Current Anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003 ᭧ 2003 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2003/4403-0004$2.50

but perhaps it comes across as more scientific. At the same time, the names used for particular indigenous peo- ples have undergone changes, and therefore we now CA✩ FORUM ON have, for example, Saami for Lapp, Inuit for Eskimo (see Stewart 2002:88–92), and San for Bushman. ANTHROPOLOGY IN PUBLIC As is so often the way with this sort of relabelling, “San” turns out to be a pejorative Hottentot—or Khoe- khoe—term for Bushmen, connoting “vagabonds” and “bandits” (Barnard 1992:8), but the principle is defensi- The Return of the ble. It is a good idea to call people by names they rec- ognize and find acceptable. Nevertheless, discredited old 1 arguments may lurk behind new words. “Culture” has Native become a common euphemism for “race.” Similarly, in the rhetoric of the indigenous peoples movement the terms “native” and “indigenous” are often euphemisms by Adam Kuper2 for what used to be termed “primitive” (cf. Be´teille 1998). Indeed, one of the major NGOs in this field, Survival International, began life as the Primitive Peoples’ Fund. It has since changed its name, but clinging to the same anachronistic anthropology it now promotes itself as a movement “for tribal peoples.” Once this equivalence On Human Rights Day 1992, the United Nations pro- between “indigenous” and “primitive,” “tribal,” “hunt- claimed an International Year of the World’s Indigenous ing,” or “nomadic” peoples is grasped, it is easier to un- People. A Decade for Indigenous Peoples was subse- derstand why the secretary general of the United Nations quently launched, to run from 1995 to 2004, and a Forum glossed “indigenous peoples” as “nomads or hunting of Indigenous Peoples established. The inaugural meet- people” (Boutros-Ghali 1994:9). The indigenous peoples ing of the Forum, held in Geneva in 1996, was unfor- forum from which the Boers were ejected was dominated tunately disrupted by gate-crashers. A self-styled dele- by delegations speaking for Inuit, San, Australian Abo- gation of South African Boers turned up and demanded rigines, Amazonian peoples, and others, precisely the to be allowed to participate on the grounds that they too quintessential “primitive societies” of classical anthro- were indigenous people. Moreover, they claimed that pological discourse.4 their traditional culture was under threat from the new Not only has the ghostly category of “primitive peo- African National Congress government. They were un- ples” been restored to life under a new label but the UN ceremoniously ejected, and no doubt their motives were secretary general of the day, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, iden- far from pure, but the drama might usefully have drawn tified common problems that these peoples suffered in attention to the difficulty of defining and identifying the modern world: They had been “relegated to reserved “indigenous people.” territories or confined to inaccessible or inhospitable The loaded terms “native” and “indigenous” are the regions” and in many cases “seemed doomed to extinc- 3 subject of much debate in activist circles. “Native” still tion.” Governments treated them as “subversive” be- has a colonial ring in many parts of the world, though cause they “did not share the sedentary lifestyle or the it has become an acceptable label in North America. It culture of the majority. Nations of farmers tended to is now always capitalized (Native), perhaps in order to view nomads or hunting peoples with fear or contempt.” suggest that it refers to a nation of some sort, and in fact However, the secretary general noted that “a welcome the term “First Nations” is often used as an alternative change is taking place on national and international lev- designation in Canada and the U.S.A. In international els.” The unique way of life of indigenous peoples had discourse, however, the term “indigenous” is usually at last come to be appreciated at its true value. Organ- preferred. This has a slightly foreign ring to English ears, izations of indigenous people had been formed. Collec- tive rights in historical homelands were being recognized 1. Versions of this paper were presented in June 2002 at the 23d and land claims pressed with some success (Boutros- Congress of the Association of Brazilian Anthropologists and in an address delivered at the opening ceremony of the Max Planck In- Ghali 1994:9–13). stitute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. I also had the The secretary general was certainly right to identify opportunity to try out the argument in a small seminar of human new international thinking on these issues. The ILO rights specialists at the London School of Economics under the Convention no. 169 (1989) concerning Indigenous and chairmanship of Stanley Cohen. Detailed comments on the paper Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries laid down that were made by Alan Barnard, Mark Nuttall, and Evie Plaice. Robert Hitchcock kindly gave me copies of his unpublished papers on cur- national governments should allow indigenous peoples rent developments in Botswana. to participate in the making of decisions that affect them, 2. Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, that they should set their own development priorities, Middlesex UB83PH, U.K. ([email protected]). 3. See, for example, the correspondence published in Anthropology Today 18 (3) (June 2002):23–25 under the title “Defining Oneself, 4. For a historical review of the notion of primitive society, see and Being Defined As, Indigenous.” Kuper (1988). 389 390 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003 and that they should be given back lands that they tra- Kalahari hunter-gatherers have more in common in their ditionally occupied. This convention has been ratified religious beliefs or kinship systems with neighbouring by Denmark and Norway among European states and by Khoi or Hottentot herders than with the Hadza of Tan- Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Par- zania or the Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo, aguay, and Peru in Latin America. However, no African many of whom lived until recently largely by foraging or Asian state has adopted it. (For a trenchant critique (see Barnard 1992). of the logic of the Indian “tribal” movement, see Be´teille Several generations—in some cases many centu- 1998.) More recently, a United Nations Draft Declaration ries—of European settlement have also greatly compli- on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been negotiated, cated the picture. Local ways of life and group identities but particularly because of strong opposition from a have been subjected to a variety of pressures and have number of African states it has not yet been put before seldom, if ever, remained stable over the long term. It is the General Assembly.5 nevertheless often assumed that each local native group The rhetoric of the indigenous-peoples movement is the carrier of an ancient culture. In familiar romantic rests on widely accepted premises that are nevertheless fashion, this culture is associated with spiritual rather open to serious challenge, not least from anthropologists. than with material values. It is unique and expresses the The initial assumption is that descendants of the original genius of a native people. To be sure, it is conceded (even inhabitants of a country should have privileged rights, angrily insisted) that the authentic culture may survive perhaps even exclusive rights, to its resources. Con- only in rural enclaves, since (again in good romantic versely, immigrants are simply guests and should behave style) native cultures are represented as being every- accordingly. These propositions are popular with ex- where under threat from an intrusive material civiliza- treme right-wing parties in Europe, although the argu- tion associated with cities, with stock markets, and with ment is seldom pushed to its logical conclusion given foreigners. However, it is argued that the essence sur- that the history of all European countries is a history of vives and can be nursed back to health if the resources successive migrations. Even in the most extreme na- are provided. The alternative is represented in the bleak- tionalist circles it is not generally argued that, for in- est terms. The loss of culture is sometimes spoken of as stance, descendants of the Celts and perhaps the Saxons a form of genocide. Even in less apocalyptic discourses should be given special privileges in Britain as against it is taken for granted that a people that loses its culture descendants of Romans, Vikings, Normans, and, of has been robbed of its identity and that the diminution course, all later immigrants. of cultural variation represents a significant loss for all Where hunters and nomadic herders are concerned, it humanity. may be argued that they represent not merely the first Boutros-Ghali accordingly insisted that the indige- inhabitants of a country but the original human popu- nous-peoples movement was not only about land or lations of the world. In a certain sense primitive, abo- hunting rights. It was, even more fundamentally, con- riginal, humankind’s first-comers, theirs