Explaining the global patterns of the occupation of indigenous lands and the transformation of aboriginal societies is not a simple task. Fairly straightforward explanations have been advanced by many indigenous leaders. Colonialism, particularly the expansion of European powers, is offered as the primary explanation. The colonial powers, the argument goes, came armed with the confidence, arrogance, and racism of Europe in the age of expansion and quickly ran rough-shod over small tribal populations. This explanation has proven convenient and consistent with contemporary legal and political challenges. Emphasizing European responsibility has played nicely on liberal guilt in Europe and the European fragment nations, convincing the wealthier nations to invest heavily in programs of amelioration. The forces at play, however, extend beyond the interaction of Europeans and indigenous peoples, although these contact experiences were a crucial element in a complex, global process.

Eurocentric explanations, particularly those focusing on the advance on overseas empires, are not sufficient. Other colonial and expansion­ary powers occupied indigenous territories, typically in areas contiguous to the lands of the dominant societies. In Scandinavia, European peoples pushed the Sami further north, just as the Russians did in the north and east. Indian administrations marginalized the small tribal societies on the culturally complex sub-continent. Aztec and Inca empires imposed control on indigenous peoples, as did dominant populations in Africa. The Japanese expanded north into Ainu territory on Hokkaido. Throughout Southeast and East Asia, external and imperial powers formed over the centuries and found ways of imposing their will on marginal peoples. Throughout vast regions, hill tribes, island peoples, and isolated communities wrestled with the challenges of adapting to non-European intrusions.

In the developing world, demographic pressures focused government attention on the most basic of natural resources: land. Through Southeast Asia, for example, expanding populations brought more and more people into the outer islands of, Indonesia, the highlands of Thailand, or other comparable locations. The Chittagong Hill region of Bangladesh provides a particularly graphic example. This area had been protected from migrants for much of the twentieth century. The newly independent Bangladesh, faced with massive population growth on the coastal plains, lifted the protections on indigenous lands in the mid-1970s and encouraged settlement. An angry report on the occupation of the hills commented:

June 30, 1984, the new Bengali settlers came to forcibly reap the rice crop from the ripe paddy fields of the Chakma inhabitants at Buushanchara. This was institgated by the Bangladesh army troops who then hid themselves. When reaping was started, the Chakma inhabitants tried to stop it. Then and there the Bangladeshi soldiers emerged and aggressively fired directly on the Chakmas. They then attacked vast areas of Chota Harina, Bara Harina, Chedoa, Garjangtali, Soguri Ps and Maudong. More than three hundred unarmed innocent Chakmas were murdered. The captured tribals were divided into three groups - old and young men, elderly women, and young women. Men and old women were shot dead. The young women were raped freely, some of them were killed and some were converted to Islam.(1)

The resulting conflicts and dislocations caused great difficulties for the Chittagong Hill peoples, and generated considerable international protest, but the government saw little justification in defending the interests of a small number of people while tens of millions lived in grinding poverty near the coast.

Aboriginal peoples fought back against the transformation of their landscapes and the potential threat to their lifeways. The proposed construction of a major hydroelectric project in northern Quebec in the late 1960s and early 1970s resulted in the creation of the Grand Council of the Crees and the launch of a major court challenge to the initiative. The Canadian and Quebec governments responded to the legal contro­versy by negotiating a treaty with the James Bay Cree, which recognized indigenous harvesting rights and granted the Cree considerable powers of self-administration. Similarly, the planned development of the North Slope oil fields in Alaska generated sharp resistance from indigenous groups, and resulted eventually in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. In Brazil, the Yanomami were even more direct. Faced with the occupation of their territories by outsiders in the early 1980s and suffering from severe outbreaks of malaria and other illnesses they moved on the interlopers, though stopping short of armed conflict.

Capitalist countries were not alone in imposing the development model on indigenous territories. The Soviet Union had the most exten­sive program for capitalizing on the resources in remote regions - and paid the least attention to questions of environmental protection and care of indigenous communities. China needed access to resources in the western territories, and paid little heed to the needs of the small and politically powerless indigenous populations in the area. Newly independent nations, including many African states, India, and Indonesia, also largely ignored the needs of isolated tribal peoples, such was the urgency to develop marketable resources and new lands. Countries like Brazil and Chile, shifting in and out of democratic control, moved quickly to identify and exploit development opportunities.

