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The Ecological Native: Indigenous Peoples' Movements and Eco-Governmentality in Columbia (Indigenous Peoples and Politics)

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This book is an important contribution to the analysis of how indigenous peoples and their environments have become central to the debate on how transnational and national governmental institutions, NGOs, corporations and the indigenous peoples themselves (particularly those of Colombia) are interacting in the emergent process of forming the means to govern the global environment. The great virtue of the book is its linkage of practical activities at the local, national and transnational levels to cultural imagery (pictorial, filmic, textual, etc.)in a manner that demonstrates the importance of the media or the imaginary at all those levels of practical activity. The book also makes good use recent and contemporary French and American social and anthropological theory, Foucault being put to particularly good use in the first chapter.

The focus is on the indigenous peoples' role in this emergent governmentality. The book is of particular interest to anthropologists, ecologists and those responsible for development programs. The book addresses the manner in which indigenous peoples have responded to the growing interest and concern of the West in those areas of cultural diversity and biodiversity that exist in Colombia--the Kogui people and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta being of central importance. Particular emphasis is given to the effects of colonial and post-colonial imagery that affects the power dynamic between indigenous peoples in their relationship with the West, both historically and with respect to contemporary events. The analysis is empirical with respect to recounting policies, social movements and historical developments, and it is theoretical with respect to western images of indigenous peoples and how they have impacted the indigenous as elements in the western imaginary. It addresses the development of both indigenous and western history in terms of social movements and institutional policies as well as the manner in which western imagery and desire regarding the indigenous has affected those practical arenas.

The basic focus is on the extent to which the indigenous and their environments have been subsumed under conceptions of western development and the needs and desires of western peoples. The book examines a variety of options to western development and eco-governmentality originating among the indigenous and their western supporters that may offer practical alternatives to current western models of development. The main point of the book is to emphasize how the status of indigenous peoples of Colombia serves as a focal point and microcosm of the larger issues surrounding the management of the environment on a global scale.