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The indigenous people of the hemisphere have resisted a five-hundred-year assault, fighting to maintain their cultural identities. During this time, authorities in the Americas have insisted that the toleration of indigenous societies and cultures would undermine their respective states. In recent years, however, the nations of the Americas have started to reverse themselves. They are altering their constitutions and proclaiming themselves multiethnic. Why is this happening now? The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States, edited by David Maybury-Lewis, helps us understand the reasons and history behind these times of transition.

The book provides a valuable overview of current problems facing indigenous peoples in their relation with national states in Latin America, from the highlands of Mexico to the jungles of Brazil. The traditional, sometimes centuries old, relations between states and indigenous peoples are now changing and being rediscussed. The collection, authored by U.S. and Latin American anthropologists using interdisciplinary approaches, enables the reader to understand these recent developments in a comparative framework. An ambitious and quite thorough collection, it is brought together skillfully by one of the discipline's maître penseurs. ... Read more

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This dissertation argues that Amazonian indigenous peoples organized via transnational networks due to the domestic blockages presented to them in their respective countires. Due to these blockages and the growing number of transnational political opportunity structures, such as national and international non-govermental organizations, multi-lateral development banks, and multinational corporation, indigenous peoples mobilized through transnational advocacy networks and eventually formed transnational social movement organizations. Through a comparative-historical analysis of five Ecuadorian Amazonian indigenous organizations, this work illustrates the processes of transnational collective action and its outcomes. ... Read more

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"Native Christians" reflects on the modes and effects of Christianity among indigenous peoples of the Americas drawing on comparative analysis of ethnographic and historical cases. Christianity in this region has been part of the process of conquest and domination, through the association usually made between civilizing and converting. While Catholic missions have emphasized the 'civilizing' process, teaching the Indians the skills which they were expected to exercise within the context of a new societal model, the Protestants have centered their work on promoting a deep internal change, or 'conversion', based on the recognition of God's existence.Various ethnologists and scholars of indigenous societies have focused their interest on understanding the nature of the transformations produced by the adoption of Christianity. The contributors in this volume take native thought as the starting point, looking at the need to relativise these transformations.Each author examines different ethnographic cases throughout the Americas, both historical and contemporary, enabling the reader to understand the indigenous points of view in the processes of adoption and transformation of new practices, objects, ideas and values. ... Read more

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Traditional indigenous cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability.

A spiritual resource for sustainable living, this poem records the creation story of the Hawaiian people. It was translated into English by Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii in 1897, while she was under house arrest at Iolani Palace, for her refusal to cooperate with overseers from the U. S. mainland. The poem tells the origin of the stars in the heavens and how all of this was born from darkness:

The slime, the source of ever deeper darkness,
Out of the depth of darkness, depth of darkness;
From the sun’s darkness, from the depth of night,
Came night, and so it was,
the night was born.

Jabez L. Van Cleefcreates poetry from foundational texts of many traditions.Find out more at www.sustainyourspirit.com ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

He Kumulipo
This is a great and powerful story chant.However every other page an image was missing and the chant in hawaiian was not printed or included. ... Read more

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This book provides a comprehensive description of the indigenous schooling process in Africa. It contends that an authentic educational program in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa should be holistic in its unrelenting quest to educate the entire person: body, mind and spirit. ... Read more

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The Aborigines of Australia have one of the most fascinating, unique and oldest cultures in the world. This factual account focuses on their society, spirituality, history and way of life from its earliest beginnings to the twenty-first century. ... Read more

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An estimated 350 to 600 million indigenous people reside across the globe. Numerous governments fail to recognie its indigenous peoples living within their borders. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the genocide of indigenous peoples became a major focus of human rights activists, non-governmental organiations, international development and finance institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and indigenous and other community-based organiations.

Scholars and activists began paying greater attention to the struggles between Fourth World peoples and First, Second, and Third World states because of illegal actions of nation-states against indigenous peoples, indigenous groups’ passive and active resistance to top-down development, and concerns about the impacts of transnational forces including what is now known as globaliation.

