International law and resource extraction : the reconstruction of indigenous identity in Cajamarca, Peru

Why has there been a sudden upsurge in the politicization of indigenous identities in Latin America? Drawing upon constructivist assumptions of ethnic identity, I find that ILO 169 and the rights contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have been accompanied by a re-construction of indigenous identity in Cajamarca, Peru. Communities that are vulnerable to the deleterious effects of natural resource extraction and have historically identified as non-indigenous, despite having an indigenous identity in their identity repertoire, have re-constructed their indigenous identity as part of a strategy to maintain tenure over traditional lands, but only after the fact that power and rights have been awarded to these communities by international bodies of law and national legal frameworks alike. That is, bodies of law can activate an indigenous cleavage under a condition of grievance.Governmen

Inside the Image and the Word: the Re/membering of Indigenous Identities

By appropriating the power of writing of the phonetic Latin alphabet and recent visual technology, new generations of indigenous people from the Americas have been able to articulate and reinforce their own sense of identity from within their cultural constructs. In so doing, they have been shaping new narratives of indigenous adaptation and survival based on native ontologies and epistemologies that critically decolonize the homogenizing forces of national and global rhetoric. I argue that the texts under examination put forward ways to conceive and to know individual and communal identity that cannot be understood outside specific, ancient notions of territoriality and re/membering

THE ROLE OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN MULTICULTURAL INTERACTIONS

In this boundless era, people cannot avoid the interactions since they yearn for the interactions to fulfill their needs. Hence, it is becoming more and more impossible for people to live exclusively without having interactions with others from different culture. These kinds of interactions create multiculturalism. The multiculturalism is a given nature for many nations in the world. Hence, they need language to help them to share their mind. In multicultural interactions, people use languages not only to communicate with others but also to symbolize themselves. People learn to enrich their understanding of how language itself works and their ability to manipulate language in the service of thinking and problem solving. To some extent, people concern with how others perceive them. This is how people want to construct their identity. Javanese language, as one of the indigenous languages in Indonesia, helps Javanese people in constructing their identity when they have interactions with others, especially in multicultural interactions. The local wisdom preserve in this language gives the people value in constructing identity to interact with others in the multicultural interactions. Yet, some people have not seen the role of the importance of the indigenous language to create identity in multicultural interactions. As part of the world community, people need to be introduced to values and ideology which will be useful in their future life. Because living in the middle of complicated diversity is an unavoidable fact for future generation, constructing identity in multicultural interactions becomes indispensible. This paper explores the power and role of the indigenous language, especially Javanese, as a medium to construct identity in multicultural interactions

Face to Face, Carl Beam and Andy Warhol

Keira Koch ’19 examines representations of indigenous cultures in prints and photographs by American artist Andy Warhol and First Nations artist Carl Beam. In this comparative study, Koch considers the topic of appropriation and re-appropriation of Native imagery. Warhol, as a non-Indigenous artist, is using this imagery to highlight the dominant narrative of the American West. Beam, however, incorporates photographs of Native subjects and traditional narratives by re-appropriating those images to tell a distinctly Native narrative. This exhibition invites discussion about the role of contemporary indigenous artists and how indigenous identities are expressed in contemporary art. This exhibition intersects with the issues and methodologies studied in Koch’s individualized major titled “Indigenous Cultures, History and Identity.” In addition to studying aboriginal arts and indigenous communities in Australia during her Junior year, Koch serves as the Co-President of Students for Indigenous Awareness at Gettysburg College.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1027/thumbnail.jp

Two-Spirit Indigenous Americans: Fact not Fiction

This paper examines the narratives of Two-Spirit Indigenous Americans who have been oppressed by heteropatriarchal norms of colonization. Two-spirit creation stories are explored to show the prevalence and importance of their identities prior to contact with Euro-American settlers and the evolution of violence, exclusion, and marginalization due to colonization.The term Two-Spirit is examined as a cultural identity of the Indigenous Americans. Finally, the paper looks at how Two-Spirit scholars are looking to combine Queer Theory with Indigenous Studies to deconstruct colonial heteropatriarchal America

