I was intrigued to find  out from today’s New York Times (Michael Cieply, “In Polanski case, a time warp”) that a report by two probation officers who, in 1977, made a recommendation against a longer gaol term (as compared to the 48 days  he got) in Polanski’s case of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old, they made the argument that while foreign filmmakers “enrich[ed] the community with their presence, they have brought with them the manners and mores of their native lands, which in rare instances have been at variance with those of their adoptive land.” Implicitly, they were making a cultural argument in favour of a lenient sentence.

These days, the cultural defense is often used in sex crime cases of non-European migrants (it is rarely successful in Europe, more often so in the U.S.), and it tends to be forgotten that thirty years ago it was applied to South and East Europeans. Overall, cultural arguments in such cases have become more explicitly articulated, both by defense and prosecution (and especially in public debates). At the same time, attitudes towards child-rearing, the agency of children and the adult-child relationship, and the biological versus moral determination of sexual behaviour have changed in complex ways. These days, children are seen as being endowed with more rights, yet, as the article points out, they are given less voice in legal deliberations because of the assumption that they must be protected. It seems that the biopolitics of childhood has become more strongly entrenched because it is harder to find an interpretive framework for the ambiguities of individual cases (that is, the difficult questions of free will and choice) when they involve individuals coming from different societies, as they increasingly do. It seems that the most successful weapon to deploy against the schematicism of this biopolitics is an equally schematic politics of culture. Thus, in a case reported by Alison Dundes Renteln in her book The Cultural Defense, an Afghan father in the U.S. was put on trial for kissing his infant son’s penis. He would have likely faced a harsher sentence than Polanski had the defense not mobilised an anthropologist to testify that such behaviour was a culturally appropriate expression of affection.

Some time ago, MAA alumnus Jesse Dart sent in this article from by Phillip Rothstein on the concept of “cultural property” and the way it has changed in significance since it was introduced by UNESCO in 1954.  Although the article is mainly focused on the impact of the concept on archaeology, there is a lot of interest for anthropologists, too.

Rothstein reviews Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage by James Cuno.  He notes the key argument that while the idea of “cultural property” was introduced in order to protect, retain and make available certain objects, sites, buildings etc as the “cultural heritage of all mankind”, it has instead come to be used in an increasingly parochial sense, to restrict access to and control over objects of cultural significance.

Of particular interest to me was the argument that modern states are increasingly defining themselves as the rightful owners of “cultural property”, even when these claims involve an anachronistic projection of the contemporary state into the past.  From the article:

The idea of cultural property has become a political trump card. At a conference in Athens in March, organized in part by a Unesco intergovernmental committee, the concept expanded even further: “Certain categories of cultural property are irrevocably identified by reference to the cultural context in which they were created (unique and exceptional artworks and monuments, ritual objects, national symbols, ancestral remains, dismembered pieces of outstanding works of art). It is their original context that gives them their authenticity and unique value.”

Those artworks, objects, symbols and relics do not just merit protection; they should be “returned” to their “countries of origin,” the only places, supposedly, where they can be fully appreciated. This has nothing to do with whether they were obtained illicitly or inappropriately.

The countries of origin, of course, are modern states, which are increasingly asserting control, a point emphasized by Mr. Cuno. In 1970 another Unesco agreement said it was “incumbent upon every state” to protect its cultural property. Cultural property — almost by definition beyond the control or disposition of individuals — is linked to the powers of the modern state and its political demands.

These are interesting points to make and it is always worth being reminded of the extent to which we take for granted the claims of nations to be the only legitimate inheritors of cultural property.  Indigenous groups have of course made ground claiming back elements of their heritage, including the remains of ancestors, from distant museums.  But nation states tend to claim heritage based on their territorialising strategies, i.e. where claims to heritage are connected with a defined territory over which exclusive sovereign rights are asserted.

In southern Thailand, where I did my fieldwork, premodern Buddhist sites are used to create a sense of the Thai nation state projected backwards in time.  In an area in which there are different and strongly contested historical sensibilities, between Thai Buddhist and Malay Muslim, this use of cultural heritage is highly political.  Similarly, the current stoush betweeen Thailand and Cambodia over the ownership of a Hindu/Khmer temple, Preah Vihear ( see here for a decent archive of stories about the conflict), illustrates the way claims to cultural heritage and claims to territory are intrinsically linked.  This case also provides an example of the way in which the “universal” UNESCO model of cultural heritage, which admonishes states to protect their heritage “for the benefit of mankind”, may contribute to the parochial claims of states against their rivals.  Indeed, the catalyst for the current crisis was precisely a UNESCO statement which reaffirmed a 1962 ruling of the International Court of Justice  granting Cambodia possession of the site.  (As a side note, a fascinating detail of this case occurred in 1963 when Thailand finally backed down after initially disputing the 1962 ruling. Rather than lowering the Thai flag that had been flying over the temple soldiers dug up the flag pole with the flag still flying, removed it from the site, and reinstalled it at another location in Thailand).

As Benedict Anderson noted, the imagined community of the nation state is imagined to be both sovereign and limited.  Correspondingly, in the national imaginary cultural heritage must also be limited, and sovereignty over it must be exclusive.   According to this zero sum mentality, a gain for one nation must necessarily entail a loss for another.