is the natural cerned with culture and identity. Indeed, beyond the con- state of humanity. If that is so, then perhaps it follows ventional list of individual human rights something new that their rights must take precedence. However, while was at issue. “Henceforth we realize that human rights Upper Paleolithic hunters and gatherers operated in a cover not only individual rights,” Boutros-Ghali claimed, world of hunters, every contemporary community of for- “but also collective rights, historical rights. We are dis- agers or herders lives in intimate association with settled covering the ‘new human rights,’ which include, first and farmers. In certain cases, including those of the Kalahari foremost, cultural rights....Wemighteven say that Bushmen and the Congo Pygmies, they interacted with there can be no human rights unless cultural authentic- farming neighbours for centuries, probably for at least a ity is preserved” (1994:13).6 (He did not consider the pos- millennium, before the colonial period (see Wilmsen sibility that “collective rights” might undermine “in- 1989a). Exchanges with farmers and traders are crucial dividual rights.”) for their economy, and their foraging activities are geared Finally, there is a strong ecological thread in the in- to this broader economic context. Moreover, the divide digenous-peoples rhetoric. According to the dogma, between a foraging and a farming way of life is not nec- hunters are in tune with nature in a way that the ex- essarily hard and fast. People may forage for some sea- ploitative and greedy farmers are not (see Brody 2001;cf. sons, even some years, but fall back on other activities Gill 1994 and Kehoe 1994). As Boutros-Ghali summed when times are tough. Alternatively, farmers may be up, in appropriately cliche´d language, “It is now clearly driven back on foraging as a result of war or natural understood that many indigenous people live in greater disasters. All this suggests that the way of life of modern harmony with the natural environment than do the in- hunters or herders may be only remotely related to that habitants of industrialized consumer societies” (Boutros- of hunters and herders who lived thousands of years ago. Ghali 1994:13). Furthermore, even where technologies are very simple, An eloquent statement of the natural-harmony thesis cultural traditions vary between regions rather than ac- has been published recently by the anthropologist and cording to modes of gaining a livelihood. For example, 6. See Kuper (1999:chap. 7); see also Chanock (2000) for an inter- 5. For a convenient review of the institutions and treaties dealing esting discussion of the new prominence given to “culture” and with human rights and indigenous peoples, see Roulet (1999). “cultural rights” in post–cold war international discourse. kuper The Return of the Native F 391 activist Hugh Brody (2001), but he has chosen to focus First Nations movement,8 favours recourse to unwritten on Canada’s far north, where the way of life has been historical resources, and in line with other Canadian ac- shaped for centuries by the international fur trade. Inuit tivists he suggests that if there are no appropriate oral commercial hunters flourished here, in time embracing traditions the court should take evidence from shamans, the new technologies of hunting rifles, motorized who are able to see in dreams the arrangements that their sleighs, and radio communications, but this trade has ancestors made with the first European settlers (Brody been in decline for decades, and the consumer boycott 2001:134–36). of furs has made further inroads in the rump of the in- Brody concedes that questions may be asked about the dustry. Since the 1950s the Canadian government has factual status of oral traditions, let alone the dreams of implemented a policy of sedentarization. Today there are shamans, but he insists that there is a reliable test of the still a few part-time commercial hunters and, as else- historical value of these accounts. It all depends on who where in North America, some men still hunt for rec- tells them. “For the peoples of the Northwest Coast,” he writes, “as to any hunter-gatherer society or, indeed, reation, but hunting is a marginal activity. Ethnogra- any oral culture, words spoken by chiefs are a natural phers have emphasized the continuing importance of and inevitable basis for truth” (Brody 2001:207). Now, what Stewart calls “the imagery rather than the subsis- where chiefs exist, the word of one may carry weight, tence aspects of hunting” (Stewart 2002:93; cf. Omura but it will not necessarily be accepted as “a natural and 2002). However, few could quarrel with Dorais’s (1997: inevitable basis for truth” by anyone other than, perhaps, 3) conclusion that “Inuit society, in many respects, is as the chief’s most loyal and trusting subjects. It is surely modern as its Euro-American counterpart.” unfortunate if advocates of native rights grant powers to Some activists wish that the Inuit would take up hunt- chiefs that they would be reluctant to allow to mere ing again and restore an ancient environmental balance, kings or emperors or even to elected presidents. Anyway, but such hopes are not justified by experience. The 1971 while some of the native peoples of Canada did have Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created 12 Native- hereditary chiefs, in other cases it is far from certain that controlled profit-making corporations, which now ex- chiefs were recognized before the office was established port resources to Japan and Korea. Recently the Inupiat by colonial authorities. There are also frequent disputes of Alaska’s North Slope have supported oil drilling on about who should be chief, and land claims regularly pit the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge native against native, chief against chief (and anthro- (although they are opposed by the Gwich’in Indians). In pologist against anthropologist). Precisely because myths Greenland, the Inuit-led Home Rule government regards function as charters, there are inevitably competing sto- hunting as anachronistic and objectionable and favours ries, and disputes often rage over who owns a particular the exploitation of non-renewable resources (see Nuttall story and who has the right to use it to back up claims 1998). to resources. Other problems arise when myths are compared with historical or archaeological evidence. As a consultant to Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the 1990s, Brody organized a historical workshop in which archaeologists explained that the Arctic was col- Leaving aside the question of how the land might be onized across the Bering Straits by way of a land bridge used, land claims on behalf of former “nomads” typically that connected Siberia and Alaska (2001:113–14): raise very tricky issues.7 Canadian courts have found that it is difficult to establish the boundaries of lands hunted One of the workshop participants was a woman by former generations or to grasp how ancestral popu- from a Cree community who was enrolled in a lations understood rights to resources and rights in land. Ph.D. programme at a prestigious American univer- They must also consider whether rights exercised by sity. She was not happy about the Bering Strait the- hunters are in some way equivalent to rights that arise ory. She pointed out that her people, and most “In- from clearing virgin lands for agriculture or to other com- dian” people, do not believe that archaeologists mon-law entitlements. Finally, they must decide know anything about the origins of human life in whether native chiefs legally entered into treaties that alienated some or all of their lands. 8. The blurb of his book presents Brody’s credentials: Oxford-ed- ucated, he has taught social anthropology at Queen’s University, Some activists argue that too much emphasis is placed Belfast, and in the 1970s “he worked with the Canadian Depart- on treaties which may have been poorly understood by ment of Indian and Northern Affairs and then with Inuit and Indian the natives and that courts should recognize that there organisations, mapping hunter-gatherer territories and researching Land Claims and indigenous rights in many parts of Canada. He are different cultural modes of encoding historical set- was an adviser to the Mackenzie Pipeline Inquiry, a member of the tlements. Hugh Brody, a leading theorist of the Canadian World Bank’s famous Morse Commission and chairman of the Snake River Independent Review, all of which took him to the encounter between large-scale development and indigenous com- 7. There is now a substantial literature on this issue; see, for ex- munities. Since 1997 he has worked with the South African San ample, Wilmsen (1989b). For an excellent account of the Australian Institute on Bushman history and land rights in the Southern situation see Hiatt (1996:chap. 2). Kalahari.” 392 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003

