Paper short abstract:

Concentrating on the comparatively recent appropriation of the notion of “the indigenous” Pakistan, this paper highlights activist approaches to instrumentalize the language of indigenous sustenance, land and customary rights to articulate voice for otherwise silenced and marginalized communities.

Paper long abstract:

Along with rising consciousness about climate change and massive environmental destruction in the Anthropocene, the archetypical notion of “the indigenous” has come to embody the ultimate Other to settler colonialism, industrial modernity, capitalism, and the modern state. In this discourse, Indigenous Peoples are sacralized as potential saviours of the Planet, as “ecologically noble savages”, who represent an alternative role model for the coming generations, from which to learn by going back to the “roots”.

Based on several years of teaching experience and research in Pakistan, this paper concentrates on the comparatively recent appropriation of the notion of “the indigenous” by Pakistani activists and NGOs. In the context of increasing awareness about the effects of land grabbing, displacement, water scarcity, flooding, salination and the loss of species, the globalized language of indigenous sustenance, land, and customary rights is instrumentalized in order to articulate voice for otherwise silenced and marginalized fishing and farming communities. It is thus worthwhile to inquire into the particular ways in which indigeneity is appropriated for social justice projects: Who and what is rendered and represented as indigenous and how are such notions of indigeneity understood by the actors themselves? Which are the terms that are in local use and how might these overlap and diverge from, often fashionable, globalized notions of indigeneity? In which ways do colonial notions of tribalism, tradition, primitivism, and rurality – all perceived as antidotes to modernity – intersect with contemporary modes of representing marginal communities as “indigenous” and “sustainable”?