I just came across this funny story (via @jensbest on twitter) about an English Star Wars fan and founder of the International Church of Jediism, who was ejected from a British Tescos store by staff over security fears when he refused to remove his hood. He felt “victimised over his beliefs”:

I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave. I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone.

Ridiculous as it sounds, the story points to the fact, that the line between what is considered „a cultural belief“ and which groups are to have the priviledge to be exempted from mainstream regulations, is a very fine one.

US Law professor Lawrence Sager is one of those, who very eloquently speak against giving groups special rights on the basis of their identification with a certain culture and religion, as this leads to the injust situation, where some people, who belong to an officially recognized group, can claim special rights, which others, who have equally strong beliefs, but can’t support them with „a culture“ („this is part of my culture“) can’t.

Thus we should seek to protect individual, as well as cultural and religious preferences, regardless of whether they can be legitimized by a group.

The Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO), an Indigenous umbrella group, has issued a press release condemning the American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expedition, “México Indígena.”  (Below I’ve pasted this press release, and following that, the text of the AGS description of the Bowman Expedition’s “México Indígena” project, which refutes many of the UNOSJO charges.)

The first charge is that one of the AGS researchers, University of Kansas’s  Peter Herlihy,  failed to disclose the fact that his research was partially funded by the U.S. military, specifically the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) of the United States Army. It also claims that Herlihy failed to disclose the participation of Radiance Technologies, “a company that specializes in arms development and military intelligence.”

Another ethics charge is a novel variation on accusations that international researchers exploit Indigenous cultural and intellectual property: they accuse the project of “geopiracy.”

They also claim that the mapping data collected by the project is fed into “a global database that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a United States Army counterinsurgency strategy designed by FMSO and applied within indigenous communities, among others.”

AGS refutes  the association with HTS, but one thing that seems clear from this project is that one of the 5 main concerns expressed by the American Anthropological Association about the HTS, namely its prediction that HTS would taint anthropologists and their informants worldwide, seems to be coming true.

–L.L. Wynn (pasted press releases below)

_________________________

PRESS BULLETIN FROM UNION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SIERRA JUÁREZ OF
OAXACA (UNOSJO, S.C.) – Oaxaca, Mexico

TO ALL STATE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA SOURCES:

We kindly request that you publish the present bulletin in your
respective means of communication.

Towards the end of 2008, the results of the research project México
Indígena (Indigenous Mexico) were handed over to two Zapotec
communities in the Sierra Juárez in the form of maps. Research had
been undertaken two years earlier by a team of geographers from
University of Kansas. What initially seemed to be a beneficial project
for the communities now leaves many of the participants feeling like
victims of geopiracy.

In August 2006, the México Indígena research team arrived at the Union
of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO, S.C.) to
present research objectives and garner support to commence work in the
Sierra Juárez region. At the time, the team included a Mexican
biologist Gustavo Ramírez, an Ixtlán native well known in the area,
who was responsible for initially approaching UNOSJO.

Project leader and geographer Peter Herlihy explained the project
objectives to UNOSJO, S.C., initially stating that it was to document
the impacts of PROCEDE [a Mexican Government program has had on
indigenous communities. He failed to mention, however, that this
research prototype was financed by the Foreign Military Studies Office
(FMSO) of the United States Army and that reports on his work would be
handed directly to this Office. Herlihy neglected to mention this
despite being expressly asked to clarify the eventual use of the data
obtained through research.

Herlihy mentioned that his team would collaborate with the following
organizations: the American Geographical Society (AGS), Kansas
University, Kansas State University, Carleton University, the
Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí and the Secretary of
Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). He failed, however, to
acknowledge the participation of Radiance Technologies, a company that
specializes in arms development and military intelligence.

Although UNOSJO, S.C. participated in some of the México Indígena
Project’s initial activities, the organization soon ceased
participation due to unclear project intentions. The Santa Cruz
Yagavila and Santa María Zoogochi communities also ended up feeling
the same distrust and they too abandoned the Project. For these
reasons, the México Indígena research team localized activities within
the San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan Yagila communities, both located
in the Zapotec region known as El Rincón de la Sierra Juárez.

In November 2008, México Indígena members Peter Herlihy and John Kelly
attended a meeting of the UCC, the Unión de Comunidades Cafetaleras
“Unidad Progreso y Trabajo” (the Union of Coffee-Producing Communities
“Unity, Progress and Work”), held in the community of Santa Cruz
Yagavila. They announced the completion of the Yagila and Tiltepec
community maps and offered their services to other organization-member
communities. They went on to mention that research had been carried
out with the collaboration of UNOSJO, S.C.’s own Aldo Gonzalez, a fact
that was immediately refuted.

Following the aforementioned UCC meeting, UNOSJO, S.C. began looking
into the México Indígena Project. Investigation revealed that México
Indígena forms part of the Bowman Expeditions, a more extensive
geographic research project backed and financed by the FMSO, among
other institutions. The FMSO inputs information into a global database
that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a
United States Army counterinsurgency strategy designed by FMSO and
applied within indigenous communities, among others.

Since 2006 the Human Terrain System HTS has, since 2006, been employed
with military purposes in both Afghanistan and Iraq and according to
what we g=have been able to determine Bowman Expeditions are underway
in Mexico, the Antilles, Colombia and Jordan.

In November 2008, the México Indígena Project completed the maps
corresponding to Zapotec communities San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan
Yagila. Contrary to the often-mentioned promise of transparency,
México Indígena created an English-only web page, a language that the
participating communities do not understand. Before the communities
received the work, said maps had already been published on the
Internet. Furthermore, the communities were never informed that
reports detailing the project would be handed over to the FMSO.

In addition to publishing the maps, the México Indígena team created a
database into which pertinent information was entered: community
member names and the associated geographic location of their plot(s)
of land, formal and informal use of the land and other data that
cannot be accessed via the Internet.

According to statements made by those heading the México Indígena
research team, this type of map can be used in multiple ways. They did
not specify, however, whether they would be employed for commercial,
military or other purposes. Furthermore, as the maps are compatible
with Google Earth, practically anyone can gain access to the
information. Yet only community members can decipher information
expressed in Zapotec (toponyms), unless, of course, one has the
capacity to translate them, as in the case of FMSO linguistic specialists.

UNOSJO, S.C. is against this kind of project being carried out in the
Sierra Juárez and distances itself completely from the work compiled
by the México Indígena research team. We call upon indigenous peoples
in this country and around the world not to be fooled by these types
of research projects, which usurp traditional knowledge without prior
consent. Although researchers may initially claim to be conducting the
projects in “good faith”, said knowledge could be used against the
indigenous peoples in the future.

We hereby demand that Peter Herlihy honor his promise of transparency
and that the Mexican public be made aware all his sources of funding
and the institutions that received information on findings obtained in
the communities.

We further demand that, in light of these facts, the Mexican
Government, firstly the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources
for having financed part of the research, as well as the Department of
Internal Affairs, the Department of External Affairs, Deputies and
Senators for possible violations of the Indigenous Peoples’ National
Sovereignty and Autonomy, clarify its position on the matter.

Oaxaca de Juárez, Oax., 14 January 2009

UNION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SIERRA JUÁREZ OF OAXACA (UNOSJO, S.C.)
________________________________

The American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expeditions seek to improve geographic understanding at home and abroad: Spotlight on México Indígena

Since 1851 the American Geographical Society (AGS) has been recognized worldwide as a pioneer in geographical research and education. Our mission is to link the business, professional, and scholarly worlds in the creation and application of geographical knowledge, methods, and technology to address economic, social, and environmental issues. To this end, AGS and collaborating universities send teams of geographers to foreign countries to build a comprehensive multi-scale geographic information system (GIS) for each region, collect open-source GIS data, conduct participatory GIS, build lasting relationships among American and foreign scholars and institutions, conduct geographic research on issues of national interest to the United States and host countries, train a new cadre of regional experts, disseminate GIS data freely to the public here and abroad, and publish results in scholarly journals and popular media.

Our purpose is to improve U. S. understanding of foreign lands and peoples and, thereby, to reduce international misunderstandings, provide a knowledge foundation for peaceful resolution of conflicts, and improve humanitarian assistance in case of natural disasters, technological accidents, terrorist acts, and wars. Each project is called a Bowman Expedition in honor of former AGS Director Isaiah Bowman, one of the greatest scholar-statesmen of the 20th Century, who served as geographer and close advisor to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, served as chief advisor to the American Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and played a key role in establishing the United Nations.

“México Indígena” was the first Bowman Expedition and is the prototype for all subsequent expeditions. From 2005 through 2008, we worked in two indigenous regions of Mexico, studying the effects of changes brought on by Mexico’s massive new land tenure program. We put geographic tools in the hands of the communities to help them use the power of GIS and maps to support their property claims and cultural rights, educate their youth, and plan conservation and community development strategies. México Indígena is an academic, transparent investigation led by Associate Professor Peter H. Herlihy of the University of Kansas (KU) and conducted entirely by university faculty and students with the knowledge, consent, and enthusiastic participation of indigenous authorities and local investigators chosen by their communities to work directly with the research team. A key role of the AGS is to ensure that the researchers maintain their academic freedom and independence.

AGS President and KU Professor Jerome E. Dobson conceived the Bowman Expedition program in the belief that “geographic knowledge is essential to maintain peace, resolve conflicts, and provide humanitarian assistance around the world” – a topic we discuss in the Geographical Review (Volume 93, Issue 3, July 2008). The goal is worldwide coverage (see http://www.amergeog.org/bowman-expeditions.htm). To date, expeditions have been sent to Mexico, the Antilles Region, Colombia, Jordan, and Kazakhstan.

The AGS Bowman Expedition program operates according to a strict set of ethical guidelines for foreign field research posted on the México Indígena website (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/ethics_statement_prototype.htm). The program has never requested nor has it received any funding from the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) program, whose design differs in crucial ways from our posted guidelines. The México Indígena research project was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Kansas.

Research topics are chosen by each expedition leader, and results are shared with all of the participants and the general public. The México Indígena expedition represents collaboration between the AGS, KU, Carleton University (Canada), and the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí (Mexico). The project has had two objectives: (1) as the first expedition, to develop a prototype for the Bowman Expeditions for the AGS, and (2) to develop a geographic, multiscale analysis of the new property regime in Mexico, in particular the Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales y Titulación de Solares (Program for the Certification of Ejido Rights and Titling of House Plots, PROCEDE) and its influence in indigenous communities. For the analysis we combined public information at various levels or geographic scales to understand the impacts of land certification in the rural sector. The results show that while privatization can bring benefits to some sectors of Mexican society, they also threaten indigenous lifeways through the introduction of individualistic and capitalistic practices. Land certification changes the historic guarantees of the inalienability of ejido and communal property and puts at risk the patrimony of rural families. It is hoped that the results will have a positive impact on understanding and disseminating the problems of the new neoliberal reforms on indigenous peoples in the country.

We use participatory research mapping (PRM), a methodology that we initially developed in Central America to provide technical training (and global positioning system, or GPS receivers) to local people who participate directly in the research. Together, we produce standardized maps for the indigenous communities that they use to promote their culture and traditions, protect their territorial rights, and plan their own projects. These maps combine, for the first time, the government cartography of the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, INEGI) and cadastral information of the National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional, RAN) with local community knowledge.

Financing for the AGS Bowman Expeditions can come from any source, public or private. When Dobson first sought funding for the program, he found a champion in the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Subsequently, FMSO has financed the expedition to Mexico, as well as others to Colombia, the Antilles and Jordan, through the Radiance Corporation that administers the contracts between FMSO, AGS, and the universities. Support for the first stage of this project also came as a research grant from the sectorial fund of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, SEMARNAT) through the UASLP Coordinación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, as well as from the U.S./México Fulbright García Robles program, for financing the participation of professors and students in the participatory mapping during 2005-06. Additional support came from the universities. All sources have been publicized on our web page from the beginning and announced repeatedly in presentations and publications.

The PRM methodology implemented in this project was approved by local assemblies and authorities in each of the eleven communities in which research was undertaken. Participation in the research was, of course, voluntary and not imposed. Local populations were involved and informed from the initial research design to the final development and publication of findings. The maps and other information generated have been submitted to the communities in digital and paper formats. For the first time, the maps document community boundaries together with topographic data and geographic and cultural information provided by the communities themselves. These maps combine the information needed for improved management of their lands and natural resources and are valuable for future generations as they document the knowledge of elders of places and sites of historical and cultural importance.
In keeping with the policies of the Bowman Expeditions, the final results are available to the public through the México Indígena web site (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/index.htm), and in publications and student theses. The original database is safeguarded and housed at the two universities (KU and UASLP). While the final results are publicly available, no personal information is released to anyone outside of the research team. The idea of sharing the final results with the general public was discussed and approved by the communities, and their published maps now are available on the project web site – now even used by community members themselves and soon available in Spanish.

We hope the maps and data will continue to be used as a tool by the local communities in their efforts to maintain control, protect, and manage their ancestral lands. The Zapotec community of San Miguel Tiltepec in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, for example, is using their new standard map in dialogue with government officials to correct an error in the delimitation of their boundary, and to locate their environmental services area. This community held an assembly of comuneros (the maximum authority of the community) on December 13, 2008 for the presentation and approval of the final maps. They listened to an opposing argument by an activist from outside the municipality, and then formally approved the maps and their inclusion on the project’s web site (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/oaxaca_community_maps.htm); and they implored us to continue helping the community with future projects. We seek no higher endorsement of our work or the AGS Bowman program.

The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that it was unavoidable for Muslims to adopt some aspects of Sharia law in the UK and he has caused an outrage in Europe (check Joana’s post, ‘The Bishop and the Sharia’, 13 February 2008). I came across a couple of articles written by some Australian Muslims in response to the Archbishop’s comments.

In the first article called ‘Grim Picture of Sharia Hides its Useful Aspects’, Ghena Krayem and Haisam Farache say that the term sharia brings to mind ‘the images of a brutal, harsh and inhumane legal system, characterised by amputations, beheadings, and stoning to death’ which has nothing to do with sharia . Because of this grim picture of sharia, it is no wonder that the Archbishop’s comments have not been well received. They say actually the sharia in terms of family law is already used by Muslim communities in Britain, in the US, Canada and Australia. In Australia people can agree to a legally binding contract using the laws of Christianity, Islam (sharia law) , Budhism, Juadism or any kind of ideology ‘as long as the contract does not abrogate the law or have an illegal purpose’. When sharia is used, it does not become a part of the Australian legal system, but it is recognised as an alternative dispute recognition process. There are similarities between the sharia law and Australian legal system. For example, sharia law has the same plaintiff and defendant system as the Australian courts; or in case of divorce ‘if a husband files for divorce he is obliged to pay his ex-wife’s rent and basic necessities and it is the husband who is forced to leave the matrimonial home’; and in terms of the custody of children, ‘the best interests of the child’ is considered and usually the mother gets the custody. Krayem and Farache says ‘while it needs to be acknowledged that atrocities have been committed against women overseas in the name of Islam, it also needs to be acknowledged that such practices have no basis in the religion itself’, and they underline the fact that recognition of alternative dispute resolution processes in other cultures show the strength of Australian democracy. The link to this article: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/02/17/1203190646668.html   

