Defenders of Nature and the Comarca: Collective Identity and Frames in Panama

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Horton
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Multiple Frames ◽  
Indigenous Land

This article examines collective identities as both a resource and constraint in framing processes of social mobilization through a case study of Panama's Kuna Indians, one of Latin America's most effectively organized indigenous peoples. It highlights tensions between movement nurturance of distinct indigenous identity as intrinsically valuable and to a degree counterhegemonic and instrumental use of an environmental frame to advance indigenous land claims. This article also explores shifts in dominant discourse and institutional practices that provide both opportunities for identity-based movements as well as risks. One way identity groups address tensions between appropriation of externally generated frames for instrumental goals and the nurturing of distinct collective identities is to manage multiple frames aimed at distinct audiences with distinct content. errors are the sole responsibility of the author.

GIS and the A'i of Colombia

2020 ◽  
pp. 711-734
Author(s):  
Anthony Stocks ◽  
Manuela Ruiz Reyes ◽  
Carlos Andrés Rios-Franco
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Colombian Government ◽  
Funded Project ◽  
Indigenous Reserves ◽  
Indigenous Land

This paper presents the work of the WCS with the A'i Indigenous people in Colombia as part of a USAID-funded project between 2009 and 2011. The project had several dimensions that make it unusual. Unlike conventional “counter-mapping” attempts to represent Indigenous land claims as a counter to government representations, the project sought to create maps and analyses that represent prior land assignments to the A'i by the Colombian government itself. These land assignments were not supported by geo-referenced maps and, in the case of Indigenous “reserves” the original boundary markers were only known to the oldest of the A'i people. Analysis of forest cover in lands controlled by the A'i reveal that they are highly protective of forests; indeed their collective identity is strongly related to forest cover. The process described also illustrates the difficult position many Indigenous Amazonians face in an era of drug wars, uncontrolled colonization, and in the case of Colombia, the lack of follow-up to the political and social measures envisioned in the 1991 Constitution.

Encountering Indigenous Law in Canada

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Thom
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Coast Salish ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Land Title ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
Indigenous Land

This chapter reflects on the work happening at the intersection of anthropology and law in Canada with respect to Indigenous peoples’ rights, title, governance, and legal orders. Indigenous legal scholars have ignited an important new engagement with Indigenous legal orders that are reshaping mainstream Canadian legal discourses. The chapter reviews how this work has profound implications for the direction of the recognition of Indigenous land title, territorial rights, and Indigenous jurisdictions. It argues that anthropologists have the opportunity to shift their engagement with Indigenous law from essentialized production of traditional cultures to ethnographically engaging with the logics and practices of Indigenous legal orders. The chapter develops a brief ethnographic case-study involving several closely related Island Hul’q’umi’num’ (Coast Salish) communities on the east coast of Vancouver Island (British Columbia) as they work to mobilize longstanding Indigenous principles and understandings of land tenure and harvest rights among themselves in a complex, state-regulated environment of shellfish harvesting. The purpose of the case-study is to highlight a path of anthropological engagement with contemporary Indigenous law, working both to appreciate the ways Indigenous and state legal orders are brought to life concurrently over time, and to reflect on the on-the-ground ways legal pluralism is experienced. The case also offers conceptual opportunities to transcend problematic state discourses of ‘overlapping claims’ and makes space for workable principles of co-existence through Indigenous legal sensibility.

scholarly journals From socio-politics to kinship dynamics among the Kaingang

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-374
Author(s):  
Cinthia Creatini da Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Southern Brazil ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Group Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
Indigenous Land

This article is based on ethnographic data on the social and political organization of a Kaingang collective that is currently requesting the demarcation of the Terra Indígena Sêgu [Sêgu Indigenous Land] (in Rio Grande do Sul State in southern Brazil). Ethnographic data observed in various indigenous Kaingang lands in southern Brazil point to an intricate and rhizomatic network of social relations within and between groups and families, which, beyond their locations of origin or residence, articulate socio-cosmic-political principles that mark distinct processes of reciprocities and divisions. Here, the movement for land claims and internal tensions within the collectives either result in distancings or approximations that are translated into principles of inclusion or exclusion of individuals and groups in relation to territories that are already occupied and or being claimed. Thus, if for non-Kaingang the Kaingang- as for other Amerindian populations - project an ethnic identity based on the idea of a generalized kinship, at the level of their intra- and inter-group relations, the fluidity with which the ties among those who are considered relatives (kanhkó) or not, can be easily made or unmade, strengthened or broken.