INDIGEGOGY: A Transformative Indigenous Educational Process

Social work training programs have not been able to keep step with the needs of Indigenous people since the advent of the profession. As former agents of government assimilation, social workers now find themselves in difficult positions where they are unable to help Indigenous people, despite their best intentions. Indigenous Social Work Education has become a necessary response to the growing needs of Indigenous people, and increasing social problems in Canada. Furthermore, Indigenous people who practice Indigenous social work have become vital to the survival of Indigenous people and their communities. The teaching and practice of Indigenized, social work education has become a strong presence in the reclamation of indigenous identity. A decolonized peda- gogy such as the one presented in the case study of the Aboriginal Field of Study (AFS) at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) affirms indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing and places control and ownership of helping practices firmly in the hands of Indigenous people. The case study outlines four critical elements of the AFS: Elder-in-Residence, Circle Pedagogy, Wholistic Evaluation and Culture Camp that are used to guide Master of Social Work (MSW) students on how to develop a Wholistic Healing Practice framework

That which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work in the Face of Unwanted Development

Studies on identity work have focused primarily on internal organizational relations, and have yet to examine if, and how, identity work occurs amongst stakeholder groups. Our paper addresses this gap in the literature through an ethnographic study of one Indigenous group – the Machiguenga, a remote Indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in the Peruvian Amazon. We also introduce concepts such as ‘glocalization’ from anthropological studies of Indigenous identity processes and integrate these with organizational knowledge of ‘identity work.’ Our findings demonstrate that Indigenous cultural identity can be both threatened and strengthened in response to natural gas development and is related to how individuals, communities and the Machiguenga (as a collective) engage in identity work

Forming strong cultural identities in an intersecting space of indigeneity and autism in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand

Through its hegemonic ideologies, colonialism and its constituent underpinnings of religious and racial superiority, necessitates the erasure of the cultural identity of people outside the dominant Euro-Western culture and as non-normative groups, Indigenous Peoples and autistic people disabled per colonized paradigms, experience oppression, and subjugation harmful to self-identity and mental health. This article discusses culturally-responsive interventions aimed at supporting strong cultural identity formation and safeguard Indigenous and autistic people from stigmatization, misrepresentation, and erasure of identity. Promising research uses Indigenous knowledges in education and arts programming to disrupt patterns of social injustice, exclusion, and cultural genocide while promote positive identity formation, pride, and resilience for Indigenous autistics. While Indigenous and autistic people exist globally, this article reviews literature from Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.Peer reviewedintersectionality; autism; Indigenous; identity; culture; disabilit

The Unmet Legal, Social and Cultural Needs of Māori with Disabilities

There is little work done in the area of indigenous disability identity issues and how they are recognised in domestic and international human rights laws. The discourse of disability has always been based on social constructionism and without it, there is no identity. I discuss its relevance to indigenous (Māori) with disabilities and how the multiplicitous nature of the identity of other has a particular impact when indigenous, gender and disability are all identified from marginalised groups. I also explore the impact of westernised thinking around impairment, in particular the models of disabilities on indigenous well-being. The issues of family (whānau), whakawhanaungatanga (family relationships), interdependence (community) and collectivity identities central to indigenous thinking are largely ignored by law and policy, yet central to indigenous identity. This ignorance in policy has led to the disparities that continue to remain for indigenous persons with disabilities, particularly those from within thematic identity groups

Ecofeminist Concerns and Subaltern Perspectives on ‘Third World’ Indigenous Women: A Study of Selected Works of Mahasweta Devi

The lives of Aboriginals, as an indigenous form of a subaltern identity, have been less documented in narratives so far. Indigenous subaltern identity forms an alter-identity in which indigenous women’s identity is even more silenced in the social order of gender hierarchy. Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in their book Ecofeminism locate the “Third World Woman” (in India) as a stakeholder of indigenous identity. The knowledge of Third World women in nurturing biodiversity drastically differs from both the Androcentric and Eurocentric models of bio-conservation. Indigenous women and the indigenous flora are both objects of genocidal violence, identity dissolution, and cultural extinction as their contribution to conservation is not recognized. As Gayatri Spivak in her seminal book Can the Subaltern Speak? voices, “The subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in the shadow.” Mahasweta Devi, renowned Indian author and social activist, portrays the marginalized Indigenous and their struggle for survival. The Indigenous are dispossessed and the indigenous women are even more displaced. Indigenous women characters of Devi’s selected works such as The Book of the Hunter and The Witch, belonging to the Shabar, Santal, Oraon, and Munda tribal communities, live in tune with ethnocentric ecological order. They are the forest dwellers who think of the forest as a unique bio-habitat in harmony with women, thereby preserving Mother Nature