the Americas. The idea that people first came as im- the northern portion of its claim overlaps land claimed migrants from Asia was, she said, absurd. It went by another ethnic movement, the Labrador Inuit Asso- against all that her people knew....There had been ciation. A further complication is that this area is also no immigration, but an emergence. . . . She would home to another category of people, originally of Euro- have nothing to do with so-called scholarship that pean stock, known locally as the Settlers. Their presence discredited these central tenets of aboriginal oral raises another sort of problem, one of principle. There culture. have been several generations of intermarriage between Settlers and Inuit; both Inuit and Settlers are often bi- lingual, and their ways of life are similar (see Plaice 1990, Samson 2001). If the phrase has any meaning, one might surely say that they have a common culture, though ap- parently not a common identity. Under certain condi- This objection broke up the workshop. Brody recalls feel- tions, Settlers are accepted as members by the Labrador ing confused. Could something be true at the University Inuit Association, but the Innu Nation regards them as of Toronto but false in Kispiox? its main adversaries, and the government excludes Set- Yet the Cree student had good reason to be troubled. tlers from collective land claims and treats them as If their ancestors were themselves immigrants, then per- squatters because they cannot prove aboriginal blood- haps the Cree might not after all be so very different lines. At the same time, a person who has lived his or from the Mayflower’s passengers or even the huddled her whole life in, say, St John’s in Newfoundland and masses that streamed across the Atlantic in the 1890s. does not speak a word of a native language may be To be sure, the great population movements from Siberia granted aboriginal status in Labrador having demon- across the Bering Straits began a very long time ago, but strated a sufficient proportion of aboriginal ancestry. it was still relatively late in the history of the coloni- In short, for the Canadian government native claims zation of the world by fully modern humans. According to land are based not only on descent but on a calibrated to a recent authoritative review, “nothing found thus far measure of descent. One has rights only if one has a challenges the view that significant human population certain number of appropriate grandparents. This might movements through the area occurred only after the peak fairly be called the Nuremberg principle. A drift to rac- of the last glaciation, 16,000 years b.c.” (Snow 1996:131; ism may be inevitable where so-called cultural identity see also Dillehay 2000: esp. chap. 2). These migrations becomes the basis for rights, since any cultural test then continued for many millennia. The first wave (knowledge of a language, for example) will exclude some passed quickly to the south, and the Arctic and Sub- who might lay claim to an identity on grounds of de- Arctic were settled at a later stage. The ancestral Aleut- scent. In the indigenous-peoples movement, descent is Inuit may have begun to colonize the far north only in tacitly assumed to represent the bedrock of collective the past 4,000 years. The ancestors of the Cree are dated identity. from 3,000 years ago (Mason 2000), while the proto-Ath- apascans are dated from 2,000 years ago (Clark 2000). Precisely whose ancestors came and when may also be problematic, and, of course, over the centuries com- munities migrated, merged, died out, or changed their The Canadian situation is not unique. Courts in Aus- languages and altered their allegiances. “Archaeologi- tralia, New Zealand, and the U.S.A. have also been per- cally well-known populations that predate the last 4,000 suaded to grant land rights to indigenous peoples. In years may never be assigned clear linguistic identities,” many Latin American countries there have been mass a modern authority concludes (Snow 1996:128). Conse- movements of “indigenous peoples” that purport to quently, it is difficult to sort out the various strains that speak for a majority of the population, but there are also intermingled to produce the native populations with movements of small minorities of “hunting peoples” whom the first Europeans made contact in Alaska and that demand the return of ancestral homelands, and their in the far north of Canada. However, it cannot be doubted claims have been sympathetically considered by some that some of the First Nations were not merely immi- governments. In most Asian and African countries, how- grants but actually colonizers. Innu, for instance, entered ever, government policy has been firmly (not to say op- the Quebec-Labrador peninsula only 1,800 years ago, dis- pressively) assimilationist with respect to minorities of placing and assimilating earlier populations (Mailhot formerly foraging peoples and nomads. Occasionally, as 1999:51). in the case of the Bushmen of Botswana and Namibia, Ever-changing colonial and national contexts have, of they have been treated as victims of poverty requiring course, added layers of complexity to the histories of economic aid. populations that derived from the precolonial commu- Botswana’s treatment of its Bushman minority has nities, and with the best will in the world it may not be been in the news recently, and the case is instructive. possible to return to a pre-Columbian state of nature. In On April 19, 2002, a Botswana court refused to order the Labrador (to continue with a Canadian example), an or- government to continue to provide services to people ganization called the Innu Nation demands the resto- living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. This case ration of ancestral lands. One difficulty it faces is that had been supported by a number of NGOs, notably Sur- kuper The Return of the Native F 393 vival International, which organized vigils outside Bo- hard times.) The government established a settlement tswana embassies, and the judgement was given prom- with a school and clinic outside the reserve and tried inent coverage in the serious U.K. press. The Times with some success to persuade Bushmen to congregate (April 22), for example, under the headline “Last Bush- there. men Lose Fight for Right to Be Nomads” reported that Two sets of considerations were crucial in the change “sub-Saharan Africa’s last nomadic people have lost a in official thinking.10 First, environmentalists com- legal battle against being evicted from their ancient plained that residents were keeping donkeys and goats homeland, ending 40,000 years of a hunter-gatherer that interfered with the game and that they were engaged lifestyle.” in poaching. This was to turn the conventional appeal Even when Botswana was still a British colony (the to environmental values against the Bushmen. Second, Bechuanaland Protectorate), Bushman policy had at- officials were committed to a national policy of bringing tracted international attention from time to time. In aid and development to what were called Remote Area 1958 the colonial government appointed a Bushman Sur- Dwellers, a term coined precisely to avoid ethnic dis- vey Officer, George Silberbauer, a district commissioner crimination. Officials found the special provisions made who had been trained in anthropology, and asked him to for people in the reserve an expensive anomaly. As a review the situation of the Bushmen and to come up minister of local government put it in a letter to the with a fresh policy. In his report, Silberbauer estimated Botswana Centre for Human Rights in January 2002,“We the country’s Bushman population at around 25,000, but as Government simply believe that it is totally unfair to he noted that only some 6,000 lived by hunting and gath- leave a portion of our citizens undeveloped under the ering and so should be classified as what he called “wild” pretext that we are allowing them to practise their cul- Bushmen9 (1965:14). Silberbauer was engaged in post- ture” (Hitchcock 2002a:2). Yet while senior members of graduate research on the G/wi-speakers west of Ghanzi, government rejected the argument from culture, there and his main proposal was that the government should was a feeling that the Bushmen were simply backward establish a game reserve in the G/wi area in which only and had to be civilized. The permanent secretary in the “wild” G/wi and, in the east of the reserve, some Ministry of Local Government was reported in the press G//ana would be allowed to hunt. The government ac- as remarking, in terms which would have been familiar cepted this recommendation, and the Central Kalahari to his colonial predecessors, that “Botswana owns the Game Reserve was established in 1961 with a territory Basarwa and it will own Basarwa until it ceases to be a of 130,000 square kilometers and an estimated Bushman country; and they will never be allowed to walk around population of some 3,000, although some hundreds of in skins again” (Hitchcock 2002b:18). Kgalagari cattle farmers also found themselves within In May and June 1997 more than 1,100 people were its borders. The second-largest game reserve in Africa, it moved in trucks to two settlements outside the reserve, occupies an area larger than South Korea or Portugal and where the usual depressing concomitants of forced re- about the same size as Bangladesh and Nepal. settlement soon manifested themselves in the form of The original policy was radically incoherent. Was this alcoholism, domestic violence, and the spread of petty supposed to be a reserve for wild animals or for “wild crime. In