The other article is called ‘Law of Our Land Can Never Be Sharia’ written by Irfan Yusuf. He says ‘Many readers will wonder what 360,000-odd Australians who tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms think of sharia. Do we want to establish the Islamic Republic of Australia? Will men be forced to grow beards as majestic as that of Dr Williams? Will the Parliament be moved from Canberra to Lakemba [a suburb in Sydney where many Muslims live]?’. He points out that ‘Muslims are not the only religious group with an ancient sacred law which they occasionally would like secular law to take account of. On a number of occasions, joint submissions have been made by Jews and Muslims in areas such as ritual animal slaughter, burial and the treatment of bodies in autopsies.’ According to Yusuf, in 1989 the Australian Law Reform Commission started an inquiry in terms of multiculturalism and the law; and received many submissions from different ethnic and religious communities regarding their cultural demands. ‘The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, a peak Muslim body representing the congregations of about half of Australia’s mosques’ raised some issues in terms of family law. For example, under the Family Law Act 1975, in order to file a divorce Muslim women had to wait for at least twelve months from the date of separation; and in sharia the waiting period is much shorter. Yusuf asks ‘how many Australian Muslims follow sharia when family disputes arise?’ and says ‘my experience in legal practice has been that the parties will go for whichever system gives them the most favourable outcome’. Australian Muslims response to sharia vary according to the country they are from since in different Muslim societies different aspects of sharia is used in different ways. The link to this article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/law-of-our-land-can-never-be-sharia/2008/02/12/1202760299357.html  

 This is not mentioned in any of the articles, but I know that for example in Turkey, where the secular state and religion is ‘strictly’ separated and where the state is jealously& anxiously guarded against religion, many secular- Muslim-Turks freak out even when they hear the word ‘Sharia’. 

Also a small note on ‘cultural differences’: The other day I saw the movie ‘The Kite Runner’. The film is briefly about an Afghan boy who flees Afghanistan with his father when it is invaded by the communist Russia, and immigrates to the US. He grows up in the US and eventually becomes a writer. At some stage in the film, the father dies and he is ‘buried in a coffin’ in the US. But as far as I know, at Muslim funerals the dead is not buried in a coffin, but the body is wrapped with white clean cloth and laid in the grave like this. In the film the father is buried in a coffin either because this Muslim Practice is not allowed in the US, or as a result of lack of attention to cultural differences; or just because of practical reasons.

Numerous Native American activists, including former American Indian Movement leader, Russell Means, presented a kind of declaration of independence for the Lakota Sioux on 19 December, 2007, to the United States State Department. Here’s the account of developments from Lakota Freedom, the website which seems to be an official newsource from the delegation:

Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

Reports have cropped up in some of the mainstream news outlets (such as USA Today), but most of the accounts simply derive from a reading of the official statement made by the group. As Fox News reports (I can’t even imagine what their editors are saying behind the scenes):

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.

A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.

The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.

Aside from the fascinating sight of watching the heads of conservatives explode, the development is provocative, to say the least (and, from what I can tell by looking on line, nearly unreported). I first read about the development on Alternet (where there’s a great discussion of the Fox News story).

As all the reports discuss, Lakota country would include parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. According to the report, citizenship in the new country would be open to all residents, not merely those recognized as Native Americans, as long as potential citizens renounced their US citizenship. According to the reports, citizens of the new Lakota country would be able to live ‘tax free’ (again, I wouldn’t stand too close to any conservative friends when they learn about this: ‘tax free… Native American independence… head exploding…’). Bill Harlan, from the Rapid City Journal, quotes activist Russell Means as claiming, ‘It will be the epitome of individual liberty, with community control.’

The declaration of independence is accompanied by a statement of their intentions that has a number of interesting wrinkles from the point of view of combining cultural survival with environmentalism. From the statement:

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. “Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty,” said Means. “Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people.”

This is certainly not the first time that ‘third wave’ human rights (indigenous rights) have been combined with environmental demands to strong rhetorical effect in a way that some academics have criticized. It also shows the degree to which this movement has probably been in the planning stages for a while.

Local media in the area are reporting that the group is not representative of the Lakota Nation, nor is it an official branch of Lakota government. Harlan in the Rapid City Journal, for example, points out that “Means’ group is based in Porcupine on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is not an agency or branch of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Means ran unsuccessfully for president of the tribe in 2006.”

Doreen Yellow Bird, writing in the Grand Forks Herald, suggests that the whole ’seccession’ is anachronistic, a ship that ‘has already sailed’:

Of the people who called or e-mailed me, most are chuckling at the absurdity of it. Means and his group, of course, would be speaking for themselves and not tribes, whose tribal councils speak for them. But Means and his group have some points – perhaps 200 years too late, but they do have some points….

We have, however, gone beyond those years. We have taken on the federal government as our government, too. That means the government also provides us funding and supplies for programs such as Head Start, housing, social services and so on – just like it does for the rest of the country.

Many of our family members willingly serve in the military. Indians serve in the armed forces in extraordinarily high numbers. In general, American Indians are proud of their record as defenders of this country – our country.

Finally, there the treaties. For the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1886 provided land. True, the U.S. government took some of that land rather surreptitiously, but we were able to hold the line because of that legal document – a treaty.

