Indigenous Rights and Land Claims Around the World

With globalization and colonization taking over almost the entire known world, native tribes who are indigenous to their lands are losing control of the lands that their people have lived in for ages to the hands of foreign colonizers who claim the land as their own. Now, indigenous people all around the world are struggling to reclaim the lands and rights that were taken away from them through non-violent social relations with national governments and large corporations. Anthropologists have recorded how indigenous people across the globe attempt to create relations with national governments to reclaim rights and lands that they once had before the colonization of their ancestral homeland.

Compiled in this essay are three examples of ethnographic research done by anthropologists who followed different aboriginal people’s journey to reclaim their land from the hands of the government. The first two articles discuss two different tribes in Canada; the Nisga’a, and the Cheslatta T’en, while the third and final article discusses the struggle of the U’wa tribe in Colombia. All three tribes have different ways and reasons for their struggle but they each have the same goal; freedom to live in their homeland and practice their culture and beliefs in peace without interference from the national government of the country in which they reside.

Anthropological Research

Carole Blackburn writes the first article, titled, Differentiating Indigenous Citizenship, Seeking Multiplicity in Rights, Identity, and Sovereignty in Canada. Her ethnographic research brought her to British Columbia where she examined the delicate society of the Nisga’a people; an aboriginal tribe who has fought for differentiated indigenous citizenship for over a cent...

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... globally so other tribes can follow in their footsteps and stand up for their rights as a historic and important people, and also to show national governments that indigenous people are essential to the world’s history and deserve to be treated with equal respect because of how their lands were colonized as part of globalization.

Works Cited

Blackburn, Carole. "Differentiating Indigenous Citizenship: Seeking Multiplicity in Rights, Identity, and Sovereignty in Canada." American Ethnologist 36.1 (2009): 66-78.

Martinez, Juan Martin Arellano. "Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles for Autonomy: The Case of the U’wa People." Diplomat and International Canada 2012.12 (2012): 109-22.

Larson, Soren C. "Promoting Aboriginal Territoriality through Interethnic Alliances: The Case of the Cheslatta T'en in Northern British Columbia." Human Organization 62.1 (2003): 74-84.