Customer Reviews

The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity

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the focus of this book was clearly on institutionalized forums and meetings sponsored by governments and NGO's, not on the actual origins of the contemporary indigenism or on what's happening at the level of communities and actual movements. I found the book shallow, uninformative, and not particularly useful.

Struggles of indigenous peoples as they define themselves, define their needs, and their desires in the context of contemporary politics. Who represents them? Who chooses the representatives? Who listens to the represnetatives? It's a complicated matter, in their world and with the UN. Continual sidelining of indigenous peoples efforts to have a voice on the political stage is a definite reality, as different paradigms collide and the dominant one wins out. The difficult politics of allowing a soverign people to live their own lifestyle within a nation, without setting off a dominoe reaction of secessionary moves buy indigenous groups all over. To what extent can they be recognized without threatening established society? A lot of food for thought here.

However....It could have been written better, as it is unaccessible, monotone, redundant, and regularly obfuscating. Which is a shame because there's some precious gems of insights and case studies in here, especially to anyone relatively knew to this topic. I read it months ago in a class on indigenous rights, and I"M GLAD I READ IT, but if I find the same ideas in a more readable text, this thing is going to be kindling.

If you're comfortable reading academic texts and/or If you're sincerely interested in human rights of indigenous peoples on the political level (an important level) it's worth buying and reading. Though it'll be a chore.

If you do end up with it, but find it hard to get through, I'd recommend at least flipping through it and picking a couple chapters to read (The first two and last two are most important IMHO), because you will learn a lot if you take the time to understand his points. Also, "evolution of indigenism" is perhaps a more appropriate title. The subtitle is spot on as far as content: "human rights and the politics of identity within indigenism."