Indigeneity

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# Indigeneity
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.author[
### H. Sivak
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.author[
### SGS 360
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.date[
### 2026-03-03
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CSRS undergraduate fellows. 
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## Rights

a) Look up the full text of the UDHR.

b) Look for references to 'groups', 'collectivities', tribes, etc., or any thing you think could apply to group rights.

- "group rights" means that they exist because of your membership in that group. Your rights at ASU are essentially individual (at most, they may be a 'class' in the sense of class action...).  
  
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c) Why not?

- Why are individuals the subjects of rights?

- What would be the advantages or disadvantages of group designations?

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**UN Charter: Art. 1, par 2**: "To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace" (also art. 55).

**UNDRIP: Art. 7**: "Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.

**Alfred & Corntassel**: "Indigenous to the lands they inhabit, in contrast to and in contention with the colonial societies and states that have spread out from Europe and other centres of empire. It is this oppositional, place-based existence, along with the consciousness of being in struggle against the dispossessing and demeaning fact of colonization by foreign peoples, that fundamentally distinguishes Indigenous peoples from other peoples of the world."

**ILO 169: Art. 1**: "Self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions of this Convention apply."

???
Activity countries. 
Botswana.  
India. 
Kenya.  
Australia. 
Canada.  
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## Definitions

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### Indigenous

### Native

### Aboriginal

### Indigeneity

### Authoctonous 
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Born or originating in a particular place...characteristic of the native inhabitants of a place or their language

(old) *Naturally occurring, following, or resulting*; now, inherent, innate; ...natural or original state.

present from the beginning; primitive.

the quality or fact of originating or occurring naturally in a particular place esp. as distinguished from ...colonizers and their descendants.

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???
Indigenous: ...relating to a people or group inhabiting a place before the arrival of (European) settlers or colonizers.
Filling the conceptual space: pastness; distance from technological modernity; 'the primitive'.  
Auchoctonous: greek origin (autokhthôn), as opposed to Latin for *aborigen*. Both mean essentially the same thing. 
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<img src="images/UNDRIP_eng.png" width="100%" /><img src="UNDRIP_es.png" width="100%" />
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<img src="images/HCDC_fr.png" width="100%" />
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### Indigeneity: a breakdown.

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a) Comparative: A connection to a region that predates those of other people; first-ness, which works better in some places (*adivasis* in India) than in others (Hmong in Vietnam & Laos

b) Non-comparative: A connection to land and other resources; a group that has "shaped the location and has been shaped by it."

c) 'Primitiveness/pastness'--i.e., relative cultural distance from modernity; distance (cultural, economic, temporal) from central authority.

d) Disruption (or greater crimes) through colonization.

e) Isolation: groups that have allies and move back and forth v. those that are cut off from political and cultural alliances.

f) knowledge systems ()
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### Other issues...

i) Modes of separation from the majority
  - Torres Islanders v. US/Canadian populations. 
  
ii) It's not only Europeans...
  - Uyghurs and Tibetans in China; Taiwan.

iii) Power and its absence. 
  - Tuareg across the Sahara
  - Hmong

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## Zomi...ans?

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a) Altitude over latitude (300m/1000ft).  
b) Resistant to state authority.  
c) Flight from centralizing states, as opposed to any specific 'first' status.

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<img src="https://www.colorado.edu/tibethimalayainitiative/sites/default/files/styles/original_image_size/public/slider/1.4_the_weathered_welcome_sign_on_the_tibet-side_of_the_zhangmu-kodari_border__0.jpg?itok=37hKlsZV" width="100%" />

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The Hmong migrated southward from southern China into mainland Southeast Asia relatively recently — largely 18th-19th century — so in Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand they are not autochthonous in any meaningful sense.

"Many societies on Tibet's periphery, such as the Khampa, Naxi, Drung or Mosuo in Yunnan, the Lopa in Nepal, or the Bhutia in Sikkim, have switched allegiances repeatedly over the centuries, moving in and out of Lhasa's orbit."

The weathered welcome sign on the Tibet-side of the Zhangmu-Kodari border

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<iframe width="425" height="350" src="https://www.openstreetmap.org/export/embed.html?bbox=85.82794189453126%2C26.194876675795218%2C90.03845214843751%2C28.256005619824972&amp;layer=mapnik" style="border: 1px solid black"></iframe><br/><small><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/?#map=9/27.230/87.933">View Larger Map</a></small>

???
The Bhutia are of Tibetan origin, arriving in Sikkim probably around the 14th-15th century, and they were not the first inhabitants — the Lepcha have a stronger autochthonous claim....
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## ILO 169. 
>1. … (a) Tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural
and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the
national community...

> (b) Peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous
on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the
country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the
time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present State
boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all
of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.
2. Self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a
fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions
of this Convention apply.

there’s...something troubling about categorizing a wildly diverse array of peoples around the world within a single identity—particularly one born of an **ideology of social evolutionism, crafted in white-settler states**, and burdened with colonialist baggage.

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Framing indigenous rights

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???
UNDRIP: Article 4
 Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the
right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local
affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions. 
Alfred & Corntassel:crimes committed to historically defined peoples (though not biologically so).   
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## What countries mean when they say 'native (or indigenous, or authoctonous) rights.

a) Liberal multiculturalism. 
- From individual rights to group-differentiated rights.  
- indigenous difference is part of a spectrum of shared historical and cultural attributes/experiences that a tolerance-based liberalism can deal with. 
- ‘neutralist’ anti‑perfectionist liberalism.

b) Human Rights  
- Indigenous communities have suffered grievous deprivations of rights, and demand recognition for this.  
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c) Communitarianism. 
- People achieve a full sense of personhood within communities, not in isolation from them.  
- Group recognition then should accommodate this, not relegate it to the private sphere.

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## Australia
<img src="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/images/Indig_land_estate_dataset_map.png" width="70%" height="70%" />

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## Australia  
> Native title has its origin in and is given its content by the traditional laws acknowledged by and the traditional customs observed by the Indigenous inhabitants of a territory. The nature and incidents of native title must be ascertained as a matter of fact by reference to those laws and customs (Mabo v. Queensland, 1992).

- Native title from traditional laws and customs.  
  - doctrine of continuity--> if the Crown took possession of those lands, continuous maintenance of customs = basis for a land claim.
  
- Native title from continuous occupation. 
  - laws and customs are not needed to address title.  
  
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