Global Indigenous Studies Resources

This book analyses marginalisation and human rights in Southeast Asia and offers diverse approaches in understanding the nuances of marginalisation and human rights in the region. Throughout the region, a whole range of similarities and differences can be observed relating to the Southeast Asian experience of human rights violation, with each country maintaining particular aspects reflecting the variability of the use and abuse of political power. This book explores the distinct links between marginalisation and human rights for groups exposed to discrimination. It focuses on ethnic minorities, children, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, refugees, academics, and people with disabilities. This book highlights the disparities in attainment and opportunity of marginalised and minority groups in Southeast Asia to their rights. It examines how marginalisation is experienced, with case studies ranging from a regional approach to country context. Paying attention to how broader socio-economic and political structures affect different people's access to, or denial of, their fundamental human rights and freedoms, the book argues that tackling human rights abuses remains a major hurdle for the countries in Southeast Asia. Providing a broader conceptual framework on marginalisation and human rights in Southeast Asia and a new assessment of these issues, this book will be of interest to readers in the fields of Asian Law, Human Rights in Asia, and Southeast Asian Studies, in particular Southeast Asian Politics.

This book argues that the production of media content, literature, and other forms of popular culture by Indigenous peoples (IPs), as well as their involvement as advisors, sources, or interviewees, serves as a platform for them not only to showcase their creativity but also to mediate their cultures, identities, worldviews, and activism. Through an examination of specific case studies of indigenous media and popular culture in the Philippines using textual and ethnographic methods, the chapters in this book shed light on the politics of representation, narratives of resistance, and self-representation and mediation of indigeneity and culture. They emphasize the crucial importance of addressing these issues to promote the recognition and empowerment of IPs, not only within the Philippines but also across Southeast Asia and the global context.

The book explores the growing tension between indigenous education, the teaching and learning of native knowledge, cultural heritage and traditions and the dynamics of globalization from the Asian perspective. It brings together a distinguished and multidisciplinary group of Asian scholars and practitioners from Nepal, Korea, India, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and the United States. After showcasing six in-depth case studies of local cultural traditions from East, South and Southeast Asia, the book examines a variety of pedagogical strategies in the teaching and learning of indigenous knowledge and culture in the region, reflecting both international trends and the distinctive local and regional characteristics resulting from the tremendous diversity within Asian societies.  

Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon - its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.

The tremendous cultural diversity and distinct ways of life of many Southeast and East Asian peoples are in serious jeopardy today because of varying combinations of economic, political, and environmental threats, often linked to severe human rights violations. Endangered Peoples of Southeast and East Asia introduces 14 endangered cultures, from the Kubu of Central Sumatra in Indonesia, to the Ainu of Japan. The most pressing issues of these marginalized groups--such as the impact of tourism, prohibition against whaling, or dislocation due to nuclear testing--are brought to light by anthropologists based on their own extensive field work. The cultural and historical information provided here is not available in any other printed source. Endangered peoples of Southeast and East Asia struggle with inadequate understanding, protection, and enforcement of human rights by state governments and the international community. The volume introduction discusses the diversity, identity, ecology, spirituality, colonial status, conflicts and wars, and finally, hope for the future of people in this region. Subsequent chapters are devoted to fourteen specific cultures, including an overview of their history, housing, subsistence strategies, social and political organization, religion and world view, threats to their survival, and their response to these threats. A section entitled Food for Thought poses questions that encourage a personal engagement with the experience of these peoples, and a resource guide suggests further reading and lists pertinent organizations and web sites. As the curriculum expands to include Asian history, this unique volume will be valuable to students and teachers alike.

Over the past 40 years, life in Timor-Leste has changed radically. Before 1975 most of the population lived in highland villages, spoke local languages, and rarely used money. Today many have moved to peri-urban lowland settlements, and even those whose lives remain dominated by customary ways understand that those of their children will not. For the Atoni Pah Meto of Timor-Leste's remote Oecussi Enclave, the world was neatly divided into two distinct categories: the meto(indigenous), and the kase(foreign). Now matters are less clear; the good things of the globalised world are pursued not through rejecting the metoways of the village, or collapsing them into the kase, but through continual crossing between them. In this way, the people of Oecussi are able to identify in the struggles of lowland life, the comforting and often decisive presence of familiar highland spirits.

Throughout the (this?)region, the rights and concerns of indigenous peoples are making news. Tensions between indigenous peoples and nation states take many forms, but none is so definitive as the question of resource sovereignty. Written by geographers, anthropologists, lawyers, economists and field practitioners, this book argues that these tensions are constructing a new geopolitics of identity and sovereignty within the nation states of Australasia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia. Building on the success of an earlier volume, Mining and Indigenous Peoples in Australasia, this volume goes beyond documenting the impacts of resource-based development to examine five key themes in contemporary disputes: the complex relationships between resources, identity and sovereignty; culture and gender issues in resource projects;marginalisation of and negotiations with indigenous interests; compensation and the monitoring of agreements; and the roles of governments in mediating relations between resource industry and indigenous groups. Detailed case studies illustrate and attest to the diverse concerns and the complexities of contemporary debates and disputes. Resources, Nations and Indigenous Peoples: Case Studies from Australasia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia provides a compelling analysis and will be invaluable for students, public servants, industry and community organisations in many spheres.

This book demonstrates how active and meaningful collaboration between researchers and local stakeholders and indigenous communities can lead to the co-production of knowledge and the empowerment of communities. Focusing on the Asia Pacific region, this interdisciplinary volume looks at local and indigenous relations to the landscape, showing how applied scholarship and collaborative research can work to empower indigenous and descendant communities. With cases ranging across Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Cambodia, Pohnpei, Guam, and Easter Island, this book demonstrates the many ways in which co-production of knowledge is reconnecting local and indigenous relations to the landscape, and diversifying the philosophy of human-land relations. In so doing, the book is enriching the knowledge of landscape, and changing the landscape of knowledge. This important contribution to our understanding of knowledge production will be of interest to readers across Anthropology, Archaeology, Development, Geography, Heritage Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Policy Studies.