Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
are non-urban and farm or hunt for food for immediate use. Although traditionally
Indigenous Peoples used wide-spread territories to obtain needed resources, today
dominant societies have seized most of these lands and restricted Indigenous Peoples
to ever-shrinking “reservations” or “territories” that are inadequate for their needs.
Who are Indigenous Peoples?
The international community has developed an understanding of the term based on
the following fundamental criterion of self-identification:
• Self- identification as Indigenous Peoples at the individual level and acceptance
as a member by the community;
• Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies;
• Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources;
• Distinct social, economic, or political systems;
• Distinct languages, cultures, and knowledges;
• Status as non-dominant social groups;
• Resolve to maintain and reproduce ancestral environments and systems as
distinctive peoples and communities.
These criteria are brought together in a definition formulated by José Martínez-Cobo
in his 1983 report “Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous
Populations:”
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical
continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their
territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies
now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present
non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and
transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity,
as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their
own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems. 8
Reflecting this contemporary understanding, Article 33 of the UN DRIP refers to
the rights of Indigenous Peoples to decide their own identities and procedures of
belonging. This means that a particular people may establish the membership criteria
for enrollment in their “tribe,” “nation,” or “society.” In the United States several
tribes still require a “minimum blood quantum,” while in Brazil, self-identification
by the individual and his or her community is the basic prerequisite.
Indigenous Peoples or Populations? Although earlier human rights documents
use the words “populations” or “peoples,” the meaning of the words has
been disputed. Some governments refer to Indigenous Peoples as “tribes”
Continued
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