9-2 Identity and Education

Ute Language Policy

"The voice of the land is in our language." The Ute Language is a blessing given to our people by the Creator. It is spiritual and must be treated as such. It is a part of our land as well as a part of our people. There is no way that our language can be separated from our traditional beliefs and practices. Our language and our culture are one. Because we believe that education is the…

Tibetans in India - A New Generation in Exile

Dorje was only four years old in 1962 when the Chinese army advanced across the Tibetan frontier into India. In what is now known as the "Assam Incident," the Chinese began shelling the tiny Himalayan town of Bomdila. Dorje's older sister picked him up at school and held his hand tightly as the two of them raced for home. Artillery boomed in the nearby hills and the main street was full of the…

GfBV - Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker

"Cultural and physical genocide must be opposed wherever it occurs." It is high time we recognized the preservation of endangered peoples for what it is: not simply an act of commiseration, but, above all, an act of self-preservation. For, among those peoples, everything our industrialized, utilitarian age has taken from us is preserved, at least in vestigial form. If we wish to become truly…

From Conquest to Counter-Insurgency

Guatemalan Indians have responded to population growth in ways that conflict with the role the state has assigned them. Most countries in Latin America, in the course of the present century, have experienced what is commonly known as a "population explosion." However, many of these same countries, four centuries ago, underwent a "population collapse" the severity of which, viewed in aggregate,…

Clitoridectomy and Infibulation

Clitoridectomy and infibulation, commonly known as female circumcision, are practices found in many African cultures. The reasons for their development are not known. They are deeply embedded, however, in cultures where they occur because they affect the very definition of what it is to be female. Many Africans and Westerners feel that the practices are harmful but efforts to eradicate them…

Book Review

I, Rigoberta Menchu Edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray Translated by Ann Wright Verso/Schocken, 1984, $8.95 Rigoberta Menchu is one of the few surviving members of a Guatemalan Indian family that has paid a blood price to plantation owners, to corrupt government officials, and to the military. This is her story, told over the course of a week in simple but eloquent Spanish - the…

Chocó Indian Relocation in Darién, Panama

Indian relocation in Central America is a result of the assertion of colonial or national authority over indigenous cultures. In order to avoid violence, native communities have abandoned traditional territories, moving into more marginal areas which are outside the control of the dominant society. Most Indian groups surviving in Central America today have lost much of their traditional territory…

Advances Toward A Miskito-Sandinista Cease-fire

On Monday, April 28, 1985, the Nicaraguan Government released 14 prisoners charged with participation or association with the armed resistance movements, MISURASATA and MISURA. This partly fulfilled the first substantive agreement between MISURASATA and the Nicaraguan Government, signed by Brooklyn Rivera (General Coordinator of MISURASATA) and Luis Carrion (Vice Minister of the Interior) in…

The Urrá Dam Project in Colombia - Research to Raise Public Awareness

The Sinu River flows down from the mountains of Colombia's northern Antioquia province. It descends through the plains of central Cordoba, passes through the city of Monteria, and spreads into a lowland swamp before emptying into the Caribbean. The very course of the Sinu, and the lives of the people who depend on it, however, are about to change. A massive hydroelectric dam has been planned for…

The Tribal Lao Training Project

Highland Lao refugees in the United States face serious crises of survival in their new environment. The Tribal Lao Training Project, initiated at the request of the Iu Mien people of Santa Clara County, California, has helped to make them more economically self-sufficient and better able to cope with the complexities of a modern urban setting. After the Communist take-over of Laos in 1975, many…

The Politics of Famine in Ethiopia

Last October, Americans became aware of the tragedy taking place in Ethiopia and responded with the largest outpouring of humanitarian assistance in memory. Relief agencies attempted to supply food and assistance to famine victims as quickly as possible; everyone assumed that the famine was the result of a drought - a "natural" disaster. Soon, however, because of difficulties in getting food to…

Solidarity Pact of Indigenous People of Asia and the Pacific

Indigenous people are found in varying numbers in most countries of Asia and the Pacific; throughout the region they have much in common. Most indigenous communities have a basic kinship through their histories, where customs and traditions are defined by virtue of centuries-old relations with land, forests, rivers and society. The problems confronting these communities are also similar in nature…

Shuar Bicultural Radio Education

Each morning Shuar Indian children in the southern Amazonian region of eastern Ecuador, gather in groups in their respective centros or villages from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. to hear lessons broadcast over the radio, alternately, in Shuar and Spanish from the Shuar Federation headquarters in Sucua. They are engaged in an unusual program of bilingual and bicultural education devised, prepared and carried…

Pundasyon Hanunoo Mangyan School - Participatory Education in the Philippines

In the Philippines, three Hanunoo communities have initiated an alternative education program to standard Philippine education. It is hoped that an education more sensitive to their culture will enable Hanunoo to develop skills essential for self-determination in their changing world. Organizing the new school has called for collaboration between Hanunoo, external support agencies, teachers and…

Politics at the US Census Bureau

Twenty-nine years after Mrs. Rose Lee Parks ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white person, the government of the United States, using the Bureau of the Census, is employing its own unique version of "back-of-the-bus" politics to America's ethnic multitudes. Each and every ethnic group in the United States, regardless of…

IWGIA - The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) was founded in 1968 after the 38th International Congress of Americanists met in Stuttgart. IWGIA was formed by a group of anthropologists who had heard disturbing reports of the annihilation of indigenous peoples in South America and decided to fight along with indigenous peoples for their rights. IWGIA is a non-profit, non-governmental…

Guatemala - Everybody's Indian When the Occasion's Right

In highland Guatemala the term "Indian" or indigena is a widely used and locally accepted means of categorizing people. It characterizes highland inhabitants seen in public roles and is generally contrasted with the term Ladino (or non-Indian). The exact sense of the term "Indian" varies, however, according to who is doing the viewing. Non-Indians from the national level on down equate "Indian"…