Re: PROTESTERS OCCUPY IMF OFFICES IN QUITO, ECUADOR (fwd) defining indig

At 05:50 PM 2/2/01 -0700, you wrote:
>A number of us appreciate the report.  Could you explain the use of
indigenous?
>In what sense is it be used, e.g., via Tom Hall's research, the U.N. 
>definition,
>something similar to the census report in the U.S. via the Cobo report, 
>"Indians"
>of the Americas, or something else?
>
>Thank you.
>pat lauderdale <pat.lauderdale@asu.edu>

Hi there,

        Well, I'm several thousand miles away from this. I picked this up
from a
listserve on social movements, that typically relays news below the corporate
'radar' as well.  Notice that it was signed 'robin' instead of Mark.

        For further information, I'll pass on something more lengthy about
various areas of the world (instead of only Ecuador), because this has been
going on for at least a year, correct? I found this next piece several weeks
ago, and I feel it deserves greater attention.

        As for the use of the term 'indigenous' I found an interesting critique
of the term's essentialism as a cloak of endemically relating race to culture.
(below) However much I use the term in a different meaning--closer to 'previous
people' before the expansion of Euro-urbanized societies and power relations
into other areas, I feel Beteille's short piece (cited below) should be read so
at least people can get a bit clearer what they mean by the term. 
        Of course in subaltern studies, the point comes up are any groups
'indigenous' when typically (for the North American 'natives' for instance,
epidemological plagues wiped out what was a much larger population base,
what--with large cities in the Mexico area as well as the area of the United
States that many later Anglo cities were constructed out of or paved over. St.
Louis is a particularly clear example. (Author: Kennedy, Roger G. Title: Hidden
cities : the discovery and loss of ancient North American civilization / Roger
G. Kennedy. Publisher: New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan
Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, c1994. Description: vii,
372 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.). 
        Plus, by the moment that fir trade (for instance) touched' various
'native' groups, they were rather 'unnative' by then, so the image and
orientations of a 'native society' is already wrapped up with relations of the
expansion of the world system of consumption/extraction when they are
identified/labeled as 'native.'  I agree that static senses of 'native' are
rather useless. As I said, I tend to use the term to denote various
positionalties instead of to denote a particular timelessness.

"The Idea of Indigenous People" (in Anthropology and the Indigenous;
Commentary), Andre Beteille, Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 2. (Apr.,
1998), pp. 187-191.

Thanks for your comment,

Regards,


Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison