The ‘Wild’, the Market, and the Native: Indigenous People Face New Forms of Global Colonization

Indigenous and traditional peoples world-wide are facing a crisis, one that supersedes that inflicted on indigenous peoples during the imperial age. Just as in the last 500 years, imperialism caused the encapsulation of indigenous societies within the new settler nation-states and their subjection to colonial political formations, loss of territory and jurisdiction, so have the globalizing market and the post-industrial/technological complex brought about another phase of profound change for these societies. The further encapsulation of indigenous societies by the global complex, to which nation-state formations are themselves subservient, has resulted in continuing loss of territory as a result of large-scale developments, urban postcolonial population expansion, and ongoing colonization of the natural world by the market. This last point is illustrated, for example, by the bioprospecting and patenting of life forms and biota by new genetic and chemical engineering industries (see Posey, this volume). Coincidental with the new colonization is the crisis of biodiversity loss; a critical issue for indigenous peoples, particularly hunting and gathering societies. The massive loss of biota through extinction events, loss of territory and species habitats, and environmental degradation, together with conservationist limitation of indigenous harvesting, constitute significant threats to indigenous ways of life. While aboriginal rights to wildlife are restricted to ‘non-commercial’ use, the pressures increase for indigenous peoples to forge unique economic niches to maintain their ways of life. Of particular importance is the vexed issue of aboriginal entitlements to commercial benefits from the utilization of wildlife arising both from developing standards of traditional resource rights and from customary proprietary interests. The new threats to indigenous life-ways in the era of the globalizing market have been brought about by the increasing commodification of features of the natural world, putting at risk the very survival of ancient societies that are directly dependent on the state of their natural environment. For instance, already in June 1978, Inupiat leader Eben Hopson, then founding Chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and spokesperson for the Alaska Whaling Commission, appealed to the London press corps for understanding and support in the legal recognition of Inuit rights: ‘We Inuit are hunters. There aren’t many subsistence hunting societies left in the world, but our Inuit circumpolar community is one of them.’

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