Because the transitions are relatively recent, it is easy to understate and underestimate the scale and intensity of this postwar occupation and incorporation of indigenous territories. The imperatives of the industrial world, which needed energy, minerals, wood, and pulp, regardless of political ideology or government structure, drove nations to move aggressively into remote regions.

National governments, confronted with the reality of the indigenous experience and the dislocations associated with the war, took new approaches to the governance of aboriginal territories. Wartime military considerations gained renewed poignancy by the terrifying prospects of nuclear conflagration as tensions built between the capitalist and communist worlds. Within each ideological camp, major investments were made in military infrastructure to prepare for the seemingly inevitable conflict between the USSR and the USA. World War II projects were expanded, upgraded or replaced. Radar stations, strategically located bomber and fighter bases, and the necessary supporting facilities continued to dot the landscape of the sparsely inhabited districts in the world. The development of the Distant Early Warning Line across the American and Canadian Norths brought the imperatives of the Cold War into aboriginal communities across the region, distorting local economies to the detriment of indigenous harvesting and, time has shown, causing considerable environmental damage as well. Along the Bering Strait, the sudden and unexpected imposition of the USSR-USA boundary after World War II closed off centuries-old contact and trade across the strait and separated family members for close to fifty years (the border reopened in 1989). In Tierra del Fuego, the militarization of the Chile-Argentinian border caused considerable dislocations for the local Yanama people. If indigenous peoples thought that the end of the war would bring a return to the old order, they were to be bitterly disappointed.

Governments had also discovered a new agenda during their forays into indigenous territories. Indigenous peoples in these isolated areas, following largely traditional harvesting lifestyles and eschewing the imperatives of the industrial age, represented something of an affront to national norms. Countries as diverse as Australia and the Soviet Union, Norway and Canada, launched substantial initiatives designed to integrate these peoples into the nation-state. Aggressive schooling campaigns were launched in an attempt to provide proper educational opportunities for indigenous children. The Canadian government, building on a pattern well-established in southern districts, expanded residential schools across the North and removed indigenous children from their families and communities. There were comparable initiatives in Siberia, where the government attempted to draw the small peoples into the values and responsibilities of the Soviet system. In colonial territories in Africa, likewise, European authorities (the British being particularly fond of educational integration) extended schooling to indigenous peoples hitherto largely ignored by missionary and official education.

The USSR, having taken a hands-off approach in the early Soviet years, moved more aggressively after the 1940s. Across the Soviet North, the governments established economic collectives, moved mobile peoples into settlements, and provided a broad range of new services to the indigenous communities. The availability of education, health care, and government support in times of hardship proved attractive, much as did Family Allowance payments in northern Canada and the state welfare supports offered in other western countries. Of particular consequence in the Russian North, however, was the mass immigration of outsiders, enticed by high wages and opportunities to circumvent the rationing imposed on southern communities. Indigenous peoples across Siberia found themselves to be a steadily declining minority in their own homelands. The situation reversed in the years following the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the subsequent "opening" of the Russian economy in the 1990s. The reduction in subsidies and the declining economic conditions created significant hardships. This era also saw the West's discovery of the staggering ecological disasters wrought across indigenous lands in the Russian North and the growing realization of the degree to which the northern landscape had been desecrated by rapid resource and military development.

Current, largely Eurocentric assumptions about the experience of indigenous peoples over the. past centuries accommodate the aboriginal societies of Brazil (especially the Amazon), but pay little attention to indigenous cultures in Chile and Argentina. They speak to the very dif­ferent realities of the Inuit in Greenland and the Aborigines in the Cape York region of Australia, but largely ignore the hill tribes of Thailand and Vietnam. An overtly European focus fails to incorporate the histor­ical experience of aboriginal peoples in the western regions of China, the mountainous areas of Bangladesh, and the desert districts of southern Africa; and yet, the dislocations endured by these tribal societies bear a striking resemblance in nature, intensity, and impact to the trans­formations associated with the expansion of European imperial powers.

