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- Convenors:
-
Jonas Bens
(Universität Hamburg)
Antje Gunsenheimer (University of Bonn, Department Anthropology of the Americas)
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- Discussant:
-
Peter Schröder
(Universidade Federal de Pernambuco)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-D307
- Sessions:
- Friday 17 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
How are "staying, moving, and settling" translated under colonial and postcolonial conditions into legal relationships between indigenous and settler communities to regulate land in the Americas? How are these legalities constructed, transformed, mobilized, and challenged?
Long Abstract:
From the early 15th century on, people from all over the world have settled in the Americas. The colonial endeavor transformed the newcomers into settlers and those who already inhabited the Americas into natives. From the very beginning, settler and indigenous communities negotiated — violently or on agreement — some kind of legal relationship defining the rights to land. Today, these legal issues continue as indigenous territories still are occupied by internal refugees and agro-industrial enterprises, often supported by the state. Legal relationships between indigenous and settler communities have varied over time under changing socio-economic conditions and varying shapes of colonial and postcolonial power relations; but they were always highly unequal, giving rise to tensions and violent conflicts. Although most recently international legal regimes for the protection of indigenous land rights have emerged, these land rights conflicts between settlers and natives have not lost their prevalence. Against that background, the panel invites papers with either an ethnographic or ethnohistorical perspective (or a combination of both) on indigeneity and land rights in the Americas. In accordance with the conference theme, the panel shall address how "staying, moving, and settling" under colonial and postcolonial conditions have been and still are translated into legal relationships to regulate land in the Americas and, how this endeavor causes further legal dilemma. Papers should focus on how and by whom these legalities between indigenous and settler communities have been and still are constructed, transformed, mobilized, and challenged in the context of conflicts over land.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 17 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
How does the Chilean Indigenous Law frame the Mapuche relationship to the land? With this question, the paper addresses the ambiguous outcomes of legal recognition.From the right to be "here" to the obligation to stay put
Paper long abstract:
Passed in 1993, the Chilean Indigenous Law recognizes the Mapuche as one of the national indigenous etnia, protecting their culture as well as the "indigenous land" (tierras indígenas). The current determination of indigenous land follow the ones of the Mapuche reserves (títulos de merced) created at the beginning of the 20th century, when the government actively promoted the settlement of European families after the violent incorporation of the Mapuche territories. The Indigenous Law sets the criteria to establish individuals and family so-called indigenous quality. In this context, the expression "indigenous land" designates the parcels of land owned by Mapuche individuals or, in rare cases, Mapuche communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Region of the Biobio, this paper argues that the implementation of the law and its interpretations represent a shift in this relation: if Mapuche, through ownership, pass on the indigenous quality to their land, the land is also considered as a necessity to be a real Mapuche. Then, the land itself seems to pass on the indigenous quality to people dwelling on it. This reversal contributes to the essentialisation of Mapuche identities and the denial of Mapuche practices of mobility: the fact of moving away, often to urban areas to escape poverty and the lack of opportunities, let arise doubts regarding one's authenticity and identity as Mapuche. The legal recognition seems then to draw to a forced immobility.
Paper short abstract:
I shall argue that the strategy of choice for indigenous peoples to resist the territorial encroachments of national as well as international actors upon their territories in Northwestern Colombia is to become players in the national and international arenas.
Paper long abstract:
Northwestern Colombia has had a long history of indigenous peoples resisting the conquest by Spanish, Scottish and other European Nations. Despite the foundation of the first Spanish town on the continent (Santa Maria la Antigua) it took four centuries to incorporate the territories firmly into the newly independent nations (first Colombia then also Panama). Within the Colombian context it was there, where indigenous peoples were successfully (re-)gaining titles on their traditional land from the 1970s on. Some twenty years later the Afrocolombian population started to also receive land titles as a native people there, similarly as the Indigenous communities, but backed only by a special law for them, not by the constitution.
Whereas the Indigenous communities have remained in a stronger legal position than their native Afrocolombian counterparts, from the 1980s on the real danger of dispossession came rather from other sources such as non-state armed groups, the military presence, international enterprises interested in natural resources or land grabbing mainly by national capital, sometimes in collusion with the armed groups (mainly paramiltary forces).
For this paper I shall argue that the strategy to resist the territorial encroachments of national as well as international actors upon their land is to become players in the national and international arenas, to become also Colombian nationals as well as cosmopolitans. The indigenous peoples' presence in both arenas is not new, although the bare necessity to fulfil the triple act of indigenous, Colombian and cosmopolitan generates an even greater challenge for the indigenous communities.
Paper short abstract:
Land-demarcations and an autonomy statute protect indigenous and ethnic land rights in Nicaragua's Autonomous Region. However, a transoceanic Canal now threatens their territories, evoke conflicts, lawsuits and resistance, and demonstrate the continuity of indigenous struggles since colonial times.
Paper long abstract:
In 2013, Nicaragua's President Ortega signed a contract with the Chinese based construction firm HKND (Hongkong Nicaragua Development) to build the Gran Canal Interoceanico. The canal aims to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean with a 275 km long maritime waterway, half of which on indigenous territories. The state sanctioned mobility project ignores autonomy regulations of the Atlantic Regions, such as the obligation to consult with concerned indigenous and ethnic populations, or land ownership and cultural wellbeing officially secured by land-demarcations in the early 2000s. While these legal regulations had brought back tentative trust to the largely divided country, conflicts are now resurfacing as tens of thousands are faced with resettlement plans and environmental destruction. Three years after construction was officially inaugurated, the Canal project has (apparently) been abandoned. However, during the past five years of anticipating the realization of a century-old 'dream', indigenous activists and lawyers marched the streets and legally defended their land.
