Reassertion of Indigenous Environmental Rights and Knowledge

Indigenous peoples have always asserted their territorial, resource and other rights when threatened by encroachment, not least in the settlement colonies covered in this chapter—Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, where they were most dramatically displaced. But in the second half of the twentieth century, the aboriginal inhabitants of these countries reasserted themselves with considerable force and success, using methods very different from those of the earlier actions—including judicial channels unwittingly provided by the colonizers. In the process, displaced and dislocated communities have attempted to repossess ‘stolen’ space—physically, intellectually, and judicially. Reassertion in the United States and these three Commonwealth countries has had global ideological ripples, which is partly why we have chosen to examine them. They also share British-based legal systems and political traditions that indigenous groups have used to good effect. We are focusing here on indigenous communities in the narrower sense, in countries where whites remained the demographic majority. Their challenge was to predominantly anglophone societies, the descendants of British settlers and immigrants who arrived mostly over the last two hundred years. The discussion is limited largely to the environmental aspects of reassertion rather than legal and other ramifications; we will mention important court cases, but not cover all landmark events on the timeline of indigenous struggle. The exploration of patterns of resistance in Chapter 16 covered South Asia and Africa where colonized people remained in the demographic majority and regained political power. Though the reassertions discussed here have strategies and aims in common, they are qualitatively different. They were not so much an attempt, by force if necessary, to repel incomers and the controls they impose (it is far too late for that), or to win overall power in an anti-colonial struggle, as a highly articulate call from the heart for justice, land, and a form of self-determination. Moreover, new movements are increasingly ideological and transnational, involving organized networks that use globalized discourses of discontent. The media, internet, NGOs, and UN fora are their tools of choice, which enable activists to influence the behaviour of states and corporations. Reassertion is the opposite of retreat, one aboriginal response to conquest, and suggests that this modern phenomenon is partly about renewed confidence.