The western media and academic critique of the experience of indigenous peoples has also linked the assault on aboriginal societies to the imperatives of capitalism. There is obviously considerable merit in this analysis, for there was clearly a pattern of intensive resource demands, aggressive exploitation of labour, and the environmental destruction associated with European expansion. But the experience of other nations and socioeconomic systems followed a similar path. Nineteenth-century Japan approached the Ainu much as Britain and France dealt with the indigenous peoples of northern North America. The Soviet Union imposed educational, cultural, economic, and social constraints lived under the colonial of European, capitalist powers, which on a global basis had a more destructive track record. The point is not that European and capitalist states were gentle, understanding, and flexible in their dealings with tribal peoples, for on balance the evidence shows that they were not. Instead, the critical element is that many different cultures, from pre-revolutionary China to post-Soviet Russia, from the Raj of India to the multicultural nationalism of Suharto's Indonesia, imposed ecônomic, social, and political structures on indige­nous peoples, largely overrode their linguistic and cultural independ­ence, and subordinated their land and resource needs to those of a larger collectivity.

If the critical element was not European ethnicity or capitalist ideology, as analysts have often implied, the question remains as to the root cause of the difficulties indigenous peoples have experienced with other societies. Although the global pattern is complex and multifaceted, the fundamental divide appears to be between surplus and subsistence societies. Although they differed greatly from the primary European empires, the expansionary states of Japan, China, the Soviet Union, and post-independence Asian nations shared a belief in the efficacy of work specialization, the production of agricultural and material surpluses, the reliance on trade in both raw and finished products and, eventually, in industrial processes. Whether the organizing sociopolitical structure was capitalist/democratic, communist, Confucian, imperial, social demo­cratic, or a dictatorship, these societies emphasized the production of surpluses and consequently placed far greater demands on the land and resources than did indigenous peoples.

In terms of determining the impact of an expansionist people on indigenous societies, having a political system which spoke directly to equality of opportunity, equality of condition, the special privileges of an elite few, or any other economic assumptions at their core ultimately mattered less than did the nature of land and resource use. In the age before expansion, most societies in the world worked largely within the constraints of known and readily accessible resources. Navigation and technology opened the world's oceans and land masses to exploration and development. Human societies subsequently divided into two fun­damentally different groups: those who continued to live within ecological constraints and those who altered basic ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other assumptions about land and resources, asserting human primacy over the animal, plant, and inanimate world. The global tensions between indigenous and expansionist powers can be traced to this fundamental dichotomy, which continues to define and shape the struggle of aboriginal peoples.

Over the past forty years, enormous energies have been devoted to identifying avenues for the protection and survival of indigenous peoples. Efforts have ranged, as described earlier, from the setting aside of large tracts (generally of commercially unattractive land) to self-government agreements, treaties, and efforts to develop a code of indigenous rights. While these political and media activities have enjoyed some successes, most notably in wealthy, liberal nations, the net effect has been limited. Cultures remain under attack, intergenerational difficulties expand, and the struggle continues to preserve cultural activities and values in the face of enormous pressures to change. Virtually none of these efforts have involved a systematic attempt to address the fundamental dichotomy outlined above. Indigenous societies have historically been based on a sustainable approach to land use, where expansionary powers are founded on the production and redistribution of surplus, either for personal profit or collective empowerment. Much more energy has been expended on convincing indigenous peoples to adopt the imperatives of the surplus economy than on examining ways in which indigenous concepts of work, wealth, land, and resource use can be supported alongside more consumption-oriented approaches.

Since so little attention has been paid to the root cause of the indigenous-newcomer divide, it is hardly surprising that the prognosis is that the future will hold more of the same. In a consumption-rich world, where poor farmers and peasants are increasingly joining an ever expanding urban, industrial workforce, there are precious few constraints on the increased exploitation of resources and continued expansion onto undeveloped or underdeveloped lands. Many of these areas yet to be exploited for surplus purposes continue to be inhabited by indigenous peoples, ensuring that the now centuries-old struggle between newcomers and aboriginal societies will continue into the future. There is an ever-dwindling supply of undeveloped territories, now mostly in the harsh lands of the deserts, in Arctic regions, and in the dense jungles of Africa and Asia. There is every reason to anticipate that the disrup­tions visited upon the indigenous occupants of other lands will soon be experienced in these few remaining areas.

