Understanding Indigenism: Building A Different Future for Us All :: Essays Papers

Understanding Indigenism: Building A Different Future for Us All â€Å"Defining one’s ‘culture’ is a life long process,† according to Indian rights activist Norman DesCampe of the Grand Portage Chippewa Tribe. â€Å"You have to live it.† Today, the life long process of understanding indigenous cultures is limited by terms of â€Å"cultural survival.† The ability of future generations to define themselves as Inuit or Kayapo is threatened as their natural environments and social integrity is hurt by government negligence: indigenous cultures must be protected under a political structure that allows the people to live as they choose to live, outside of the transformative power of established nation-states, and the assumptions of these powers. Thus, international organizations must actively ensure the rights of impoverished indigenous â€Å"states within states†: The right to â€Å"exchange equitably† (Rose 234) as autonomous states with nation states is the basis for the new politically explosive global phenomenon (Neisen 1) of indigenous sovereignty and cultural autonomy. However, in Western government, â€Å"native peoples are in the way because they are thought to undermine the state- whichever state they find themselves in- because of their struggle to maintain their own ways of life† (Wolfe, â€Å"Tribes†). Because they present economic challenges to land use and resource exploitation, indigenous peoples share sufferings under political oppression, deracination and racism and are, as in the case of Australian Aborigines, the â€Å"poorest of the poor.† Destroyed by a â€Å"rhetoric of hate,† genocide and mass murder are the tools of nation states to control the unwanted obstacles in economic development (Niezen 55). Colonialism transformed the indigenous life of the Yanomami, the Maasai, the Hawai’ians, the Aborigines and hundreds of other indigenous peoples. Industrialization moved humanity beyond the â€Å"world in which people mattered to a world in which they are expendable† (Wolfe). Today, still entrenched in the imperialistic ideology of colonialism by modern forms of globalization, nation states noisily quarrel over the rights to exploit both land and people for economic power without regard to indigenous existence. Non-Hawaiian haoles crudely render false historical interpretations of their â€Å"settler society† as a blessed yoke of â€Å"civilization† to the pitiful â€Å"feudal† Hawaiians (Trask). Some indigenous people attempt to assimilate, as â€Å"for years [one Aboriginal man] had ‘sweetened’ himself up just like tea, trying to make himself and others understood [to invading Western cultures]’† but â€Å"‘nothin g been come back. Just nothing’† (Rose 195). Without political muscle, indigenous people are forced to promote ecologically harmful projects, such as hydroelectric dam proposals, to survive within the paradigm of the Western world.