Return of the natives

Across North and South America indigenous peoples are making their voices heard.

Luke Disney | November 2003 issue

After 500 years of, often brutal, repression, there are signs that Amerindians are making a comeback. Having seen their numbers drop from 100 million to just 4.5 million 150 years after Columbus’s arrival, there are now more than 47 million indigenous people spread across the two continents, and their numbers are growing. Against the odds they have managed to stem the tide of cultural and linguistic devastation, and are, in many areas, experiencing a cultural and political renaissance.

The importance of indigenous social, cultural and environmental traditions has been recognized by the United Nations, which established the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2000, and declared this the Decade of the Indigenous People and August 9, the annual International Day of the Indigenous Peoples.

On a higher plane, Indian spiritual insights continue to attract increasing attention from indigenous and non-indigenous people alike. Type in ‘Shaman’ on your Internet search engine and you’re confronted with a whole host of courses, clubs and newsgroups eager to help the expert or novice practitioner get in touch with traditional sources of enlightenment and inspiration.

It has been indigenous peoples’ growing presence in North and South American politics that has arguably provided the greatest sign of their resurgence. Indians compose a significant minority (at least 5% of the population) in 12 Latin American countries, in four of which they account for more than 40% of the population. But internal divisions and rivalries have long left them susceptible to divide-and-rule tactics of governments and multinational companies. However, as Sergio Cáceres, editor of Bolivia’s Juguete Rabioso (quoted in Le Courrier International, August 21-27, 2003), concludes, in other countries the masks have come off, and indigenous political parties are increasingly shaping national politics.

In Bolivia, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which represents most of the country’s close to six million indigenous people – more than 50% of the country’s total population – saw its share of the vote rise from 3% in 1997 to 21% in 2002, with its leader Evo Morales finishing second in the race for the presidency. The party expects to win a solid majority in the 2007 elections.

In Ecuador, where Indians make up more than 40% of the population, president Gutiérrez owes his office to the support of the native Pachakutik- Nuevo País party and initially filled four ministerial posts with Indians before dismissing them in an abrupt about face in August of this year, leaving his chances at re-election hanging by a thread.

One could also mention Peru’s, Alejandro Toledo, who became the continent’s first – democratically elected – indigenous president in 2001. Despite his continued failure to deliver on many of his election promises, Toledo’s rise to power represented a historical breakthrough for the country’s almost 13 million Indians.

Elsewhere indigenous peoples are on the verge of making political breakthroughs. In Guatemala, Rigoberto Quemé, who currently serves as mayor of the country’s second city Quetzaltenango, was set to run in the presidential elections in November, but was forced to withdraw his candidacy due to dissension in his party, an umbrella group for a multitude of indigenous parties.

In 1999 Venezuelan Indians established political representation for the first time thanks to the introduction of a new constitution. The country now marks 12 October as ‘the day of Indian resistance’.

In the northern hemisphere Canadian Indians are rebounding from the disappointing loss of a 1992 constitutional referendum that would have established indigenous representation as a separate level of government. In August this year, the Dogrib First Nation signed the Tli Cho treaty with the Canadian government. Under the terms of the agreement, the Dogrib will gain control of 39,000 square kilometres (an area roughly the size of Switzerland) of their ancestral lands. They will have exclusive ownership of all natural resources (which includes Canada’s two diamond mines) and significant control over their development. The historical treaty also includes unique self-government provisions for the 3,000 Dogrib.

At a general level, it is easy to see the positive aspects of the indigenous people’s increased political influence. They are better placed to reform the ‘foreign’ political systems – imposed on them by the European colonists – to better accommodate their own customs and interests. Their ascension to power has had an effect at a more personal level, as well. ‘Following [the political changes] of the 1990s, Indians have began to have a better opinion of themselves,’ says Nina Pacari, ex-minister for foreign affairs in Ecuador (El País, quoted in Le Courrier International, August 21-27, 2003).

The Indians do not have a unifying political ideology. Plans for reform differ from group to group and from culture to culture. However, at a broader level they are united in their rejection of social inequality and the destruction of the environment.

In this respect it is no coincidence that Indians have taken on a pivotal roll in the growing anti-globalisation movement, which has brought together a wide range of ideologies and interests under the banner of opposition to the current neo-liberal economic order and its proponents. A growing number of people are experiencing the destructive effects of putting profits ahead of people; something Indians have witnessed for decades. As Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the masked spokesman for the indigenous Zapatista rebels in Mexico – pioneers of the anti-globalisation movement, according to Naomi Klein of No-Logo fame – put it in his address to the protestors gathered at the latest WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico: ‘We are the indigenous, the young, the women, the children, the elderly, the homosexuals, the migrants, all those who are different. That is to say, the immense majority of humanity.’

Since roughly the 1970s people across North and South American have been questioning the negative views of indigenous people and their cultures. Now, the increasing political power of indigenous peoples makes it increasingly likely that their antiquated’ and ‘savage’ traditions will play an important role in righting many of the environmental, spiritual and social imbalances afflicting communities and countries on both continents.

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