Indigenous Peoples in a Globalized World

Understanding the Impacts of Globalization on Indigenous Peoples in National and International

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Globalization

Globalization is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. In particular, advances in transportation and telecommunications, infrastructure, and the rise of the Internet have played a major role in creating a globalized world.

These are all major factors in globalization and precipitate further interdependence of economic, socio-political, and cultural activities both nationally and internationally.

What’s Driving Globalization?

Economic shifts: The natural tendency of capitalism to expand itself is expressed increasingly in the information age in the need of business, large and small, to compete in regional and global markets

Technological shifts: The move towards post-industrial economies and the information revolution greatly facilitates globalization.

What’s Driving Globalization?

Political shifts: The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic shift away from state intervention to the market as the emphasis upon deregulation, privatization and economic liberalization continue to make economies and societies more open to the world.

Cultural shifts: Fuelled by the aforementioned developments, an awareness has grown among national elites and many citizens’ groups or social movements (such as the global environmental movement, represented by, for example, Greenpeace) that the fate of nations and communities are increasingly bound up with the changing dynamics of the global economy and the global environment.

What the heck was all that? Why does it

matter? Globalization has had a varying degree of impacts on

Indigenous peoples around the world.

Some academics would maintain that we have always lived in a globalized world. However, due to the four ‘shifts’ we just examined, both the positive and negative aspects of globalization are further reaching than ever before.

Unfortunately, for most Indigenous peoples, globalization has only further marginalized, impoverished, and dismantled their societies and cultures.

“I noticed what you have there, it’s nice…I think we’ll take it!”

Indigenous people throughout the world sit on the "frontlines" of globalization's expansion; they occupy the last pristine places on earth, where resources are still abundant: forests, minerals, water, and genetic diversity. All are ferociously sought by global corporations, trying to push traditional societies off their lands.

National governments making decisions on export development strategies or international trade and investment rules, rarely consult Indigenous communities.

As we have learned…

Today, our world is experiencing a rapid decline in cultural diversity and the eradication of Indigenous peoples and their lifeway.

Many of these Indigenous people, their language, culture, and lifestyles face a questionable future. The relatively rapid decline in language diversity parallels the decline in cultural diversity. These changes are due in part to the product of both historical relationships - imperialism, colonialism, global economic development, and militarism - as well as cultural beliefs that rationalize or justify actions that have served certain cultures at the cost of others.

Issues from Globalization

Land Grabs

Environmental Issues

Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

Assimilation Tactics

Resistance Movements

Intervention from Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s)

Impacts of Transnational Corporations (TNC’s)

Potential Research Options

Chiapas Conflict (Mexico)

“Law of the Jungle” Conflict (Peru)

Land Disputes of the Hopi/Navajo (Arizona)

Diamond/Oil Exploration in the North (Nunavut)

San People/Central Kalahari Game Reserve (Botswana)

‘Stolen Generations’ (Australian Aborigines)

Issues in Citizenship and Identity (Hill Tribes in Thailand)

Giving Globalization Context

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTBkfzjyJ5g