Indigenous Peoples through the Lens of UNESCO

Abstract

The engagement of UNESCO with indigenous peoples and their heritage provides insights into global norms that affect collective cultural rights, religion, and education of indigenous peoples. It also enables insights into structural and organizational challenges and opportunities indigenous peoples experience in the current world. Against this background, this paper analyzes exemplary UNESCO standard-setting documents that explicitly approach indigenous peoples. In doing so, the paper asks first, how these documents situate indigenous peoples in the context of cultural/religious diversity and education. Second, we reconstruct how UNESCO addresses the holistic education of indigenous peoples, and how does it relate to the notion of the holistic approach itself. Methodologically, the paper applies qualitative content analysis with close reading and situates UNESCO’s developments in the theoretical framework of the study of religion. From this perspective, the results address ambiguities around the term “religion”, when concentrated to ritual, and the possibility of convergences between universalist and holistic knowledge.