Those documents are important, shouldn’t be abrogated and should be taken seriously.

Means and his group are seemingly out of step, but they remind us of our tragic history.

The fact that the movement is likely quite limited is, in some sense, not surprising; the demand of Native American activists for independence in the US is not high by comparison to indigenous activism in other places with which I’m more familiar, but there are some very savvy, very angry Indian activists in the US. The boon of Indian casinos has not shut up all of the demands for real justice, autonomy, and social development. As Wonkette describes, the fact that the US Department of the Interior hasn’t been paying royalties on petroleum extracted from Indian lands for a few decades might have something to do, too, with their irritation at treaty violations (although I’m not as cynical, there’s nothing like being robbed through a pipeline to really continually remind you of just how your rights are being undermined.).

One of the dimensions of this that interests me most is the way that property law is being used as a primary tool of activism. As I found in research on the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra or MST) in Brazil, since property law has become such an expansive area for pressing legal claims of all sorts (for example, trademark infringement being easier to pursue redress for than libel or slander), property has also become an important tool for human rights issues. Especially around indigenous groups and other traditional owners (sharecroppers and small farmers, maroons), land title is a major wedge for extracting not just regularization of holding, but also other concessions. In the case of the Lakota land, the declaration is explicitly being described as a shadow cast over any land transfers in the affected area. As the Free Lakota media announcement says:

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Whether or not the declaration does immediately affect land transactions remains to be seen (I’ll try to find out more and post on it). Real estate systems in a lot of places have been very successful at ’suspending doubt’ and carrying on with transactions even if the legitimacy of title is questionable, so I suspect this will not slow down sales. (Of course I’ll also be watching to see if the Lakota get blamed for any housing slump in the region, even though the subprime mortgage crisis is far more likely to be to blame.) Bill Harlan points out that land has long been a central issue for the Lakota:

A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1980 awarded the tribes $122 million as compensation, but the court did not award land. The Lakota have refused the settlement. (As interest accrues, the unclaimed award is approaching $1 billion.)

In the late 1980s, then-Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey introduced legislation to return federal land to the tribes, and California millionaire Phil Stevens also tried to win support for a proposal to return the Black Hills to the Lakota.

Any comparison to Australia is strained for a number of reasons, including the lack of treaties with Aboriginal Australians and the relatively recent recognition by Australian courts of legitimate land claims, whereas these had a much longer traditional of judicial recognition in the United States. But the idea of the Lakota claiming independence in the middle of the American heartland will no doubt fuel fears among some Australians that the ‘red heart’ of this country might up and declare its independence if granted any rights.

Of course, if you take the Lakota activists at their word, then the lesson should be that secessionist movements are inspired, not by the granting of rights, but by the search for some remedy when a situation is intollerable. As Phyllis Young, representative from Standing Rock, explained: ‘The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people.’ As the announcement goes on to explain, Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any group of men with low HIV+ rates (44 years) and infant death rates are five times that of the majority US population. Unemployment is 85%, and poverty over 95%.

I’ll keep on eye on this one and try to post more as more information becomes available.

On Thursday the ABC program Difference of Opinion addressed the topic of the Northern Territory intervention.  Entitled A New Deal for Indigenous Australians?, the program featured a panel of Indigenous leaders debated the merits of the Intervention in front of an audience.

The panel was made up of Sue Gordon, Chair of the NT Task Force; Tom Calma, Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner; Olga Havnene, CEO of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT (and Women for Wik organiser); and Lowitja O’Donaghue, Inaugural Chairperson of ATSIC.

The context of the debate was both the NT Intervention and the recent surprise announcement by John Howard that he had suddenly become interested in reconciliation after 11 years of doing everything in his power to undermine any form progressive policies in relationship to Indigenous Australia.

While announcing his change of heart on reconciliation and his willingness to hold a referendum on putting a mention of Indigenous Australians into the preamble of the Constitution (but not into the body mind you). Howard claimed that he had recently discovered the value of “symbolic” gestures, as if a decade of refusing to apologise to the Stolen Generation isn’t a symbolic gesture. 

Actually, I think the move was a symbolic gesture, but more towards the Australian electorate than towards Indigenous Australia. A week before he announced the election it was pretty clear he was trying to demonstrate to the electorate that although he was an old dog he still has some new tricks to play.

Back to Difference, the opinions expressed by the panel were varied, which helped to illustrate that there is certainly no consensus even within Indigenous Australia about the merits, or lack thereof of the Intervention.  As would be expected, Sue Gordon was a lot more upbeat about the Intervention and claimed that people in many remote communities were very happy to have part of their income quarantined.  This was hotly disputed by the other panelists, who emphasised the confusion and lack of information in these communities which has bred a lot of uncertainty and fear about what the government would be doing.  I was particularly impressed by Olga Havnene, who made the point that although the Intervention is ostensibly addressed at protecting children from abuse, there is no mention of children in the new legislation and it is very hard to see how many of the policies are supposed to contribute to child protection. 

A couple of the panelists also pointed out that the real tragedy of this process is that there has been virtually no consultation with Indigenous Australians at large, and specifically with the remote communities being targeted.  Thus even if some of the policies might have some objective benefits for some members of the communities, they don’t contribute to any sense of empowerment or control within the communities themselves.