November 2001 the government announced Bushmen”? Who could live there, and what rights would that it would no longer provide public services or welfare they enjoy? A few non-G/wi Bushmen migrated into the payments to anyone remaining in the reserve. At this reserve, but they were not entirely welcome. What about point 500–600 people remained within its borders, and the Kgalagari pastoralists who made their homes there it was an appeal on their behalf for services to be restored before the proclamation of the reserve? And what about that the court rejected in April 2002. These actions were the majority of Bushmen in the country, who had no taken in the face of international protests. Indeed, there claims there at all? Botswana became independent in was something of a backlash in government circles 1966, and the new political class was generally unsym- against the activities of NGOs, notably Survival Inter- pathetic to the policy behind the reserve and tended to national. The Botswana government has concluded that point to a clear parallel with the South African Bantustan some international agencies are effectively proposing a system. Initially, the Botswana government—like its co- form of apartheid and sabotaging a rational policy of lonial predecessor—was nevertheless prepared to make development. allowances in order to allay international concerns, but On the face of it, the situation in South Africa is very in the late 1970s the situation changed and government different to that in Botswana. Bushmen, or San, within policy hardened. During the drought years of the late South Africa were generally believed to have died out or 1970s and early 1980s many people left the reserve, to have been assimilated by the late 19th century. The though perhaps intending to return. (G/wi had long been Hottentots, or Khoi, had been largely acculturated to the accustomed to labour migration to the Ghanzi farms in so-called Coloured group, though there are some bilin-

9. Silberbauer used this term to describe Bushmen “who are able 10. Survival International has insinuated that the real reason for to subsist on the proceeds of their hunting and foodgathering and the population removal is that a deal has been hatched between De who either live in remote areas without moving out on any visits, Beers and the government to exploit diamond resources in the area, or who only make brief visits in some years to Ghanzi farms or although if diamonds were found in the reserve they would be at Bantu-owned cattle-posts, for the purpose of trading or finding food the disposal of the government, since the reserve is designated as and water” (Silberbauer 1965:14). state lands (Survival International, news release, April 19, 2002). 394 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003 gual Afrikaans-Nama-speakers in the northern Cape. visits from Nelson Mandela or the U.S. ambassador. To- Moreover, at the time of the political transition the ANC day the various Griqua settlements seem to have opted was unsympathetic to any movement of ethnic assertion rather more enthusiastically for participation in evan- within the country. In 1996, when he was deputy pres- gelical Christian movements (Waldman 2001). ident, Thabo Mbeki represented the Khoi and San as On another front, however, the South African govern- South Africa’s first freedom fighters but in the conviction ment did make a grand gesture. A (khomani San As- that they had since passed from the scene.11 The gov- sociation was set up to make claims to rights in the ernment was evidently caught by surprise when the in- Kalahari Gemsbok Park, an enormous game reserve that digenous-peoples movement was taken up by UN agen- had been established in 1931. There were only about a cies and NGOs in South Africa began to champion the dozen people in South Africa who could still speak the cause of the country’s own indigenous peoples. (khomani language, but the movement was strongly The first movement to achieve prominence was the supported by an NGO based in Cape Town. Rather Griqua movement—or, rather, movements, since there vaguely specified rights of “ownership” in the park were were competing organizations that claimed to speak for symbolically handed over to “the (khomani people.” the Griqua people. The Griqua emerged on the frontier People classified as (khomani were also allowed to of the Cape colony in the late 18th century. At first they graze stock in certain areas. This more specific and prac- called themselves Basters, but the missionaries per- tical right was crucial. As Steven Robins has pointed out, suaded them to adopt a less shocking name. They were while “San livestock farmers are often perceived to be largely Khoi, or Hottentot, by ancestry, but they were less authentically San by donors, for many Kalahari San, Christians and spoke Dutch. Equipped with horses and goats and sheep have been, and continue to be, their main guns, they operated as cattle ranchers and freebooters. strategy for survival” (Robins 2001a:24, b). Unfortu- In 1804 they settled under the auspices of the London nately, these privileges have created tensions between Missionary Society at Klaarwater, later called Griqua- town. In the course of the next generation the commu- those classified as San and other local residents, who had nity split, there were various migrations, and treaties been classified as Coloured under apartheid. And just as were made and abrogated with the Boer republics. Later under apartheid, people have been obliged to reformulate in the 19th century descendants of the original com- their ethnic identities in order to get access to resources. munity, by now largely landless, were divided between Williams Ellis, describes, for example, Oom Frik, who three widely separated settlements and increasingly as- “says he is not a San, but he is part of them by virtue similated into the broader Cape Coloured society (see of his grandmother having been a ‘pure San,’ she had Ross 1976). according to him the correct phenotypic features” (Ellis Under apartheid, many Griquas were initially classi- 2001:259). fied with the Bantu-speakers, but they managed to get The change of ANC policy is at least in part a response themselves reclassified as Coloureds, which was a more to agitation by NGOs, with their international connec- privileged situation. In the 1990s, however, some Griqua tions (Robins 2001b). The government could not ignore politicians declared that they were Khoi and San, indig- these pressures while it harboured aspirations to recog- enous people, and demanded restitution of ancestral nition as Africa’s leading actor in the field of human lands and representation in the House of Traditional rights. Moreover, ANC leaders were committed to ges- Leaders. Support was forthcoming from the United tures of restitution for the injustices of apartheid. Sym- Nations Indigenous Peoples’ Forum. The government bolic acts of solidarity with San are now popular, and on was ready to treat with them but became frustrated when the occasion of South Africa’s Sixth Freedom Day, on the various Griqua spokesmen refused to agree on a sin- April 27, 2000, President Mbeki unveiled the new na- gle representative body for purposes of negotiation. To tional coat of arms, which displayed at its centre two sort out the claims to leadership, officials consulted gov- figures from a Bushman rock painting. Below is a text ernment anthropologists. Ironically, this was a return to from an extinct Cape Bushman language, !ke e: /xarra the practices of the apartheid regime. These selfsame //ke, which has been translated as “Unity in Diver- government anthropologists had been accustomed to sity”—the motto of the New South Africa, though the similar duties when they were employed by the Depart- precise meaning of this passage in an obscure, dead lan- ment of Bantu Affairs. Now, redeployed to the Depart- guage is a matter of some scholarly controversy.12 (The ment of Constitutional Development, they found them- motto of the old Union of South Africa was “Unity Is selves faced with the familiar task of identifying the Strength.”) The advantages of this official gesture are traditional leader, although as its happens they were un- nevertheless apparent enough. None of South Africa’s 11 successful on this occasion. The rival claimants to the official languages is being privileged. The only ethnic Griqua leadership came together only for brief official group that is given special status has long vanished from the scene. And the new symbol may boost South Africa’s 11. Mbeki said: “I owe my being to the Khoi and San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape—they who reputation in the field of human rights, since in some fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to 12. Alan Barnard writes (personal communication) that the literal defend our freedom and independence, and they who, as a people, translation of the motto is !ke (“people” or “men”) e (“who,” plural) perished in the result” (quoted in Bredenkamp 2001:192). /xarra (“different”) //ke (“meet, be together with”). kuper The Return of the Native F 395 circles today the litmus test is a government’s policy on Fostering essentialist ideologies of culture and identity, indigenous peoples. they may have dangerous political consequences.