Those indigenous people hoping to be able to continue exercising con­trol over their lands might wish that no meaningful, exploitable resources are found within their territories and, equally important, that the nation­state expanding into their area is one of the handful of wealthy, liberal (and somewhat guilt-driven) countries that is open to more flexible approaches to the management of indigenous affairs. The experience in Scandinavia, Greenland, and the North American North shows the value of the alignment of these imperatives. If, in contrast, the resources are promising and the government and dominant society is either disinter­ested or preoccupied with other struggles, more ominous threats emerge. In numerous countrie's in South and Central America and in South and Southeast Asia and Africa, these conditions apply, raising very serious questions about the trajectory of indigenous-newcomer relations and about the capacity of indigenous peoples to retain effective use of tradi­tional territories. The challenge is formidable. The industrial world's demand for resources is seemingly unlimited. There is little evidence that, even in the medium term, indigenous considerations will stop major resource projects from proceeding. At a very fundamental level, patterns of human consumption - some would say greed - that underlie the contemporary world are pressing the limits of the globe's resources and chal­lenging traditional uses of the land in ways that are all too familiar.

The expansion of non-indigenous peoples over the past centuries continues to exact a considerable cultural toll. In many parts of the world, traditional language use has fallen dramatically. Hundreds of indigenous languages are at risk of disappearing within a generation or two, and only a few are truly vibrant. There have been some notable successes, perhaps the best being the efforts to support Sami language use in Scandinavia and Maori language in New Zealand. In most countries, the language of the dominant societies continue to shoulder aside indigenous dialects, which are rarely taught in schools, receive little government support, and are used by a steadily declining number of native speakers. There is considerable academic interest in the lan­guages and in the knowledge and world view imbedded within the lin­guistic conventions of indigenous societies, but the urgent effort to document the language and cultural information seems, at times, to heighten the sense of desperation and fear.

The grudging acceptance of indigenous culture and tradition as a critical part of the legal, intellectual, and informational base of western societies is no assurance of long-term integration of aboriginal knowledge. A particularly troubling case in Australia involved a proposal to build a bridge to Hindmarsh Island. The local aboriginal people, the Ngarrindjeri, stopped the project when a group of women told the court about a secret tradition, part of women's business, that forecast a great calamity if a bridge was built. Australian authorities had earlier accepted aboriginal testimony as justification for stopping the Coronation Hill Gold Mine project in the Northern Territory. After the court decision in favor of abandoning the project, other Ngarrindjeri women challenged the "secret" tradition and argued that it was false. After further review, the Australia courts and politicians accepted the argument that the island story was not Convincing and authorized the construction of the bridge, which was duly built. This episode reveals the difficulties inherit in working across cultural divides, and in particular of using indigenous knowledge within a western legal tradition. It is but one example of a worldwide struggle to understand and reconcile knowledge, beliefs, and priorities between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

The story is not altogether one-sided. In the wealthiest countries - Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland/Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland - respecting the rights and aspirations of indige­nous peoples has become politically acceptable, if not politically neces­sary. Cynics will point out that this renders indigenous rights a luxury available only to the richest nations -and indicate that poorer nations, like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Russia, and others have neither the time nor the money to indulge in the sizable transfers of wealth and power that have become characteristic of the First World governments. In the richer nations, at least, indigenous peoples are securing greater legal and constitutional recognition, have secured autonomy or selfgoverning arrangements, have received compensation for past injus­tices, and have otherwise been allowed to participate more equitably in resource development. There is a very long way to go, and the Penan in Sarawak, !Kung in Botswana, the Chittagong Hill People in Bangladesh and the Yanomami in the Amazon share few of the legal and financial opportunities of the Dene in the Mackenzie Valley of Canada, the Navaho in the western United States, or the Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory.

