indigenous people / minorities

Inuit leader wins environment prize

Published on April 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, indigenous people / minorities, inuit

Canadian Inuit leader Sheila Watt-Cloutier won the 2005 Sophia environment prize Wednesday for drawing attention to the impact of climate change and pollution on the traditional lifestyles of the Arctic’s indigenous people and others. Ms. Watt-Cloutier, born in Nunavik, Que., and raised in a traditional Inuit family, has been the chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference for the past decade. Last year’s winner, Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, went on to win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. >> continue

Indigenous Russians Unite Against Oil and Gas Development

Published on April 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, development empowerment, ecology nature, indigenous people / minorities

ZNet

Despite their small numbers, the Sakhalin aborigines are standing up to multinational energy companies that are developing oil and gas deposits on the island. On March 25-26, representatives of the Nivkh, Orok, Evenk, and Nanai peoples of Sakhalin held a congress in the town of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Roughly 3,000 indigenous people make up about 0.5 percent of the island’s total population.

The indigenous congress created a council which will represent the island’s indigenous population in negotiations with the oil companies and Russian government authorities. The council will advocate for an ethnographic study to assess the cultural impact of the oil and gas projects on indigenous peoples.

The new Shell pipeline is being constructed over a sacred Nivkh burial ground. The noise from the construction has impacted the caribou population and driven herders away from their traditional grazing grounds. The new Shell drilling platform and the pipeline connecting it to the shore is due to be constructed near the key feeding area of the endangered western pacific gray whale. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Peoples of the Russian North and Far East (Arctic Circle)

ZNet

Laos: Massive Dam Project Could Backfire

Published on April 11, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, development empowerment, ecology nature, indigenous people / minorities

IPS News

A new dam funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB ) and hailed as a windfall for Laos may end up doing more harm than good to one of the world’s poorest nations and its vulnerable farmers, several independent development groups say. It shows that international financial institutions, spearheaded by the Washington-based World Bank, are paying little regard to indigenous people, the environment or the long-term welfare of the poor nation. This will drastically alter the character of two important rivers, displace thousands of desperately poor residents, and disrupt the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. >> continue

IPS News

A new dam funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB ) and hailed as a windfall for Laos may end up doing more harm than good to one of the world's poorest nations and its…

Indigenousness and the Politics of Spirituality

Published on April 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

The commodification of indigenous spirituality is based on Romanticism’s construction of indigenes as more authentic, closer to nature and the sacred than Westerners; but it grew out of popular fascination with indigenous spirituality, fueled partly by ethnography and its imitators. By the 1980s a growing popular literature on New Age mysticism was emerging, drawing many concepts from Romantic notions of indigenous spirituality.

The commodification of spirituality led to outrage on the part of many indigenous peoples that white “wannabees” were playing at being Indian and appropriating their spiritual traditions. Some Native American groups decreed that only members of their own tribes would be permitted to practice certain traditions. Another possibility that appealed to some indigenous groups was to copyright their spiritual practices through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The idea that the right to spiritual practice is determined by blood violates everything we know about the constructed nature of race, ethnicity and culture. As anthropologists, we cannot turn our backs on our most fundamental assumptions, even to protect indigenous groups whose spiritual traditions have been fetishized. Taken to its logical extreme, it leads directly to essentialization and racism. >> continue

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

Smithsonian Folkways to Open MP3 Music Store

Published on April 1, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, music, technology

Washington Post

The Smithsonian Institution is entering the highly competitive world of music downloads by offering the Smithsonian Folkways collection of ethnic and traditional music in an online music store. Smithsonian Global Sound, the new project, will be formally launched during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in June.

Global Sound will charge 99 cents a song, which are available in MP3 format. The Smithsonian will pay royalties to the artists, as its recording label has done with records and CDs. The Web site, www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, will allow searches by artist, geographic location, language, cultural group or instrument. All of the Folkways archives, including photographs, can be downloaded onto a screen. >> continue

Washington Post