Re-vitalizing an indigenous language: Dictionaries of Ainu languages in Japan, 1625–2013

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 547-578
Author(s):  
Annette Skovsted Hansen
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
First Century ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe re-vitalization of indigenous languages depends on political and legal support and the implementation of language rights depends on knowledge of vocabulary and grammar structures of the individual languages. Throughout the nineteenth century world, compilers of dictionaries adapted indigenous languages to match standards defined in nation-building and, thereby, enabled latent possibilities for indigenous populations to re-vitalize their languages in connection with the United Nations Year for Indigenous Peoples in 1993, and the first United Nations Decade for Indigenous Peoples, 1995-2004. This article focuses on dictionaries of the languages of the Ainu populations in the borderlands between the nation-states Japan and Russia. The main argument is that the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act promulgated in 1997 had a significant impact on the production and purpose of Ainu dictionaries. The dictionaries prior to 1997 functioned, predominantly, as records, which contributed to the increased visibility of Ainu populations inside and outside Japan in the immediate national interests of Japan, whereas the dictionaries published after 1997 are intended to enable the active use of Ainu language today. An important sub-point is that the post-1997 Ainu dictionaries rely heavily on dictionaries, word lists, and grammar books compiled before 1997, which have therefore come to support efforts to re-vitalize Ainu languages in the twenty-first century.

Regaining Ground

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Herlihy ◽  
Matthew L. Fahrenbruch ◽  
Taylor A. Tappan
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
First Century ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Demographic Trends ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
Indigenous Land

This chapter describes the geographies of indigenous populations and their territories in Central America, past and present. A brief discussion of previous archaeological research provides a context for the region’s pre-Columbian populations and settlement distributions prior to an examination of the territorial and demographic collapse precipitated by European conquest. The chapter chronicles a twenty-first-century resurgence of indigenous populations and their territorial rights in Central America, including the emergence of geopolitical units that we call indigenous territorial jurisdictions (ITJs), the likes of which represent new strategies for accommodating indigenous land ownership and governance within the context of modern states. Archival and census research, in situ field experience, and geographic information system (GIS)-based land use and cadastral mapping inform the understanding of indigenous peoples’ past and contemporary demographic trends, settlement patterns, and territorial challenges.

Indigenous Peoples in Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renee Sylvain
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Activism ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Work Done

Moringe ole Parkipuny addressed the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (UNWGIP) in 1989 and, for the first time, opened up discussion of the idea that certain groups of hunter-gathers and pastoralists in Africa merited the status of indigenous peoples. Local activists and international organizations took up the cause in the following decades. Several international conferences resulted in new forms of activism, the reformulation of local identities, and a growing body of scholarship addressing African indigeneity. As NGOs built solidarity among relatively scattered groups of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, often skeptical state governments initially resisted what they saw as demands for recognition of status and claims to “special rights.” Disagreements between state interests and newly organized indigenous groups were expressed at the United Nations during the process of adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); but as the idea of indigeneity evolved through such discussions, African governments gradually came on board. International activism and work done by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights play significant roles in convincing African states to accept the concept of “indigenous peoples.” The issue of developing a definition of “indigenous peoples” appropriate for Africa remains unsettled and continues to present challenges. Mobilization among marginalized groups on the African continent itself, however, has presented NGOs, activists, states, and courts with the opportunity, through well-publicized struggles and several landmark legal cases, to refine the category to better fit with African contexts.

scholarly journals Collaboration and discord in international debates about coca chewing, 1949–1950

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Warren
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
Health Effects ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Field Survey ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
Global North

This essay complicates our thinking about unequal North-South ‘collaborations’ by considering how distinct scientific traditions, national politics, forms of racial thinking, and conditions of internal colonialism in the global South shape relations with individuals and entities based in the global North. It does this by examining conflicts between Peruvian scientists and the United Nations’ Commission for the Study of the Coca Leaf, which visited Peru and Bolivia in 1949 to investigate the health effects of coca consumption on highland Indigenous populations. Sent at the Peruvian government’s invitation, commission members saw themselves as conducting a field survey. However, they quickly found themselves embroiled in conflict with a Peruvian high-altitude physiologist, Carlos Monge, who sought long-term, laboratory-based collaboration. Monge’s scholarship and experiments proved controversial for UN authorities because they emphasized the racial alterity of highland Indigenous peoples even as he and his peers disagreed about the health effects of coca chewing.

III. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA: THE PRAGMATIC REVOLUTION OF THE AFRICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES' RIGHTS

2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
African Charter ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
African Commission

The definition and scope of indigenous peoples' human rights are usually contentious in the context of Africa.2While in recent years indigenous peoples' human rights have expanded immensely internationally, in Africa indigenous peoples' rights are still perceived to be in their infancy.3At the United Nations, the group of African States delayed the process that finally led to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 (UNDRIP).4At a national level, most of the States in Africa are still reluctant to recognize the specific rights of indigenous peoples.5Until recently, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (the Commission), the leading human rights institution for the continent,6had kept a low profile on the issue and had ‘not always interpreted indigenous peoples’ rights favourably'.7From this perspective Commission regarding the communication submitted by the indigenous Endorois community against Kenya casts new light on the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa.8The decision, which has already been hailed as a ‘landmark,’9touches on several crucial issues regarding the development of indigenous peoples' human rights in Africa. This groundbreaking decision did not materialize unexpectedly but is part of a wider evolution of the Commission regarding indigenous peoples' human rights in Africa. It echoes the work of the Commission's own Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations/Communities (Working Group) which was established in 2001 with the mandate to focus specifically on the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa.10The mandate of the Working Group is to examine the concept of indigenous communities in Africa, as well as to analyse their rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter).11In 2003 the Commission adopted the report of the Working Group which proposes several avenues for the recognition and promotion of indigenous rights in Africa.12The adoption of an Advisory Opinion by the Commission to support the adoption of UNDRIP marked another step toward the affirmation of indigenous peoples' rights in Africa.13The Advisory Opinion not only participated in unlocking the reluctance of the group of African States to adopt the UNDRIP, but also reflected developments taking place at the international level on the rights of indigenous peoples as well as their connection to the continent. Remarkably, in recent years, the Commission has started to refer to indigenous peoples' rights in its examination of States' periodic reports.14All these factors and the recent decision of the Commission in the Endorois case indicate the emergence of a consistent jurisprudence on indigenous peoples' rights in Africa.

Securing Land Rights through Indigenousness: A Case from the Philippine Cordillera Highlands

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Titia Schippers
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Indigenous Community ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Mining Companies ◽  
Municipal Council ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (1997) offers indigenous peoples in the Philippines the opportunity to obtain title to an ‘ancestral domain’. This article discusses how leaders of the Bakun Indigenous Tribes Organization (BITO) in the Cordillera Highlands strategically used the state-sponsored indigenous-peoples discourse and political-administrative structure to acquire land rights for the inhabitants of the municipality of Bakun. Though the inhabitants did not necessarily identify themselves as indigenous, they welcomed land rights as a protection against unwelcome incursions by mining companies and other extractive projects. However, the discourse of indigenous peoples’ rights tends to essentialise the difference between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Being indigenous has become a politicised identity whose bearers are expected to prefer the ‘traditional’ over the ‘modern’, the ‘collective’ over the ‘individual’. In Bakun, moreover, the discourse of indigenous peoples’ rights eventually became an arena in which a power struggle was played out between BITO and the municipal council, both belonging to the indigenous community.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Declaration ◽  
The Individual

The rights of indigenous peoples under international law have seen significant change in recent years, as various international bodies have attempted to address the question of how best to protect and enforce their rights. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is the strongest statement thus far by the international community on this issue. The Declaration was adopted by the United Nations on 13 September 2007, and sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education, and other issues. While it is not a legally binding instrument under international law, it represents the development of international legal norms designed to eliminate human rights violations against indigenous peoples, and to help them in combating discrimination and marginalisation. This commentary on the Declaration analyses both the substantive content of the Declaration and the position of the Declaration within existing international law. It considers the background to the text of every Article of the Declaration, including the travaux préparatoire, the relevant drafting history, and the context in which the provision came to be included in the Declaration. It sets out each provision's content, interpretation, its relationship with other principles of international law, and its legal status, and also discusses the significance and outlook for each of the rights analysed. The book assesses the practice of relevant regional and international bodies in enforcing the rights of indigenous peoples, providing an understanding of the practical application of the Declaration's principles.

Indigenous Peoples and the Global Indigenous Movement

Geography ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Merlan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
United Nations ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The United Nations