Comments The indigenous-peoples movement has been fostered by the UN and the World Bank and by international devel- opment agencies and NGOs. Despite the fact that the keiichi omura ideas behind the movement are very dubious, the mo- Faculty of Language and Culture, Osaka University, tivation is surely generous. Whatever the reasons behind Osaka 560-0043, Japan ([email protected]). 5i03 it, a grant of land to poor people may be a good thing even if very large tracts of land are sometimes being Kuper tells us that essentialism is still one of the most handed over to extremely small communities—or, crucial issues that we must address if we are to avoid rather, to small categories of people defined in terms of making the same mistakes as the modern anthropology descent. But I am doubtful about the justice or good sense criticized by postmodern and postcolonial anthropology of most of these initiatives. Policies based on false anal- as a collaborator of colonialism. This is because, as is ysis distract attention from real local issues. They are demonstrated in this article, although the indigenous unlikely to promote the common good, and they will peoples movement has certainly contributed to the pub- certainly create new problems. Wherever special land lic recognition of collective rights and empowerment of and hunting rights have been extended to so-called in- indigenous people, such as the establishment of Nunavut digenous peoples, local ethnic frictions have been ex- Territory in Canada, its theoretical and conceptual foun- acerbated. These grants also foster appeals to uncom- dation is an essentialist ideology that creates and am- fortably racist criteria for favouring or excluding plifies the differences among ethnic groups and thus ex- individuals or communities. New identities are fabri- acerbates ethnic frictions. As Kuper suggests, we should cated and spokespeople identified who are bound to be not only criticize the theoretical foundation of essen- unrepresentative and may be effectively the creation of tialist ideology but also propose an alternative to it, for political parties and NGOs. These spokespeople demand without some reformulation of culture and identity the recognition for alternative ways of understanding the “primitive” will be restored to life under the veil of the world, but ironically enough they do so in the idiom of “indigenous.” Western culture theory. Since the representations of How shall we begin to propose such an alternative? I identity are so far from the realities on the ground and think that a clue to this problem is suggested, although since the relative wealth of the NGOs and the locals is not clearly stated, in this article, especially in the dis- so disparate, these movements are unlikely to be dem- cussion of the discrepancy between the reality of indig- ocratic (see Sieder and Witchell 2001). enous peoples and the basic premises of the indigenous Why have these discredited ways of thinking become peoples movement. Kuper examines the assumptions so influential once again? As always, our conceptions of underlying the indigenous peoples movement, such as the primitive are best understood as counters in our own the premise that each indigenous group constitutes the current ideological debates (see Kuper 1988:7–9). The im- original inhabitants of a country and is the carrier of an age of the primitive is often constructed today to suit ancient culture in which humans live in harmony with the Greens and the anti-globalization movement. Au- nature, and concludes that these assumptions are open thentic natives represent a world to which we should, to serious challenge. In reality, contemporary indigenous apparently, wish to be returned, a world in which culture groups have experienced continual sociocultural change does not challenge nature. At the same time, the move- in the course of the complicated modern history of hu- ment exploits the very general European belief that true mankind—migrating, merging, changing their lan- citizenship is a matter of ties of blood and soil. In Europe guages, social organizations, and modes of subsistence, today, this principle is used to justify anti-immigrant altering their allegiances, and influencing each other. No policies. The obverse of this, however, is the painless indigenous group has lived in complete isolation and concession that faraway natives should be allowed to kept its way of life unchanged since the beginning of hunt in their own Bantustans. And so the indigenous- humankind. In this sense, the society and culture of peoples movement garners support across the political every contemporary indigenous group is a complex of spectrum for a variety of different, even contradictory various elements resulting from historical interactions reasons. (The founder of Survival International, Robin that is still in the process of change. Nevertheless, as Hanbury-Tenison, recently achieved new prominence as Kuper points out, in the political arena and the courts chief executive of the Countrywide Alliance, a move- the definition of “indigenous” and the authentic images ment formed to oppose the banning of fox hunting in of indigenous peoples are based on the assumptions of Britain.) But whatever the political inspiration, the con- ties of blood and soil derived from the Euro-American ventional lines of argument currently used to justify “in- essentialist or nationalist ideology of culture and iden- digenous” land claims rely on obsolete anthropological tity mentioned above, that is, constructed regardless of notions and on a romantic and false ethnographic vision. the reality of indigenous peoples’ societies. 396 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003

This discrepancy throws light on two aspects of the The vehement Native rejection of Trudeau’s proposed sociopolitical situations of indigenous peoples. First, it policies in 1969, however, took the government by sur- indicates that indigenous peoples are still subordinate to prise. Any threat to the protection of Native minority Euro-American society because it is that society that status was interpreted as a blatant attempt at assimila- defines indigenousness and controls decision making on tion, later appraised as “cultural genocide.” The liberal indigenous problems. At the same time, however, it in- notion of a just and equal society has been viewed with dicates that indigenous peoples have the potential for deep suspicion by Native Canadians ever since. Never- redefining indigenousness. For example, as I have shown theless, Kuper’s attack on the growing indigenous rights (Omura 2002), Inuit people continually redefine their movement is timely because it brings us back to a nec- ethnic imagery in everyday life in accordance with essary position of equilibrium. There is no way forward changing conditions in an effort to construct a positive from the many racially motivated points of tension that ethnic identity. Through this redefinition, Inuitness as plague current affairs except by recognizing that all hu- defined by Inuit people themselves allows the adoption mans are equal, regardless of race and ethnic background. of new customs, such as jig dancing, tea drinking, and Quite apart from questioning the very premise of using even trapping and driving snowmobiles, all introduced race as a justification for claiming special rights, Kuper as the result of contact with Euro-American society. Seal raises questions about the inherent problems of identi- hunting with rifle and snowmobile, regarded as deviation fying exactly who qualifies as “indigenous,” “aborigi- from authentic “tradition” and criticized by environ- nal,” or “Native” and in what contexts. All of these di- mentalists in the seal fur war (Wenzel 1991), has become lemmas are apparent in the cases with which I am “tradition” as defined by Inuit people. Moreover, some familiar, and they are not easily addressed or set aside. descendants of non-Inuit identify themselves as Inuit The difficulty lies elsewhere, however: in history, con- and are recognized as such in their community because text, and location. Invariably issues of prior rights—and they were adopted and brought up by Inuit. According their fellows, the insidious rights based on racial, cul- to Briggs (1997), furthermore, some half-qaplunaak tural, and ethnic differences—are championed from a po- (white)–half-Inuit elders are respected as Inuinnat (real sition of injustice, inequality, and disenfranchisement. Inuit) because their behavior conforms to Inuitness. Trudeau’s version of the “just society” was trounced Therefore, it may be said that the reality of indigenous because it came with a legacy of racist policies that had peoples eludes definitions and imagery constructed in shaped Canadian Native relations since the birth of the terms of Euro-American essentialist ideology, and the Indian Act in 1876 and had in fact been copied by postwar redefinitions of identity and culture that indigenous peo- South African apartheid. In its nation-building enterprise ple continually execute in their everyday life erode the Canada had dealt with the “Indian Problem” by swinging basis of that ideology even though they are still under between the two opposing positions of separation and its dominion. If this is so, then it is on the daily practice assimilation in such a way that, by the mid-20th century, of indigenous peoples that we should focus. most aboriginals were either living on reserves as reg- istered Indians receiving certain benefits but denied full Canadian status or living off-reserve with no such ben- evie plaice efits and only limited access to the economy. In either Department of Anthropology, University of New case, the policies had succeeded in isolating Native Ca- Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5A3 nadians, who were living in poverty with the highest ([email protected]). 