In any case, there is a strong contrast between Howard’s proposal for “reconciliation” as an essentially abstract notion and the concrete reality of the policies that are impacting on actual Aboriginal communities.  Good ethnographic studies done in these communities would, I think, help to illuminate discrepancies of this kind.

The show’s website is worth a visit.  It includes video from the program, the transcript, online forum and a poll about the Intervention. 

The Jamaica Gleaner reports that the “global Rastafarian community” — as part of a global trend towards the institutionalisation and legal protection of indigenous “cultural property” announced the establishment of a council to protect Rasta intellectual property from unauthorized appropriation by non-Rastas (notably gangstas). See the article here.

The Australian Anthropological Association has just issued a statement about recent developments in government policy towards Indigenous Australia. The statement came with a request to disseminate as widely as possible, so I am reproducing it here. The statement expresses “deep concerns” about current developments, which include the government reaction to the “Little Children are Sacred” report mentioned in some earlier posts on this blog. Personally I am very happy that the AAS has taken this step as the Association has generally not got involved in public debates in recent years. I hope that it signals a move to a generally more engaged professional association which can demonstrate the contribution anthropologists can make to public debate.

Click on the link below to read the full statement. The original statement can be found here.

The Australian Anthropology Society registers deep concerns at the policy direction the Australian nation is taking towards its Indigenous citizens. As a group of scholars, many with long-standing and ongoing professional experience of remote as well as rural and urban Aboriginal communities, we offer the following comments:

1. Australia has refused to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document that was many years in the making. The Declaration does not provide an alternative set of laws to those of Australia or of any other nation. What it does do is oblige nation states to support the capacity of Indigenous populations to act. It aims to enhance the capacity of those populations, and individuals within them, to determine their modes of life within the laws and institutions of the states of which they are citizens. We and our Indigenous colleagues and friends cannot help but wonder at Australia’s ungenerous response to the non-binding but uplifting principles contained in the UN Declaration.
2. Minority populations with different social and cultural histories are a feature of many modern nation-states, and the ability to treat such people honourably is a measure of the maturity and humanity of a nation. Despite the body of work produced by anthropologists, the varied Indigenous societies that have interacted with the radically different European settlers at various stages since 1788 are little understood in their own country. Even the simplest features of the classical Aboriginal traditions — the totemic and moiety divisions, the mutual dependence and reciprocity built into ceremonial and economic arrangements, the multilingualism evident among the wealth of languages — are less well known to educated Australians than is the Indian caste system or the Spanish bullfight. Without knowledge of the normal economic, political and family structures that comprised the everyday life of Indigenous people, there can be little appreciation of the radical destabilisation and restructuring that these societies have had to manage.
3. Aboriginal people have been adjusting to their changing social conditions, in some cases for over 200 years but in others within living memory. While a long-term assimilative process may be inevitable and can be constructive and even liberating, a large body of research demonstrates that forcing established social processes into a foreign mould is destructive of individuals, families and cultures. There is no doubt that the insistent pressures and stresses resulting from radical social change, without a respectful and reciprocal relationship with the nation’s authorities, have been responsible for severely destabilising family authority and informal community standards of care and protection for the young and the vulnerable. This breakdown in turn has made it difficult to maintain social control. It is the loss of a coherent community structure that has seen the emergence of some extreme examples of social pathology, which, it must be stressed, are neither typical nor representative of the majority of Indigenous people.
4. The despair, desperation and destructive violence that mars the social life of a substantial number of Indigenous communities does demand government action. Indeed action is long overdue, but dealing with social dysfunction in a clumsy and ill informed manner is likely to compound the level of disorder and add to estrangement. Anthropologists working in Australia are personally and painfully aware of real and urgent humanitarian needs. Only the most scandalous and shameful of these feature in the media; the chronic conditions that generate them are not so obvious. Effective policy responses require an intelligent understanding and respect for the conditions and the people involved. The language of aggressive assimilationism is not effective in dealing with culturally distinct and historically alienated people. Although initially time consuming, processes of negotiation with respected individuals and relevant organizations are far more effective and thus, in the longer term, more economical. Measures for which Aboriginal people have been pleading for years — more police and law enforcement, better housing, and effective implementation of alcohol prohibitions — should not appear as corrective measures imposed in a military-style operation.
5. We believe strongly that the governing of vulnerable, marginal and excluded peoples carries an added responsibility as these are people whose voices are often muted in the public arena. Rather than welfare recipients being made the target of punitive measures, there needs to be long term commitment to a stable and holistic program of providing adequate resources for these communities to come to terms with their current conditions of integration with the state’s institutions and processes. A wealthy nation such as Australia surely has the knowledge, the expertise and the resources to provide excellence in education, housing and health for the relatively few residents of remote communities, as well as for other Indigenous Australians. It is crucial that these people are listened to, and thus enabled to take responsibility for the direction of their development into the future.

The United Nations approved the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September, 2007. After decades of work, this Declaration is the fulfilment of political efforts that can be traced back to visits by the Iroquois Confederacy and the Maori to the League of Nations in the 1920s.

