Indigeneity and indigenous politics: Ground-breaking resources

Ioris, Antonio A. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0156-2737 2023. Indigeneity and indigenous politics: Ground-breaking resources. Revista de Estudios Sociales 85 , pp. 3-21. 10.7440/res85.2023.01

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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to relate the important question of the autonomy of indigenous peoples, in terms of making decisions about their lives freely, with the notion of indigeneity, reconceptualized as a socially constructed and deeply questioned resource. Resources are more than just static assets or amounts of matter waiting to be measured, explored or protected. Something becomes a resource through joint processes of quantification, valuation and normalization. In this order of ideas, indigeneity is not only the verification of something or someone in relation to "something else", but a nexus of self-realization and political intervention of indigenous peoples. To be indigenous is to exist politically in space and linked to antagonistic forces and processes that constantly degrade the ethnic and social condition. Therefore, indigeneity is a resource that presupposes the value and struggle for rights and for other (so-called) indigenous resources found on their lands. The main contribution of this article is the affirmation that indigeneity is an innovative resource and a reaction formulated in the interstices of the old and new machines of market-oriented coloniality. It is reinterpreted as special and highly politicized, and directly and indirectly opposed to the processes of hoarding of the world and the appropriation of other territorialized resources of indigenous areas. It is concluded that indigeneity, as an innovative resource, it has become a key factor in the process of external and internal recognition, which galvanizes political mobilization and encourages new forms of interaction. What makes indigenous peoples increasingly unique is also what makes them share a sociopolitical struggle with allied and subordinate social groups.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Language other than English:	Spanish
Publisher:	Universidad de los Andes
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	5 May 2023
Date of Acceptance:	23 March 2023
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2023 15:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/159240

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