6i03 rates of youth suicide and teenage pregnancy, the short- est life expectancy, and the lowest incomes of any group In 1969 the newly elected and much lauded Canadian in the country. This appalling state of affairs is persis- Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was about to launch his tently paraded on national television, most recently in “just society.” Key to his campaign was a white paper the form of gas-sniffing pre-teens in the Innu commu- on Indian affairs that recommended dismantling the In- nities of Labrador, where youth suicide is the highest in dian Act. Underpinning Trudeau’s “just society” was the Canada and accidental immolation not infrequent. belief that all Canadians should be treated equally. The The Native scepticism that had greeted Trudeau’s at- notion was not new. In 1949, when Newfoundland joined tempts to dismantle the Indian Act was well founded. Canada, Joey Smallwood had argued that his new prov- To the cynical at least, the rapid development of the ince contained only Canadians: Newfoundland had no Canadian North over the ensuing decades exposed the “Natives.” For that reason, the Indian Act was never “just society” as no more than a ruse to cover an intended applied to Newfoundland’s several thousand aboriginal “land grab” resulting in large-scale resource extraction inhabitants. Smallwood soon realized, however, that he that seldom benefited the local, especially Native, in- was now responsible for maintaining Native commu- habitants of the North. Smallwood, for example, suc- nities that elsewhere in Canada fell under the federal ceeded in converting Labrador into a vast mining and budget. The rather hamfisted attempts to share this bur- hydro-electric enterprise. It would be naive to think that den have hampered aboriginal relations in the province Trudeau was not aware of the pressure to develop the ever since and are at least partially to blame for the rather North, even if his assimilationist policies are not inter- messy state of affairs to which Kuper alludes in “The preted as complicit. Return of the Native.” Rights of any sort that are based on recognizing racial kuper The Return of the Native F 397 difference are indefensible, but the attempt to redress alization movement” it is hardly the fault of the indig- past and present wrongs with the likes of the Forum of enous peoples. This phrase, added to another about the Indigenous Peoples is at least understandable. Should “agitation by NGOs, with their international connec- Western liberal democracies not attempt to succour the tions,” is reminiscent of the rhetoric of some oppressive vulnerable? Do countering policies such as affirmative governments that, in disclaiming the political agency of action and “Citizen Plus” not perform this task ade- indigenous peoples, attribute their actions to the manip- quately? Or are they always likely to be corrupted by ulative powers of non-Indian agitators. One can see why nationalist movements such as those that produced Na- such a cliche´ is used by authoritarian governments, but zism and apartheid? Kuper’s example of the disruptive coming from an anthropologist it is, to say the least, Afrikaners is telling. The problem here may be one of puzzling. definition, but the issue goes a good deal farther when Again, Kuper asserts that “ ‘culture’ has become a com- the intrinsic meaninglessness of arguing for special prior mon euphemism for ‘race.’ ” With no further clarifica- rights comes into play. Groups the world over have been tion this statement becomes yet another cliche´, lacking invaded and conquered, usually with devastating con- the depth and elegance of Verena Stolcke’s (1995) anal- sequences. The difficulty we find ourselves in currently ysis of what she called “cultural fundamentalism,” the is that it is unpalatable to watch on the sidelines while crypto-racism that plagues Western Europe today. To put those recently conquered suffer a fate shared by millions in the same category indigenous claims for legitimate throughout history whose societies have disintegrated. difference, Nazi racism, and South African apartheid is In a liberal Western democracy, we prefer to soften the to miss the point of differential power. In other words, blow with seemingly racist policies while doing very lit- to put Western powers of conquest on an equal footing tle to prevent the inevitable outcome: the loss of a dis- with ethnic demands for recognition is either to ignore tinct way of life in favour of supporting the majority or to minimize the violence of Western expansion. True, status quo. We justify our complacency with Darwinian there are plenty of conflicting situations in which ethnic arguments about the survival of the fittest or the prin- groups are pitted against each other for or against de- ciples of democracy while making the most of the de- velopment (or local investment along the lines described velopment opportunities that arise. In the end, only an by Sahlins [1992] as “develop-man”). Such are the risks adherence to the notion of human rights gives us the of hasty generalizations. semblance of moral progress. Kuper generalizes about the motivations of indigenous The position of anthropology in this debate is decid- peoples, about NGOs, about national situations, and edly uncomfortable. In its guise as the discipline inter- about anthropologists. Behind the politically correct crit- ested in cultural diversity, it could be construed as the icisms of “essentialist ideologies” there is an embrace academic wing of the indigenous rights movement, of development that does not withstand critical analysis whose role is to advocate the rights of vulnerable cultural (Rist 1997, Perrot et al. 1992). Kuper seems concerned minorities. Anthropology is also motivated by the rela- that indigenous movements will rock the boat: “Wher- tivist argument that all cultures must be respected as ever special land and hunting rights have been extended equal. This is only one side of the anthropological coin, to so-called indigenous peoples, local ethnic frictions are however. The inseparable other is understanding human exacerbated.” This argument is akin to the subterfuge commonality. How do we accommodate the two? Ku- according to which miserable British workers were quite per’s position may well be the only tenable one, yet it contented with their lot until Marx came along. Perhaps does not address the inequality we are left with in the the aftermath of apartheid has cautioned Kuper against wake of misguided, misplaced, or blatantly racist policies the mess caused by ethnic battles, but in Latin America of the past. Nor does it appear to safeguard us from the we cringe at the paper’s final statement: “The conven- perpetuation of an often racially biased status quo and tional lines of argument currently used to justify ‘indig- the seemingly inevitable erosion of diversity. enous’ land claims rely on obsolete anthropological no- tions and on a romantic and false ethnographic vision. Fostering essentialist ideologies of culture and identity, alcida rita ramos they may have dangerous political consequences.” “Ob- SQN 107, Bloco 1, Apto. 601, Brası´lia, D.F. 70 743- solete,” “romantic,” “false” are all adjectives that re- 090, Brazil ([email protected]). 6i03 quire much demonstration lest they remain at the sub- level of insults. One wonders what the point of Kuper’s paper really is. Poor argumentation contributes to the paper’s sour fla- Is it a criticism of cultural diversity, a protest against vor. The repeated attempts to reduce complex issues to self-serving NGOs, or a repudiation of pseudo-ethnic simple statements can be illustrated in two examples. claims? Perhaps it is all three together. His discomfort One is the contradiction between the disparaging rejec- with the term “indigenous” is understandable, but to say tion of the use of the Cree shamanic idiom as legal ev- that its usage by “the indigenous peoples movement” is idence for land rights and his charge that, in making a euphemism for “what used to be termed ‘primitive’” their legal claims, indigenous spokespeople “ironically is to blame the conquered for the conqueror’s bad lan- enough . . . do so in the idiom of Western culture theory.” guage. Similarly, if the “image of the primitive is often From this perspective it seems that indigenous peoples constructed today to suit the Greens and the antiglob- can never win. The other example is the following non 398 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003 sequitur: “Since the representations of identity are so far perform as authentic “bushmen” in their everyday lives from the realities on the ground and since the relative if anthropologists and land-claims judges are not to dis- wealth of the NGOs and the locals is so disparate, these miss their identity claims as false and opportunistic. No movements are unlikely to be democratic.” First of all, one expects “the English” to perform their Englishness; it would be remarkable if representations and realities being English allows one both to be “modern” and to actually coincided. As for the rest of the sentence, I con- make claims on an idealized English past of kings and fess that the logic escapes me. If NGOs were as deprived queens, castles, medieval villages, and pastoral land- as the locals, what utility would they have? I also fail to scapes. see what democracy has to do with ideal versus real and As Sahlins (1999:140) notes, the survival of indigenous the amount of NGO resources. Moreover, are spokes- peoples is often dependent on modern means of produc- people unrepresentative everywhere? Are new identities tion, transportation, and communication