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The knowledge of the world’s indigenous peoples, their ethos and way of life is not just for themselves. Non-indigenous people should learn, adopt and absorb all this if they want to create a more sustainable and egalitarian world, activist C R Bijoy told Down To Earth on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is equally applicable for non-indigenous peoples, said Bijoy.
“People who want to learn about the forest should learn from the people who live there. Similarly, people who are free will have better understanding and knowledge of justice, egalitarianism, democracy and sustainability,” he added.
Science and common sense should propel the non-indigenous world to take lessons from the indigenous way of life.
“Our absorption and adoption of indigenous knowledge and frameworks is one of the major pathways that we have to sustainability,” he said.
The UNDRIP is the result of a long struggle by indigenous activists that goes back to the 1940s. The world was in the throes of World War II, which the then League of Nations had been unable to stop.
“The Indigenous peoples’ issues emerged in the international arena in the 1940s when indigenous activists, especially from the Americas, brought them up persistently in the International Labour Organization (ILO), then under the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor,” said Bijoy.
When the United Nations was formed at the end of World War II, these activists were told that it was a body of nations and that indigenous peoples did not have a locus standi for representation.
Nation states also objected to the use of the term ‘indigenous peoples’, saying it would have various political ramifications.
“There is a subtext to this. The 1940s and 1950s were the period of decolonisation. Various human rights conventions from that time stated that ‘peoples’ must have the right to self-determination. We must remember that most nation states had been formed then. The idea of self-determination also included secession besides varying degrees of autonomy,” says Bijoy.
The UN later decided that the term ‘peoples’, which emerged during the period of decolonisation, was no longer valid as the process of decolonisation was mostly complete. ‘Peoples’ thus no longer signified secession and thus got wider acceptance.
Another stumbling block in the long road to indigenous rights was about who could be included in the category of ‘indigenous peoples’.
The UN does not have any umbrella definition, according to Bijoy. It is left to national governments and people themselves to decide who is indigenous.
A popular working definition that emerged during the initial debates was:
“Indigenous populations are composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them and by conquest or settlement reduced them to non-dominant or colonial situation, who today live in more conformity with their social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than with the institutions of the country which they now form apart under the state structure which incorporates mainly the national, social and cultural characteristics of the other sections of the population which are dominant.”
But as per Bijoy, this definition elicited objections as it would only be applicable to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, which are settler-colonial societies.
“This definition was challenged as being incomplete. Thus, the whole idea of being indigenous has expanded overtime. From 150 million, indigenous peoples may now number up to 300 million because of the broadening of the definition,” the activist stated.
The ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Council of the UN, through a resolution in 1982 created a Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
The Working Group drafted the UNDRIP in 1988, as part of their mandate. It was debated that very year and was adopted almost two decades on.
The UNDRIP subsequently became the gold standard for all UN bodies, which started looking at indigenous peoples as a separate entity, who were to be considered in aspects of every developmental project across the globe.
According to Bijoy, the long struggle for indigenous rights has resulted in indigenous peoples being the most visible and organised globally. They are well-represented in global bodies and mechanisms. This has implications for national laws.
“The Canadian province of British Columbia passed the Declaration Act in November 2019 to align provincial laws with the UNDRIP. In the Philippines, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act in 1996 created a Commission of indigenous members, who go across the country to demarcate indigenous territories so that they have some control over land and resources. Interestingly, the Provisions of the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled) Areas Act (PESA) in India was passed the same year. Nepal has formally recognised 59 Adivasi Janjatis through the National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities Act in 2006. In 2007, it also ratified the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) and supported the UNDRIP. The new Nepali Constitution of 2015 recognises indigenous peoples and provides affirmative action for them,” observed Bijoy. He calls these developments ‘positive spillovers’.
According to Bijoy, the moot point in debates and discussions regarding indigenous peoples is often missed. It is something that is historic and civilisational, he said.
“Indigenous peoples by and large are pre-feudal. They were on the peripheries of feudal states. Even if they were part of kingdoms, the rule of the king never actually extended to their territory,” he noted.
The basic difference between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples is that the mode of production is community-based in case of the former.
“They believe they belong to their land and not the other way round and that it belongs to everyone. They were a free people and had a free association with nature and biodiversity. This association and the necessity of livelihood and existence enabled them to have a larger in-depth understanding of nature. Therefore, they have the largest quantum of knowledge regarding flora, fauna, food items. A large portion of the modern pharmacopeia has not come from labs or scientists but from indigenous peoples’ ethno-botanical knowledge. The Susruta Samhita, that forms a part of Ayurveda’s canonical texts, clearly says that one must go to the forest peoples to learn about medicines and herbs,” according to Bijoy.
But most importantly, he noted, indigenous peoples never enslaved anyone nor did they get enslaved. “They kept out of the feudal system, resisted colonisation and subjugation, making it clear they wanted to remain free. They know more about freedom than anyone else. Their ideas of freedom, have in fact influenced democracy everywhere,” said Bijoy.
He gave the example of India, where the British saw that mainstream caste society never had notions and values of democracy and therefore democratic laws and systems were to be formulated gradually for them.
“But then they found that this was not applicable to the Adivasi regions as the tribals already had very egalitarian systems of democracy and governance in their societies. Thus, the mainstream governance laws were kept away from and excluded these tribal regions,” he added.
In independent India, indigenous peoples have pushed their values and framework of democracy into modern legal frames and even beyond, according to Bijoy. He gives the examples of landmark laws such as PESA and Forest Rights Act of 2006.
“Meanwhile, mainstream society does not understand democracy. It still continues to abide by the colonial system of governance and administration, with institutions of democracy having little control over them,” said Bijoy.
However, the very fact of indigenous knowledge being talked about as a panacea for today’s global environmental crisis, while superficial and mere rhetoric, highlights an important fact.
“This shows that indigenous peoples have survived feudal, colonial and capitalist onslaught since their systems are more robust, resilient and sustainable. That is why they affirm and assert their autonomy to pursue them, refusing to give them up, surviving and their systems have got legal acceptance and wider currency,” he concluded.