Indigenous and national identities: the risk of a new racism as opposed to assuming multiple identities

DANIEL FEIERSTEIN

Winnipeg

Encuentro; XI Meeting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS): Time, movement, and space: Genocide studies and Indigenous peoples; 2014

International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)

This paper examines the impact of indigenous identity politics on discussions of national identity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. After a long history of persecution during which their identities were denied, various peoples - especially in the Americas but also on other continents like Oceania - have begun a process of recovering their cultures and identities, while condemning the violent imposition of Western identity on the states of different regions. Nevertheless, this enormously rich and important process has also brought problems. For one thing, it has lumped together under the heading of ?indigenous? or ?aboriginal? peoples a variety of cultures and identities that had already been homogenized under colonialism. Colonialism defined these peoples largely in negative terms ? i.e. they were not part of Western culture; it ignored their historical and cultural differences as well as their different concepts of identity. Another problem is that this process has sometimes led to reverse racism, prioritizing ?blood and soil? nationalism typical of Western racist thinking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including ties with territories where indigenous peoples once lived and from which they were violently expelled.This paper critically analyzes some of the risks associated with this resurgence of racism. It explores other alternative historical processes that have sought to integrate indigenous identities into a multicultural national identity, starting with Evo Morales? political project of the Movement Toward Socialism in Bolivia and the enactment of a new Bolivian Constitution.