This paper demonstrates postcolonial continuities of injustice experienced by indigenous populations seeking their rights to land and self-determination. Although international law and human rights regimes increasingly provide protection, international investment treaties and state power put populations in Nicaragua at risk. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, historical documents and contemporary lawsuits I argue that, while the infrastructure project seeks to turn a remote country into a space of global economic concern, indigenous groups are again obliged to resist historical continuities of injustice and marginalisation demonstrated in the gap between rights and the practical implementation of these rights.
Paper short abstract:
Indigenous claims on the right to land, and self-determination on these lands, concern almost exclusively rural territories. This paper explores the insurgent urbanism by highland Mayas in a city in southern Mexico and their challenge of the "right" place to claim indigenous rights.
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous claims on the right to land, and self-determination on these lands, have won recognition both by national constitutions and international conventions. Almost exclusively, these claims have concerned rural land. However, a growing number of indigenous persons live in cities. Here, they can usually not exert forms for collective self-determination as indigenous peoples. Furthermore, they are commonly, in the racialized praxis of urban planning and governance, neither recognized as subjects with full urban citizenship, granted equal rights as other residents.
I investigate this dilemma in the colonial town of San Cristóbal de las Casas in the highlands of Chiapas in Mexico. This town has the last decades experienced a rapid urbanization by Mayas from surrounding rural communities searching livelihoods, many of whom have been politicized by regional waves of indigenous mobilization, most notably the Zapatista movement. Some argue their right to this urban land since it was occupied by their ancestors when the Spanish colonizers arrived. Most hold a critical gaze of the continued mestizo governance and control of the city, privileging mestizo interests and keeping indigenous inhabitants in a marginalized position. Mayas live in shanty neighborhoods around the town center with none or only partial recognition and access to urban resources. However, they exercise a range of claims on the city, forming collective forms of neighborhood governance, and creating their own spheres for transportation, infrastructure and markets. In my paper, I discuss the potentials of this insurgent urbanism and its challenge of the "right" place to claim indigenous rights.
Paper short abstract:
The ejido is a form of communal land holding in Mexico introduced after the Revolution. It roots in pre-Columbian times and grants territory and a certain autonomy to peasant communities. But conflicts about land with state entities continued, as this case of PEMEX in a Totonac community shows.
Paper long abstract:
More than a hundred years after its introduction the ejido - a form of communal land holding for agricultural use - still counts as one of the most important accomplishments of the Mexican Revolution, when masses of indigenous peoples and peasants demanded their own land. Large holdings of wealthy landowners where expropriated and distributed to landless peasants to be administered as communal land by a community of ejidatarios with equal rights and responsibilities. The concept in ideas of pre-Columbian communal land as for example the Aztec Calpulli and was therefore considered "authentic Mexican". Originally designed to grant a certain political and organizational freedom to the communities, the important role during the establishment and the continuing interference in administrational matters by state authorities led to a perpetual presence of the state in the ejido. This is demonstrated especially through the governmental expropriation of ejido land for purposes of national interest. The extraction of resources such as hydrocarbons was one of these purposes, for which large parts of ejido territories were expropriated by the state-owned oil company PEMEX. This paper introduces the case of an ejido founded by Totonac peasant families in the state of Veracruz, which is strongly affected by hydrocarbon extraction and lost more than one quarter of its original territory to PEMEX until the present date. Conflicts about the ejido land have been part of the community life since the entrance of the state company, during incisive reforms and prevail until the present day.
Paper short abstract:
That paper aims to work with the guarani narratives from young and oldest indigenous about the concept of TEKOHA, that means in guarani, the place they live their life, "the place where we are what we are".
Paper long abstract:
That paper aims to work with the guarani narratives from young and oldest indigenous about the concept of TEKOHA, that means in guarani, the place they live their life, "the place where we are what we are".
And how the young re-semanticizing of tekoha`s concept, now, TEKOHA are inside their bodies.
The body is the place they living their lives and the only possibility they have to dwell their tekoha.
The question is how they live their lives? Why does the body become the only place they can live?
The indigenous people in Dourados` reservation are" in between", and to try to understand that place we must understand that is not a transitory place but is the reality of their lives, is a frontier, as wrote Latour, the place where hybrids are forged.
To be in between is to be in constant negotiation in ontological terms. To try to understand those processes it will be used the conception of dwelling perspective from Ingold and anthropophagy from Viveiros de Castro.
Paper short abstract:
This paper proposes to read Amazonian quilombolas 'dating' practices and semantics as a 'taming' vector that both opens and limits the possibilities of livability and cohabitation of humans and nonhumans in the forest.
Paper long abstract:
Amazonian quilombolas dating practices generate connections that temporarily 'tame' not only the people involved in the relation, but also specific parts of the environment and animals. I first propose to read 'dating' practices and semantics as a taming vector that both opens and limits the possibilities of livability and cohabitation of humans and nonhumans in the forest. Secondly, I suggest to see 'dating as taming' as an embodied process which is central to quilombolas place-making and personal ontogenies. More generally, the relational contingency of taming is discussed in contrast to the idea of the 'domestication' of whole landscapes or species, and inquires into the conceptual implications of considering particular persons, places and animals as being 'tame' for some, but potentially 'wild' or dangerously unfamiliar for others.