“Indigenous” names an emergent, collective, globalizing and (increasingly) legally recognized sociopolitical identity, resulting from a social movement which became institutionalized from around 1980. Typically, those now termed “indigenous peoples” were formerly known by local, regional, or national category terms or ethnonyms applied to them by outsiders (e.g., “American Indians,” “Australian Aborigines,” Eskimo, or Aleuts), rather than by terms that they used among themselves. In many cases older terms have been replaced, also from ca. the 1980s by alternative terms emergent from social and political processes of liberalization within particular nation-states or regions (e.g., “First Nations,” “Native Americans,” Adivasi, or Inuit). “Indigenous” is increasingly used of, and by, these peoples in reference to themselves and others, even where other local and regional designations persist. Though forms of the word have a long history, “indigeneity” is relatively recent in internationalist usage. This use grew in relation to a range of circumstances: the interaction of indigenous activism with developing global institutions; Third World decolonization and civil rights activism; political and economic conditions that prompted reorganization by (especially liberal-democratic but also other) states of entitlements to land and resources; and diffusion of measures implicating indigeneity across levels of state and corporate administration. Given indigenous globalization, some authors write of “becoming” indigenous. The recency and selective participation of indigenous people and communities means that there is often a considerable gap between elite relationship to internationalist concepts and activism and more local forms of understanding on the part of indigenous people less engaged at that level. Some states continue to deny the applicability of “indigeneity” to their own situations, while affirming its relevance to states of settler colonial origin. Yet indigenous organizations are emerging even in such countries (e.g., Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, India). The League of Nations and, later, the United Nations, have centrally hosted and promoted globalization of the indigenous category. Concern with those now considered to be “indigenous” took shape after World War I as a matter of labor conditions and human rights affecting “disadvantaged” peoples in “underdeveloped” countries. In the post–World War II period there was concern with “discrimination” against disadvantaged and “indigenous” peoples. In 1982, a Working Group on Indigenous Populations was created within the United Nations. The main product of the working group over twenty-five years was the formulation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (cited under United Nations as a Center of Indigenous Globalization), adopted by the General Assembly in 2007.

scholarly journals Conversations on Indigenous Education, Progress, and Social Justice in Peru (Conversaciones sobre Educación Indígena, Progreso, y Justicia Social en el Perú) (pp. 10-25)

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Alva Sumida Huaman
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Educational Design ◽  
English Only ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Material Gain ◽  
Indigenous Participation ◽  
Globalized World

<div>This article attempts to contribute to our expanding definitions of Indigenous education within a globalized world. Additionally, the article critiques notions of progress modeled by powerful nation-states due to their histories based on the intended consequences of marginalizing Indigenous populations for the purposes of material gain. Last, global discourses on meaningful Indigenous participation in educational design are discussed as they illuminate culturally and politically based movements that defy singular narratives of Indigenous peoples and education. (This article is provided in English only.)</div><div><span style="font-size: 10px;"><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p><span style="font-size: 10px;">Este art&iacute;culo intenta expandir nuestras definiciones de educaci&oacute;n en el contexto de un mundo globalizado. De esta manera, el art&iacute;culo presenta una cr&iacute;tica a las ideas de progreso que han sido impuestas por estados-naciones que concentran el poder. Se argumenta que esta imposici&oacute;n es el resultado de procesos hist&oacute;ricos basados en la marginalizaci&oacute;n de poblaciones Ind&iacute;genas con el prop&oacute;sito de enriquecer materialmente a las sociedades occidentales. La discusi&oacute;n finalmente se enfoca en los discursos globales que enfatizan la relevancia de la participaci&oacute;n Ind&iacute;gena en el dise&ntilde;o de la educaci&oacute;n, y que destacan la contribuci&oacute;n de los movimientos pol&iacute;ticos y culturales al desaf&iacute;o de los discursos esencializados sobre los pueblos Ind&iacute;genas y sus relaciones con el desarrollo de educaci&oacute;n. &nbsp;(Este art&iacute;culo se ofrece solamente en ingl&eacute;s.)</span></p></span></div><div><br /></div><!--EndFragment-->

A political sociology of the Nordic countries

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Allardt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Second World

The Nordic countries of Europe have many common traits. They are small countries in Northern Europe, they have been Lutheran since the Reformation, and they had, for centuries, a strong landholding peasantry but a weak aristocracy. They developed a comprehensive welfare state after the Second World War, and they are more sceptical about European integration than people from other countries in Western Europe. Despite attempts to create a Nordic union and the existence of a Nordic Council, their joint Nordic orientation has been subordinated to the national interests of the individual Nordic countries. They are clear-cut nation states with a nationalism that is not fierce, but represents a kind of official, controlled and uniform national spirit. With respect to parliamentary politics and social policy the main features of the countries have been called the Nordic Model. The model still exists, but rests on shakier ground than before.

Indigenous Peoples: An Emerging Object of International Law

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russel Lawrence Barsh
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Level ◽  
Annual Session ◽  
Indigenous Organizations ◽  
First Time

The Working Group on Indigenous Populations, an organ of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, ended its fourth annual session last August by distributing seven “draft principles” to governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for comment as the first step in preparing “a draft declaration on indigenous rights, which may be proclaimed by the General Assembly.” For the first time since indigenous organizations took their concerns to the international level in 1977, a formal commitment has been made to the development of new law, probably in time for the “cinquecentennial” in 1992 of the “discovery” of the Americas and a proposed international indigenous year.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document