scholarly journals Cree Elders’ Perspectives on Land-Based Education: A Case Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-91
Author(s):  
John Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Indigenous Land

This study deals with the notion that Indigenous peoples are concerned with preserving their communities, nations, cultural values, and educational traditions. Indigenous peoples have a land-based education system that emerges out of their own worldviews and perspectives, which need to be applied to research concerning Indigenous cultures. This work explores Indigenous land-based education through the perspectives of Cree Elders of Northern, Manitoba. Six Cree Elders were interviewed to explore the ideas and practices of land-based education. The article engages discussion of Indigenous land-based education stemming from Elders’ teachings of Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, identity, and vision. Informed by Cree Elders, this qualitative study articulates an Indigenous interpretation of land-based education. Research findings demonstrate that Indigenous land-based education can be used to promote well-being among Indigenous peoples in Canada. While the study is based on the Cree experience in Northern Manitoba, its message is significant to many other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Drawing on the Elders’ teachings, policy recommendations are generated for advancing Indigenous land-based education

Respecting water: Indigenous water governance, ontologies, and the politics of kinship on the ground

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole J Wilson ◽  
Jody Inkster
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Living Entity ◽  
Settler Societies

Indigenous peoples often view water as a living entity or a relative, to which they have a sacred responsibility. Such a perspective frequently conflicts with settler societies’ view of water as a “resource” that can be owned, managed, and exploited. Although rarely articulated explicitly, water conflicts are rooted in ontological differences between Indigenous and settler views of water. Furthermore, the unequal water governance landscape created by settler colonialism has perpetuated the suppression of Indigenous ways of conceptualizing water. This paper thus examines the “political ontology” of water by drawing on insights from the fields of critical Indigenous studies, post-humanism, and water governance. Additionally, we engage a case study of four Yukon First Nations (Carcross/Tagish, Kluane, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, and White River First Nations) in the Canadian North to examine their water ontologies through the lens of a politics of kinship including ideas about “respecting water.” We also examine the assumptions of settler-colonial water governance in the territory, shaped by modern land claims and self-government agreements. We close by discussing the implications of Indigenous water ontologies for alternate modes of governing water.

scholarly journals Place Attachment, Feeling of Belonging and Collective Identity in Socio-Ecological Systems: Study Case of Pegalajar (Andalusia-Spain)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3388
Author(s):  
Javier Escalera-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Place Attachment ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Water System ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Study Case ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ways Of Life

Shared feelings of belonging and attachment held by people in relation to the place they live, and the development of collective identities that such feelings can promote, should be taken into account when seeking to understand the configuration and operation of socio-ecological systems (SES), in general, and the impact these factors have on SES adaptability, transformability and resilience, in particular. However, these topics have not been examined in enough depth in prior research. To address the effects of people’s feelings of place attachment and belonging in specific SES and the impacts they have on the aforementioned properties, in addition to theoretical instruments appropriate to the emotional and cognitive nature of this kind of phenomena, in-depth empirical qualitative studies are required to enhance understanding of the cultural and symbolic dimensions of the SES of which they are part. In this regard, the analysis of people–place connections, feelings of belonging and territorial identifications (territoriality) is strategic to understanding how the biophysical and the socio-cultural are interconnected and structured within SES. This article is based on a case study implemented through long-standing ethnographic research conducted in Pegalajar (Andalusia-Spain), which examined the struggle of the local population to recover the water system on which the landscape, as well as the ways of life that sustain their identity as a town, has been built. This case proposed a perspective on feelings and collective identifications as analytical interfaces between social and natural dimensions of SES in order to enhance understanding of their structuring and dynamics, particularly their resilience, and in order to manage them in a more sustainable way.

