Tribal Peoples for Tomorrow’s World

Ideas, things and even individuals can cross in both directions, but however porous and elastic the boundary is – and both are major components in its strength – it must retain its integrity if the group is to survive as a definable people.

irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.

prehistory,

When Margaret Thatcher famously declared that there was no such thing as society, she meant that the population should be looked at only as individuals, that there was no underlying social fabric which bound them into something which extended beyond themselves.

Indigenous peoples are the descendants of those who were there before others who now constitute the mainstream and dominant society. They are defined partly by descent, partly by the particular features that indicate their distinctiveness from those who arrived later, and partly by their own view of themselves.

Critics of tribal peoples’ rights often assert that those who support them want the people to remain poor. But that is not what is at stake at all: it is rather a case of trying to prevent people being driven away from self-sufficiency and towards impoverishment by others taking their land and resources.

‘a people’ meaning an identifiable society.

the human need to belong,

a group which has had ultimate control of their lands taken by later arrivals: they are subject to the domination of others. Used in this sense, descent is less important than political perception.