Even these gains, slight as they may be, come with a cost. Through the 1960s and 1970s, indigenous peoples were able to draw on a well of liberal "guilt" in the industrialized nations, capitalizing on the domi­nant societies' recognition of the injustices of the past. As aboriginal groups have secured significant political concessions or, even more significantly, enjoyed major legal successes, a strong and often bitter backlash has emerged. In Australia, the now-weakened One Nation Party tapped into rural and working-class anger about the "entitlements" of Aborigines. Continuing criticism of the Aboriginal "industry" in the country and of the failure of costly government programs to ame­liorate social and economic conditions resulted in the 2004 decision of the Howard administration to eliminate the Aboriginal and'Ibrres Strait Islanders Commission, the primary Aboriginal body charged with attending to indigenous needs in Australia. Legal victories in the United States touched off strong protests from resource users who saw them­selves losing out to indigenous rights holders, particularly as regards fish­ing in the Pacific Northwest and hunting in Alaska. Across Canada, a series of major concessions on resource rights by the federal government and Supreme Court of Canada decisions in favor of aboriginal peoples generated hostile reactions from non-indigenous peoples, many of whom argued for a "one law for all" approach in the country. According to polls conducted in 2003, a majority of Canadians now oppose the continued extension of indigenous and treaty rights. Similarly, the revitalization of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand sparked angry outbursts from Pakeha spokespeople who opposed the creation of "special" status for Maori people. The reaction against the re-empowerment, limited though it may be, of indigenous peoples is not likely to dissipate and may grow as aboriginal groups become more insistent, secure additional gains, or increase their protests and acts of civil disobedience.

Indigenous peoples in countries around the globe share a common concern about the future. In nation after nation, community after community, they debate the relative merits and dangers of greater integra­tion with the mainstream economy or of encouraging separation from the dominant society. They discuss the best ways to sustain traditional values and customs in the face of the integrating influences of popular culture and the intrusions of resource developers, settlers, government officials, missionaries, and other agents of change. Indigenous leaders generate discussion about legal or illegal means of protest, and work with support groups and international indigenous organizations to secure greater attention to their cause. They consider a wide variety of constitutional and political relationships, rarely emerging from indige­nous traditions, that might provide greater protection for their commu­nities. And they watch the steady encroachment of the surplus societies, with their considerable appetites for resources and land.

Indigenous societies and cultures are not unchanging or unchangeable, despite the desire of some outsiders who wish for the maintenance of traditional ways. Indigenous peoples respond to changes in their environment, just as all other societies do. The responses are sometimes creative and sometimes conservative. Some of the reactions support longstanding values and lifeways; others challenge the very core assumptions of the society. The introduction of new animals and plants, germs, land tenure systems, political structures, different social assumptions, alternate spiritual beliefs, non-indigenous settlers, mass commu­nications, and new technologies affect any society, not just those based on indigenous traditions and customary ways. The fairly common assumption of the newcomer societies is that indigenous peoples cease to be indigenous if they adapt to the new ways, a major falsehood that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the core values and commitments of indigenous peoples.

Non-indigenous peoples have found numerous ways of demonstrating their interest in and support for the struggles and determination of the aboriginal populations. In addition to backing indigenous protests and supporting indigenous demands for government action, non-indigenous peoples celebrate their artistic _expression. Significant markets have emerged for indigenous literature and celebratory movies about indigenous historical and contemporary crises, ranging from Black Robe's depiction of the devastation of Great Lakes peoples to the controversial Rabbit Proof Fence from Australia and two extremely popu­lar New Zealand movies, the gripping and disturbing Once Were Warriors and the more poetic Whale Rider. This interest has created large and sustainable markets for aboriginal art such as Inuit soapstone carvings and prints, Aborigine dot paintings, Coast Salish masks, and Northern footwear and coats. The very aggressiveness of newcomer interest has, in turn, proved troublesome. In Siberia, for example, folk-art collectors have been purchasing and removing from the region sacred items, spiritual objects, historically important material, and numerous drawings, paintings, and pieces of clothing, reproducing a pattern which earlier affected indigenous peoples in other areas.