The Ebb and Flow of the Foreign-Born: Changing Conditions for Collective Identities

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-207
Author(s):  
Reed Ueda
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Local Effects ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Ebb And Flow

Winders’ Nashville in the New Millennium is a study of the local effects of the new immigration in areas that had historically experienced a paucity of immigrants and international culture. By employing a methodology based on participant observation, personal interviews, and oral histories, Winders demonstrates that a surge of immigrants in a local community can produce a complex challenge to epistemologies of collective identity based on historically entrenched ethnic categories and popular memories. Her research is a fresh addition to a field of scholarship that has produced illuminating interdisciplinary studies about the effects of the changing flows of immigrants on communities, generations, and minority groups.

GIS and the A'i of Colombia

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
Anthony Stocks ◽  
Manuela Ruiz Reyes ◽  
Carlos Andrés Rios-Franco
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Original Boundary ◽  
Colombian Government ◽  
Funded Project ◽  
Indigenous Reserves ◽  
Indigenous Land

This paper presents the work of the WCS with the A'i Indigenous people in Colombia as part of a USAID-funded project between 2009 and 2011. The project had several dimensions that make it unusual. Unlike conventional “counter-mapping” attempts to represent Indigenous land claims as a counter to government representations, the project sought to create maps and analyses that represent prior land assignments to the A'i by the Colombian government itself. These land assignments were not supported by geo-referenced maps and, in the case of Indigenous “reserves” the original boundary markers were only known to the oldest of the A'i people. Analysis of forest cover in lands controlled by the A'i reveal that they are highly protective of forests; indeed their collective identity is strongly related to forest cover. The process described also illustrates the difficult position many Indigenous Amazonians face in an era of drug wars, uncontrolled colonization, and in the case of Colombia, the lack of follow-up to the political and social measures envisioned in the 1991 Constitution.

scholarly journals Navigating Ethnicity: Collective Identities and Movement Framing in Deeply Divided Societies

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Chiara Milan
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Mobilization ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
Common Feeling

Abstract This article explores collective identity frames and discursive strategies employed by social movement actors mobilizing in ethnically divided societies, a context where ethnicity constitutes the primary collective category of identification. By using Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study, it analyzes movement framing in three waves of social protests that occurred in the country in the last decade. Specifically, it investigates the diverse ways in which movement leaders tackled ethnicity in their discourses. The article shows that movement leaders’ narratives rested, respectively, on the primacy of human and citizenship rights, a common feeling of deprivation, and victimhood. Their approach toward ethnicity, however, differed in each wave. Ethnicity was openly rejected in 2013, avoided and not openly contested in 2014, and accepted and approached as an opportunity to bring further support to the movement in 2018. The article highlights that ethnicity can be tackled differently by social movement actors mobilizing on nonethnic grounds in divided societies, and that it might constitute a vantage point for social mobilization rather than a drawback, contributing to raising transversal solidarity.

From Persianate pasts to Aryan antiquity. Transnationalism and transformation in Afghan intellectual history, c.1880–1940

Afghanistan ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-67
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Archaeological Methods ◽  
Subsequent Rise ◽  
Intellectual Disciplines

This essay forms a case study of the transnational dimensions of Afghanistan's modern intellectual history through a focus on the practice of history. It traces the development of Afghan historical writing between around 1880 and 1940, with an emphasis on the revolutionary historiographical transformations of the 1930s. Prior to this decade, Afghan historians broadly continued the dynastic and genealogical traditions of the Persianate tarikh (‘chronicle’). After discussing several such texts, the focus turns to the new intellectuals associated with the Kabul Literary Society (Anjuman-i Adabi-yi Kabul) in its role as a crossroads for the importation and adaptation of European intellectual disciplines. Drawing on Anglophone and Francophone scholarship in their Dari-Persian publications, the Society's historians forged radically new conceptions of collective identity by adapting European linguistic and archaeological methods. An examination of the writings of two such historians, Ya‘qub Hasan Khan and Ahmad ‘Ali Kuhzad, documents the subsequent rise of the new historical ideology of Aryanism by which Afghanistan and its peoples were linked to the ancient Aryans and their homeland of Bactria qua Aryana.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document