that they pay fabricated wherever they emerge? Are NGOs well off for with money acquired from public transfer payments, everywhere? resource royalties, wage labour, or commercial fishing. Particularly regarding the thorny issue of ethnic re- Rather than being swallowed up by the homogenizing surgence what we need is serious anthropological re- forces of modernity and globalization, however, many of search, rather than casual generalizations, and open- them recast their dependencies on modern means of pro- minded anthropologists who neither adopt indigenous duction in order to reconstitute their own cultural ideas causes as an article of faith nor reject ethnic struggles and practices (1999:ix). Similarly, indigenous groups are as racist manipulations by unscrupulous opportunists. drawing on the resources of a global civil society to re- What is an appropriate analysis for South Africa will not constitute themselves as “traditional communities.” be for Amazonia. The enormous differences in historical Kuper seems to expect indigenous peoples to conform to trajectories, political conjunctures, and local responses their primordial identity narratives in their everyday should prevent us from assuming that in telling one story lives when they often find themselves having to respond we tell them all. This capacity to address broad issues to contradictory demands that they be both Late Stone without losing sight of “the realities on the ground” is, Age survivors and modern citizens of the nation-state. after all, a major asset of our anthropological training. It is unlikely that activists’ “benign essentialism” con- stitutes a threat to democracy as Kuper suggests, and surely it is inappropriate to compare San and Inuit iden- steven robins tity politics to the violent outbursts of ethno-national- Department of Sociology, University of Stellenbosch, ism, racism, autochthony, and xenophobia in parts of Private Bag X1, 7602 Matieland, South Africa Europe and Africa. Finally, is “a drift to racism” really ([email protected]). 15 i 03 “inevitable where so-called cultural identity becomes a basis for rights”? I think not. Let me illustrate my ar- Kuper’s article is an eloquent critique of the essential- gument by drawing on the case of the South African San. izing tendencies of the discourses promoted by indige- During the 1980s, anti-apartheid activists focused on nous peoples movements, and it raises some troubling populist class-based forms of political mobilization and questions. For example, does the radical disjuncture be- popular land struggles rather than on “cultural” strug- tween indigenous identity narratives and everyday lived gles. Intellectuals in the popular left tended to be dis- realities delegitimize the indigenous rights movement? missive of such struggles; from their perspective (see Ma- Who is to authenticate and legitimize these narratives? gubane 1973, Mafeje 1971, Boonzaier and Sharp 1988) Kuper’s caricature of indigenous rights activists as ethnicity and “tribalism” constituted forms of “false misguided romantics does not do justice to the rhetorics consciousness” promoted by the architects of Pretoria’s and strategic priorities of activist logics. Mainstream ac- homelands and separate-development policies. With the tivists, NGOs, development consultants, and trade end of apartheid, “ethnicity” and “race” replaced “class” unionists regularly essentialize their “clients”—“sub- as the keywords of the new official political discourse, sistence farmers,” “female-headed households,” “work- and NGOs and indigenous peoples’ organizations began ing class,” and so on—without necessarily discrediting to promote self-determination and cultural rights for in- their political projects. Indeed, such rhetorical strategies digenous peoples. It was in this context that “indi- often make for effective activism. Gayatri Spivak’s con- genous” Nama, San, and Griqua ethnic revitalization cept of “strategic essentialism” is useful for understand- movements took place. ing such situated activist logics (see Robins 2001b). In 1999 members of the “(khomani San community” Moreover, essentialist constructions of identity are not necessarily incompatible with an active embrace of the achieved the return to them of land in and around the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park from which they had contradictions of modernity and its bittersweet fruits. 1 Although ethnographic examples of the integration of been forcibly removed in the 1960s. Many of them had modern, industrial technologies into indigenous cultural been regularly performing for tourists at a “bushman” repertoires—“indigenous modernities”—represent a sig- 1. The land restitution act does not recognize “tribes” or “indige- nificant challenge to the Western dichotomy between nous” or “aboriginal” land rights. Achievement of restitution is “the traditional” and “the modern,” such binary think- possible only for individuals or communities that were forcibly ing persists. For example, the San are still expected to removed through racially based legislation subsequent to 1913. kuper The Return of the Native F 399 village a few hundred kilometres from Cape Town, and contribution to debate on an issue that has avoided con- their repertoire of performances was strategically de- fronting the implications of some potentially critical ployed during the land-claim process. The 1999 land problems. Indigenousness, as Kuper shows, is no more a handover ceremony was the culmination of extensive justification for claiming special rights in perpetuity NGO lobbying of government and massive media cov- than having red hair, white skin, or blue blood. erage that helped the (khomani San land claim “jump It would of course be easy to overlook the theoretical the line” in a process in which tens of thousands of poverty of the indigenous rights discourse were it a uni- claims were competing for attention. A senior Depart- versally effective tool for solving those problems it sets ment of Land Affairs (DLA) official in Pretoria told me out to deal with, viz., the precarious status of nominally that the case had been prioritized by the minister of land indigenous minorities in some countries. While the in- affairs and the president in an attempt to acknowledge digenous rights message has arguably benefited minority the wounds of San genocide and land and cultural dis- populations in the Americas and the Antipodes, its in- possession. It had captured the president’s vision of the vocation elsewhere has sometimes been counterproduc- African Renaissance and the government’s desire for rec- tive. The precarious status of San peoples in southern ognition as a leader in the promotion of human rights Africa, for example, shows first that it is not always pos- in Africa. Essentialist constructions of San cultural con- sible to identify who is indigenous and who is not, sec- tinuity by the (khomani San, the South African San ondly that those peoples best placed to claim the privi- Institute, the media, and the government fuelled this leges due to indigenes are not necessarily those most in agenda and provided a group of superexploited and hy- need of assistance, and thirdly that a focus on indige- permarginalized ex-farm workers and their families with nousness may well reinforce the very structures of dis- visibility and support that strengthened their case. This crimination that disadvantage these peoples in the first was indeed an instance of “strategic essentialism” in place (Suzman 2001, 2002). action. Indigenous rights instruments claim what credibility For Kuper, while the motivation for such interventions they have mainly because of their applicability to situ- by activists and indigenous movements may be “gen- ations in which the descendents of indigenous peoples erous,” their political consequences are generally un- form clearly identifiable and, most important, conspic- desirable. If we were to accept his gloomy prognosis, it uously marginalized minorities. Were the special would make sense to lobby the South African govern- “rights” and privileges demanded in ILO 169 bestowed ment to call off its land-reform programme. To deny upon indigenous populations that formed empowered communities access to significant material resources as majorities they would be considered discriminatory and reparations for past injustices because they deploy es- offensive. As Kuper points out, the same broad concep- sentialist ideologies of culture and identity would be a tion of culture underwrites both the indigenous rights serious disservice to a tradition of anthropology and ac- movement and the political ideology of Europe’s far tivism that has sought to reconcile a “cultural politics right. While it is a somewhat crude comparison, the lan- of recognition” with redistributive justice. Deconstruct- guage of ancestry, bodily substance, and land that Ingold ing essentialist ideologies of culture and identity should (2002) shows to be at the heart of the indigenous rights be merely a first step toward understanding and situating narrative is not dissimilar to the Nazis’ “blood and land” local constructions of “truth,” not the goal of anthro- slogan still popular among right-wing groups. Given that pological practice. Surely anthropology should not strive few European proponents of indigenous rights would to reduce subaltern voices and histories to a sanitized consider such thinking acceptable or appropriate in their and standardized version of the anthropologist’s “truth.” homelands, this suggests that the contemporary indig- Kuper’s masterful analysis of global discourses on indi- enous rights discourse is the progeny of a worldview that geneity fails to convey a sense of the unruly and con- conceptually differentiates a First World ordered