Should we have a universal concept of “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights”?: Ethnicity and Essentialism in the Twenty-First Century
Should we have a universal concept of “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights”?: Ethnicity and Essentialism in the Twenty-First Century Journal Article
Anthropology Today
- Author(s): Bowen, J.R.
- Published: 2000
- Volume: 16
Abstract: Many, if not most anthropologists, myself included, have spent our professional lives working with people whose traditions, language, or way of life differ from people in power. We sometimes use the phrase 'indigenous' to refer collectively to such people and to contrast them to the groups who dominate in terms of politics or economics. The term 'indigenous' has also become part of legal discourse, as coalitions working at the United Nations and elsewhere have made 'indigenous peoples' rights' a part of international customary law. I wish to examine here the argument that the most appropriate legal and (more broadly) normative concept to characterize struggles for greater autonomy within nation-states is that certain rights accrue to all, and other rights accrue only to those people who are 'indigenous.' I underscore that those who make this argument intend for the idea of 'indigenous peoples' rights' to have universal applicability and legal force. I focus on the relationship between the idea of 'indigenous' as it appears in current legal and political discourse about the right of peoples, and the many local ideas of 'indigenousness' that one finds used in different parts of the world. Does making universal claims about rights that accrue only to 'the indigenous' have different consequences in different places? Is this universal valorization of territorial precedence required to achieve certain ends, or can ideas of self-governance and equality achieve them as well? In the end, I argue for a two-stage framework combining a broader universal notion of group-differentiated rights with multiple, culturally-specific local concepts of people, place and state.