this time. This paper uses Akimel O'Odham (i.e., Pima) cultural knowledge to contextualize the “Hohokam Collapse.” We show that this perspective of culture history explains the relationship between prehistoric and historic populations and answers many of the long-standing questions regarding cultural variation in the Phoenix Basin.

Review: Assent among Modern Indigenous Peoples

Reviewed is X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent by Scott Richard Lyons.

Mexican Indigenismo, Choctaw Self-Determination, and Todd Downing's Detective Novels

Todd Downing, the Choctaw author of ten detective novels published between 1933 and 1945, is one of the most prolific and most neglected American Indian writers of the twentieth century. In eight of the novels, Downing appropriates and refigures Mexican indigenismo —the official post-revolutionary celebration of Mexico's indigenous history and culture—to reveal evidence of the modern indigenous people obscured by indigenismo discourse. He also makes three extraordinary discoveries in the context of mid-twentieth-century American Indian literary and activist histories. He detects a persistent though enervated European colonial presence and a more potent neocolonial invasion of Mexico by U.S citizens. He also identifies a contested yet successful indigenous Mexican resistance to this invasion. Finally, Downing's literary model of self-determination in novels such as The Cat Screams anticipates the anticolonial discourses of the American Indian civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the literary renaissance that attended it.

Historical and cultural roots of drinking problems among American Indians

Roots of the epidemic of alcohol-related problems among many Native North Americans are sought in cultural responses to European arrival, the role of alcohol in frontier society, and colonial and postcolonial policies. Evidence from the historical record is considered within the framework of current social science. Initially, Native American's responses to alcohol were heavily influenced by the example of White frontiersmen, who drank immoderately and engaged in otherwise unacceptable behavior while drunk. Whites also deliberately pressed alcohol upon the natives because it was an immensely profitable trade good; in addition, alcohol was used as a tool of "diplomacy" in official dealings between authorities and natives. The authors argue that further research into the origins of modern indigenous people's problems with alcohol would benefit from an interdisciplinary "determinants of health" approach in which biological influences on alcohol problems are investigated in the context of the cultural, social, and economic forces that have shaped individual and group drinking patterns.