around tested character of the creation of histories and identities market forces and civil society from a Third World com- “from below.” Is this thorough dismissal of the logics of posed of organic islands of discrete culture (Chanock indigenous identity politics a sign of a growing desire to 2000). Kuper is clearly correct to assert that indigenous return to good old-fashioned ethnographic authority? is a contemporary gloss for “primitive.” Key concepts in the indigenous rights narrative are derived from a conspicuously “Western” lexicon. Thus, james suzman for many “indigenous” people, the formal assertion of African Studies Centre, Cambridge University, their rights as indigenes often involves the novel invo- Cambridge CB23RQ, U.K. ([email protected]). cation or reconceptualization of concepts such as “his- 5i03 tory,” “culture,” and “tradition.” Culture in these in- stances ceases to be grounded in a continuity of practice Despite the fact that the indigenous rights doctrine is and instead becomes the primary vehicle for the artic- out of step with much contemporary anthropological ulation of identity. Interestingly, situations portrayed as thinking, few anthropologists have openly criticized it. battles for “cultural survival” by the indigenous rights Of the few who have, most have been careful to add the movement are often considered by the people concerned caveat that their critique is intended for theoretical con- to be battles about livelihood, liberty, poverty allevia- sumption only. To this extent Kuper’s piece is a welcome tion, and access to development or social services. In- 400 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 3, June 2003 deed, when and if culture enters into local narratives, it have unfortunate consequences. And a misleading rhet- is usually as an adjunct to other concerns. Southern Af- oric is bound to have its costs. Suzman points out that rica’s San people are frustrated not because they cannot the indigenist discourse promotes stereotypes of primi- pursue their “traditional culture” but because they are tive tribesfolk. In consequence it “may well reinforce impoverished, marginalized, and exploited by the dom- the very structures of discrimination that disadvantage inant population. these peoples in the first place.” Appeals to “culture” Thus, while the indigenous rights message may pro- may persuade Western audiences, but they can com- vide succour to Europeans anxious to convince them- pletely drown out the voices of local people. As Suzman selves of the sanctity of other ways of being and doing, notes, San people in Southern Africa “are frustrated not it also fuels ethnic tensions in Third World states at- because they cannot pursue their ‘traditional culture’ but tempting to build a national identity from the debris of because they are impoverished, marginalized, and ex- colonial fiefdoms. As a result, proponents of an unso- ploited by the dominant population.” phisticated indigenous rights message are easily dis- Perhaps, then, the rhetoric may be not only bad an- missed by anxious Third World governments as unin- thropology but bad tactics as well. Ramos warns, how- formed and arrogant neocolonials. ever, that any criticisms should be muted. Critics pro- Many ethnically fragmented African states that have vide ammunition to sinister forces with decidedly had to cope with the legacy of colonial divide-and-rule unpleasant agendas, including “some oppressive govern- policies have developed flexible and imaginative ap- ments that, in disclaiming the political agency of indig- proaches to addressing the tensions experienced by their enous peoples, attribute their actions to the manipula- peoples between their status as “citizens” on the one tive powers of non-Indian agitators.” I accept that this hand and their status as “subjects” on the other (Mam- is a real problem, but I am reluctant to go along with dani 1996). Debate on the question of collective versus self-censorship. Are we to tell our students that for po- individual rights in these states is inevitably bound by litical reasons we—and they—should pretend to believe the immediate need to develop practically effective pol- in ideas that have no intellectual justification? Must we icies towards the accommodation of minority concerns. criticize Victorian evolutionism when it is invoked to Not unsurprisingly, these debates expose the tautological justify discrimination against a minority population but twists and loops of the “rights conundrum” (see Nhlapo endorse it, or keep silent, when this logic is put to use 1999) that has hamstrung the ratification of the UN’s to support land claims on behalf of the same minority? declaration on the rights of indigenous people. They also Should we ignore history for fear of undermining myths suggest that any further elaborations on the basic indi- of autochthony? vidual human rights doctrine must be responsive to local Even if we could accurately weigh up the medium- peculiarities rather than the pursuit of universal appli- and long-term political costs and benefits of saying this cability. Broad critiques such as Kuper’s may stimulate or that, our business should be to deliver accurate ac- those involved in minority rights issues to generate al- counts of social processes. If anthropology becomes, as ternative approaches to dealing with the problems ex- Plaice remarks, “the academic wing of the indigenous perienced by marginalized minorities. rights movement,” if we report only what is convenient and refrain from analysing intellectual confusions, then our ethnographies will be worthless except as propa- ganda. Even as propaganda they will have a rapidly di- Reply minishing value, since the integrity of ethnographic studies will be increasingly questioned by the informed public. adam kuper Omura and Robbins raise the possibility that the in- Uxbridge, U.K. 3ii03 digenist rhetoric can be self-correcting. Imaginative new twists may be introduced, adapted to local circum- Suzman remarks that “the indigenous rights doctrine is stances. (An interesting example involving the Canadian out of step with much contemporary anthropological Inuit is presented in Morin [2001].) Beth Conklin de- thinking.” This is true, although it must be admitted scribes such a case in her contribution to the recent that it is thoroughly in step with certain strands of cul- American Anthropologist symposium “Indigenous tural theory. Some commentators, however, take the Rights Movements” (Hodgson 2002a)2. Conventional en- view that academic judgements on the premises and vironmental arguments in favour of land grants to in- logic of the doctrine are neither here nor there—that digenous peoples are discredited in Brazil. Indigenous perhaps the rhetoric does come across as essentialist and leaders have been implicated in too many well-publi- romantic but, as Robbins remarks, “such rhetorical strat- cized instances of ecological vandalism. Some activists egies often make for effective activism.” therefore choose rather to emphasize the ancient folk Unfortunately, activism, however well-intentioned, wisdom of shamans. As Conklin explains, this allows does not always work out for the best. The case studies I summarize in my paper indicate, hardly surprisingly, 2. The introductory essay (Hodgson 2002b) reviews recent litera- that if policies are based upon fantasies about primordial ture. This issue appeared after my paper had been circulated for hunters rather than on local realities they are liable to commentary. kuper The Return of the Native F 401 them “to construct new discourses about indigenous ings of “late capitalism” that Dombrowski invokes. Per- peoples’ identities” by appealing to fashionable ideas haps capitalism is not as late as all that. Certainly about “indigenous knowledge.” She points out further globalization is neither as new nor as global as is widely strategic advantages. Brazilian nationalists were reluc- assumed. The discourse on globalization recalls Victo- tant to alienate vast swaths of forest to particular ethnic rian ideas about the inexorable spread of civilization. minorities, but they are happy to agree that native ex- Like the old enemies of civilization, those who inveigh perts have some sort of collective copyright in ancient against globalization seem to expect the Noble Savage medical lore. Awkward questions about political repre- to stand in its way, like Obelix the Gaul hurling menhirs sentation can also be avoided: “Whereas the figure of the at the Romans. ‘chief’ can raise the empirically testable question of Finally, Plaice expresses the fear that we may be forced whether a certain individual has or deserves his people’s “to watch on the sidelines while those recently con- support,” Conklin suggests, “the figure of the shaman quered suffer a fate shared by millions throughout his- circumvents such questions” (2002:1053–55). In other tory whose societies have disintegrated.” Yet she herself words, spiritual leaders are not required to be democrats. has demonstrated that ethnographers can contribute This is creative enough, but I do not see that the new fresh and realistic definitions of social problems by doctrines represent a more reliable basis for social policy coolly analysing the fluid and complex situations on the than the old pieties of the indigenist movement. ground and dissecting the goals of various agents. Such Omura and Ramos emphasize, very properly, that not studies clarify the pros and cons of specific public poli- all indigenous movements are the same, which I would cies, and that is a worthwhile objective. have thought a good argument against saddling them all I am grateful to the colleagues who have responded to with the same ideology. 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