Indigenous Peoples in the Face of Globalization

Abstract

Indigenous peoples throughout the world are experiencing the full presence of injustice in the form of duplicitous development schemes, poverty, landlessness, dispossession, political and religious oppression, and genocide. They resist the injustices, yet resistance is only part of the struggle. Protests, social movements, and organizations such as the Indigenous Environmental Network engage in similar struggles against injustice and for nature. A crucial feature of indigenous peoples is their substantive reliance on the interrelatedness of nature. Today's call for, and acceptance of, global diversity is limited when it is built within the constraints of modern nation—states, which often view diversity as deviance if it does not conform to modern norms and definitions. Traditional indigenous knowledge can provide some inclusive approaches to current environment problems and critical ideas on how to improve our questions to create more equitable, less oppressive structures from which to approach the numerous crises.