Northern Plains Experience

• The prerequisites of survival called for cooperation and sharing among all members. For the most part, surplus accumulation was not a practice.
• Traditional governments are characterized by the collective ownership of all lands, waterways, forest and wildlife, full participation and consensus in decision-making, and non-coercive leadership.
• The work of women was seen as vital to the survival of the group and not of lesser value.
• Indigenous people were integrated into the global economy through a worldwide system of mercantile capitalist trading companies.
• Where our people have been integrated into the wage-labour economy, it has been at the bottom of the social ladder.
• While the overall policy of government was assimilationist in nature, the intent of the reserve system was to isolate our people from the emerging national society.
• Attempts at modernization have taken the form of aggressive efforts to deculturalize Indigenous children initially through residential schools and continuing with the modern education system.
• The legal characteristics that are given to our people are not ones that we have chosen, but are a by-product of our relationship with the government of this country.
• The exposure to consumer goods and the mass media further contributed to the adoption of individualism and consumerism.
• The dispossession from the land further impoverished women and children who were the most dependent on the land for survival.
• Women tend to be at the forefront of the struggle against destructive development schemes because often their very survival depends on maintaining the integrity of the land and the forests.

--Clarkson, Morrissette and Régallet, authors of Our Responsibility to the Seventh Generation, 1992

Other Indigenous Experience:

Encounter with Modernity in Marwar, India: all life - human, animal and vegetable - has flourished in this hostile region by evolving a delicate and precarious relationship with the fragile eco-system. However, the integrated mode of life in this region has been destabilized in the early 19th century when the colonial rulers of India initiated a re-ordering of the region into a commercial periphery of London and Liverpool. By the turn of the 19th century the region began to be ravaged by prolonged droughts, famine and mass hunger. Marwar became a synonym for the region of death.

Even though the people of Marwar had always perceived a direct relationship between close grazing sheep and goat and the consequent desertification and increasing recurrence of drought and famine, they could not hold their ground once the region was linked with the London and Liverpool markets and wool, mutton and hides became marketable commodities. The "cow protectors" soon transformed into sheep breeders without much cultural resistance. Yet another blow to survival structures in the arid zone was dealt during the 1950s when land was privatized under the banner of "land reforms" after India's freedom from the British in 1947. The result was a basic restructuring, fraught with dangerous and unimagined consequences of the arid zone's social and physical environment. Formerly, life in the Thar was based primarily on pastoral economy, supplemented by cottage crafts and marginal agricultural all linked to a "community sense" with the natural resources. Now agriculture appears to be the "primary source of sustenance" and at the same time the pressure on pastoral sector has increased manifold. Source: Arun Kumar, 1991.

Common Land in India: Tribal People held their land in commons. Through the process of statization and privatization, beginning with British colonial rule and continuing in the post-colonial period, the extent of the village commons was greatly reduced. Through the creation of a market in forest products, the state disrupted the traditional subsistence economy and contributed massively to the impoverishment of Indigenous peoples. State policies established a monopoly control of forests, reserved large areas for commercial exploitation, and severely curtailed the traditional harvesting rights of the tribal people. These policies promoted the growing of commercially profitable trees under the guise of "scientific forest management" further reducing the availability of those varieties used by local tribal people, and allowed extensive tree clearing to secure construction materials and to permit the establishment of tea and coffee plantations, and large scale agriculture, thereby increasing government tax revenues. The effect of these policies included the erosion of local forest management systems, the separation of Indigenous peoples from their traditional economy, the criminalization of continued forest use, ongoing conflicts between state forestry officials and the local people, and the re-orientation of forest management to meet the needs of commercial interests. Source: Arun Kumar, 1991

The Use of Alcohol and Drugs in other Territories: Alcohol and drugs have always played a key role in the trade with the Indigenous peoples. West Indies rum was used extensively in the North American fur trade, while opium played a similar role in India and China (Rothney, 1975). The introduction of addictive substances such as opium, tobacco, tea and coffee as cash crops were particularly devastating to Indigenous societies because of the social disruptions caused by addictions and the additional devastation to fragile soils. Among the tribal people of India's Thar desert, the now pervasive addictions to opium, tobacco and tea have been the result of rather slow and smooth processes, often encouraged by the establishment of public liquor stores. To date, there are few individual or societal mechanisms available to tribal people by which they could perceive on their own the massive drain these products cause on their thin resource base. Source: Arun Kumar, 1991

Labour in South America: There are areas in South America where Indigenous peoples are virtually slaves through their debt-bonded labour. In such cases, people are often pressured into taking loans at very high interest rates. These debts are paid with labour, but are usually managed in such a way that the debt can never be paid off, resulting in permanent indentured labour. Any attempt to evade can result in imprisonment, and in extreme situations, debtors are murdered and their killers rarely prosecuted. Source: Icihi, 1987

Indigenous Coffee Producers: Coffee represents the second source of income in Mexico, after oil. In Oaxaca, it is the first source of income. Almost 100% of coffee producers are Indigenous and are bound through 21 regional organizations (20,000 producers), regrouped into the State Coordination of Coffee Producers since 1989. This grouping allows them to have access to a larger market, to consolidate their regional organizations, to coordinate their production and marketing activities, and to provide training and advice in regards to management, organization and relations with government and companies. Currently, coffee producers face a severe crisis with a depressed coffee price of $70 US/quintal, while the current cost of producing it is $80/quintal. Small producers are victims of behaviours from both governments which weakened the International Coffee Organization either by encouraging dumping practices or by protecting consumers' interest, and from transnationals who buy at the cheapest price. This situation makes it almost impossible for small producers to make a living and to shift to organic coffee production because such a shift requires an adjustment time lag. Source: Meeting with Indigenous People in the State of Oaxaca March 1-5, 1992

Marginalization of Women in India: Parallels can be seen in the experience of tribal women in other areas with the introduction of production for the market. A similar sexual division of labour in these societies resulted in the marginalization of women and their female children with the change in the nature of the economy. Colonial policies were such that it was the men who came to form the labour force for the large agricultural plantations, and it was the men who were supported by the state to engage in cash-crop production. When men began producing cash crops, or left the villages for employment on plantations in urban areas, the women had to assume the responsibilities of the men in domestic production. Because of their increasingly marginalized status in the economy, and because the exodus of men from the rural areas left women as the sole providers for their families, the introduction of production for exchange significantly undermined the health and well-being of women and their children. The shift to the production of cash crops displaced subsistence agriculture and led to malnutrition, especially among women and children. The best land closest to the villages was often appropriated by men for cash crops, leaving only the more distant and marginal lands for subsistence agriculture. Having to travel extended distances to tend to their crops extended the women's working day and put extra pressure on already scarce resources. The increasing use of marginal lands for food production depleted the fertility of the soil and reduced the quantity and the quality of the food available for consumption. This along with gender differences in food distribution led to higher levels of malnutrition among women and their female children. Source: Bina Agarwal, 1992

Tribal Women in India: The devaluation of Indigenous knowledge has impacted especially severely on women. An assessment of the circumstances of tribal women in India has found that: development strategies make no attempt to acknowledge or enhance women's extensive knowledge of the resource base; women are excluded from the institutions which create and transmit modern scientific knowledge; and the increasing degradation of the land and increasing privatization and statization is destroying the material basis for women's ecological knowledge.

Selected Web sites

• Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Final Report, 1996
  
  

  The Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples represents the most concise and comprehensive distallation of North American Indigenous issues. Searchable on line version, hosted by the Institute of Indigenous Government
  

• Report of the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, 1999
  
  
• American Truths
  
  

© 2000 International Institute for Sustainable Development