General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa said, “the importance of this document for indigenous peoples and, more broadly, for the human rights agenda, cannot be underestimated. By adopting the Declaration, we are also taking another major step forward towards the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.” Sheikha Haya warned, however, that “even with this progress, indigenous peoples still face marginalization, extreme poverty and other human rights violations. They are often dragged into conflicts and land disputes that threaten their way of life and very survival; and, suffer from a lack of access to health care and education.”

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma stated that, ‘Today’s decision is a milestone for the world’s indigenous peoples and for the United Nations.’ Calma explained that, ‘The Declaration reaffirms that indigenous individuals are entitled to all human rights recognised in international law without discrimination. But it also acknowledges that without recognising the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and ensuring protection of our cultures, indigenous people can never truly be free and equal.’

(Readers can find more information from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission on the UN Declaration here.)

Although the Declaration achieved very strong support (143 for, 4 against, with 11 abstentions), sadly, some of the countries with the largest indigenous populations. opposed the declaration: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Russia, which had been expected to oppose the Declaration, abstained from the vote in the end (especially important for Indigenous peoples in the Arctic). As Commissioner Calma comments, ‘it is a matter of great regret that Australia and three other nations have opposed the Declaration, particularly given that Australia had indicated its support for the vast majority of the Declaration’s provisions during the negotiations of the text.’

Calma has argued before, and maintains, that the Australian government’s reasons for opposing the Declaration are unsound and that the Government interprets the Declaration in ways that are inconsistent with international law in order to make their argument against it.

Monday, the Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett moved a motion to change the Australian position on the Declaration, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald. Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was in Canberra following the APEC summit, and Bartlett’s motion sought to undo some of the damage done to the Declaration by Prime Minister Howard’s earlier successful efforts to lobby the Canadian government to reject the Declaration, which it had favored. In spite of support from his own party, Labor, the Greens, and Family First, Bartlett’s motion on behalf of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples went down in defeat, 35 to 33.

Backlash against the governments opposing the Declaration has been pretty swift… well, at least in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. I’m still searching for evidence of condemnation from the United States of its government’s resistance to Indigenous Rights, but I’m not holding my breath. (I’m a Yank, and I think most progressives in my home country are suffering from ‘outrage fatigue’ at this point. So many outrageous acts, so little time to get worked up…)

Especially given the current policy toward Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, it is perhaps not surprising that the current Government does not support the Declaration. Although the Declaration, like most human rights declarations, is non-binding and has no enforcement mechanism (we await the day with great hope…), it does make general statements that seem inconsistent with current policies.

For example, Article 26 of the Declaration states that, “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.”

According to another piece in The Herald, Northern Territory Labor Senator Trish Crossin has pointed out that the Government’s stance on the Declaration is ‘compounded by its radical intervention in the Northern Territory to combat sex abuse.’ Crossin points to a pattern of ‘heavy handed, top down’ approaches to Aboriginal policy that could have been balanced by the principles of the Declaration. In light of these policies in the NT, Crossin said, ‘The principles [of the UN Declaration] would ensure that indigenous people are partners in change, not merely the subject of a government’s latest policy shift.’

There is a profound irony that policies which substantially abrogate Aboriginal community rights, threatens local autonomy, stymies an already-slow land claim process, and otherwise undermines Indigenous rights can be implemented with extraordinary speed, whereas a non-binding document of principle, decades in the negotiation, one acceptable to the vast majority of Latin American, African, Asian, and European countries, must be approached with the greatest trepidation and fastidiousness. When the government wants to take away rights, they’ll make up policy as they go. When it comes to a statement of principle in support of rights, one that has no enforcement mechanism and is non-binding, suddenly the same people turn into anal-retentive constitutional scholars, worried about the possibility that just maybe one of the articles might contravene established legal principles.

You would think that, when many communities are feeling under attack by Government policy, the folks in charge might want to throw them some sort of concession. One could even see this as a kind of shallow, photo-op possibility. I can almost hear the PR people in the Government, ‘Look, some Australians are worried about your treatment of Aborigional communities. We’ve got this great opportunity to sign an international, non-binding, high-sounding Declaration – no skin off our backs! And we can even do a little meet and greet with some of the Aborigional representatives that helped to draft it. That’ll really shut up some of our critics!’

The utter inability of the Government to make even basic, superficial, potentially-hollow concessions to Indigenous rights (how hard is it to say ‘sorry’, for example?) reveals a resistance to Aboriginal rights, autonomy, and self-determination that can offer no concession because it is so ideologically brittle. It’s not just that real change must be resisted; even the appearance of allowing for the possibility of change must be emphatically avoided. But the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples probably stood no chance in Australia under the current Government as long as the word ’self-determination’ lurked anywhere near it. Perhaps because I’m an American who has spent a fair bit of time in and around Indian reservations that allegedly have ’sovereignty,’ I have a hard time understanding the visceral fear that some Australians have for the concept. In the US, I feel like many Americans feel reservations are great because they create spaces where they can avoid pesky laws against bingo, slot machines (aka, pokies in Oz), and cigarette taxes.

While it is disappointing to human rights activists, I cannot imagine what it must feel like for those Aboriginal activists who helped to put together the Declaration with long years of hard work, negotiation, compromise, and hope. Thank you to the activists and drafters and negotiators for your hard work; I do hope that we can soon right this injustice.