As contact experiences unfold - and some of the indigenous-­newcomer relationships are now many centuries old - all partners in the exchange are affected. Non-indigenous societies have long learned from the traditional owners of the land, and the indigenous peoples have gained and lost from the newcomers. In some parts of the world, social relationships have encouraged a stronger, deeper, and more complex interrelationship. The pattern of intermarriage in New Zealand, across the United States, in parts of Canada, among the Ainu and Japanese, in Siberia, and other locations has drawn indigenous and newcomer societies together. The social and cultural implications of this pattern of intermarriage vary widely, from the intense understanding of each other's culture that can accompany such relationships to a potentially sharp decline in the number of women and men available for marriage within an indigenous society. In many quarters, intermarriage is viewed as harming the stability of indigenous communities and hastening assimilation. In others, New Zealand being perhaps the strongest exam­ple, the practice of intermarriage is often viewed as encouraging greater interaction between indigenous and newcomer peoples. Intermarriage, of course, is not a new phenomenon, and the understanding of the full implications of their personal and social. relationships lies, in part, in a great awareness of the comparative impact of these marriages involving indigenous peoples around the world.

This book began with a very simple premise: that the examination of indigenous history in global perspective would reveal important com­monalities and differences in the transformation of aboriginal societies. There is growing evidence of the degree to which indigenous peoples see their struggles and their survival in global terms. While efforts to comprehend their experiences are often framed in local, regional, or national terms, the aboriginal peoples and organizations are discovering vital connections and support networks around the world. There is, as well, a distressing congruence of experience. Indigenous peoples, regardless of whether they live in a liberal democracy, an authoritarian state, or a developing nation, face comparable challenges. The Innu of Labrador face conditions of unemployment, cultural change, and dislo­cation that appear strikingly, even distressingly, familiar to the Itenm'i of Kamchatka, the Yamana of southern South America, the Aborigines of Cape York, the Tsimshian of the west coast of Canada, or the Penan of Borneo. The degradation of indigenous lands continues apace, as do state efforts to regulate, control, or support aboriginal cultures. Indigenous peoples in liberal democracies do better, financially, than those in the developing world, but the pattern of economic, social, and cultural marginalization is much the same. There is, to put it simply, an indigenous reality around the world, one that is reflected in the history of indigenous-newcomer interactions and has been conditioned by that same history. Efforts to come to terms with contemporary realities and future prospects for the indigenous peoples of the world must, it seems, be balanced by an understanding and acceptance of the importance of historical relationships and experiences.

The lifestyles and harvesting activities which sustained indigenous cultures for centuries have, in large measure, been undermined by development, settlement, or government policy. Compared to two cen­turies ago, relatively few people continue to hunt, trap, and fish for sub­sistence. Those who struggle for sustenance have often been moved to government centers or have been induced to accept a more agricultural and sedentary existence. Estimates suggest that there are between 375 and 400 million indigenous people worldwide (with the numbers depending largely on the definition of "indigenous"). Of these, only a small percentage continue to live off the results of their harvests. Only a few groups, mostly in the liberal democracies, have access to significant amounts of capital and employment. The vast majority of the world's indigenous peoples live at or below acceptable national and interna­tional standard-of-living levels. They are almost always among the poorest peoples, in material and financial terms, within their countries. While there are increasing organizational and logistical efforts directed at these peoples and communities, the efforts are small in comparison to the need. Legal rights remain the focus for court challenge and political negotiations. Only a few observers have recognized that legal rights rarely translate into a substantial and lasting change in material and cul­tural conditions. Around the world, and at a pace that is almost unprecedented in human history, indigenous peoples struggle to respond to changing realities and shifting economic and social conditions. To label this era as one of uncertainty is to state the obvious and to understate the scale and nature of the challenges which lie ahead.

Only forty years ago, both the academic community and western industrial societies at large paid very little attention to the historic experiences and contemporary struggles of indigenous peoples. To the degree that there was administrative, political, or societal awareness of the indigenous situations, the difficulties were ascribed to the failures and shortcomings of the aboriginal population and to their inability to capitalize on the myr­iad opportunities presented by the modern world. Resistance scholarship has corrected these impressions. But the studies have also tended to be one-dimensional, focusing largely on the actions of the outsiders and on the evils and consequences of European colonization.

There are emerging signs of a more nuanced scholarship emerging, one which builds on the resistance studies of the past and which seeks to explore the complexities of the encounter experience.

 

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