This volume offers a clear message for genocide scholars and others concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide: much greater attention must be paid to the plight of all peoples, indigenous and otherwise, no matter how small in scale, how little-known, how "invisible" or hidden from view.

Samuel Totten is currently The Distinguished Visiting Ida E. King Scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is also the editor of the Transaction Series on Genocide Studies.

Robert K. Hitchcock is professor of geography at Michigan State University. He is a renowned expert on southern Africa and the author or editor of numerous books, including Kalahari Communities: Bushmen and the Politics of the Environment in Southern Africa and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Southern Africa.

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Customer Reviews (5)

Excellent,
The book shows in vivid detail how many groups who have developed a superiority of power/technology etc frequently use it in a most base and grasping manner, warping their own morality to justify it. Rather than the simplistic European/American(bad) vs nobel savage (good) conflict that some other reviewers took from it,it demonstrated the all universal human trait of brutality and genocide in the pursuit of plunder and greed. The readyness to which societies on the one hand professed education,morality etc descended to levels of cruelty that begars belief in clear and systematic and recurring patterns used to self justify it makes for an absorbing book.

PC BS
Go elsewhere for a balanced scholarly account, this book is just an attempt to cash in on a false politically-correct warping of history.Not much good for anything.

Read GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL and get the facts right!
Ricardo, gimme a break! Amazing as it was, the Aztec empire was not as advanced as Europe. To believe otherwise is to delude yourself into a resentful fantasy that'll only embitter and do you no good. Had Pericles fought the Mexicas two thousand years before Cortés, he would've won just the same because the Aztecs didn't even have the wheel! They didn't know how to forge metals, or plow a field. They didn't know how to travel by sea or sail in a lake. And they weren't any kinder to the peoples they conquered. Any tribe was Chichimeca ("children of dogs") to them, and treated accordingly. That's why Cortés made so many allies overnight.

That's not to say the Aztecs were inferior. Compared with the Navajos, the Sioux, the Apache, and the rest of the Chichimeca, they were a world power in their own right. But compared against Spain they were not, And Spain was on its way out, too! So what? Tough luck! Welcome to History; that's what it's all about!

And sure, the Aztecs DID perform human sacrifices; it's a ritual depicted in most of their códices. Were they any worse than the Europeans? No. Were they "intelectually superior" to them? Nope again. They weren't as developed a society as Europe was, that's all. Live with it!

"What is past is prologue". Don't waste you energy trying to deny the past, work to better the future. And please spare us your spiteful rants; we Mexicans have enough troubles as it is right now to be branded "fascists" as well!

An Epic Tragedy. One of the Best Books I Have Ever Read.
The premise of the book has become so cliched that its fundamental truth has almost become obscured.Cocker uncovers in painstaking detail the results of European colonialism in four areas of the world.Without ever romanticizing the societies (the bloody nature of the Aztecs is particularly stressed) that are conquered, he paints a tragic picture that moved me to the point of tears more than once. A valuable antidote to apologists for European/Western Imperialism.

simplistic
Crocker is a journalist who has previously proven his ability to write thoughtful, well-researched books that sell disappointing numbers.It is hard to blame the man for wanting to sell enough books to make some money. It is somewhat harder to take the amount of gore in Rivers of Blood, butone has to concede that he has the formula down.To sell books one mustwrite about a) bad guys, b) harrowing, boodthirsty murder, c) really simpleideas.Here we have world class bad guys in the Europeans who set out toconquer the world by murdering all the people who lived everywhere else. The fact that these people fought back and sometimes won adds drama.But,hello?What about the role or European diseases, or the role of a Europeaneconomic system that surely did as much as European weapons to destroy thenon-European civilizations.Bloodthirsty conquest is as old as history. If the only thing that happened in the sixteenth century was that a bunchof European guys got on boats and set out to conquer other people, there would be no news to report.Mark Crocker misses most of the reallyimportant aspects of the Eurppean conquest of the world.I prefer myhistory more complex and closer to reality.Try reading Bullough's Pond ifyou really want to know what the American Indians were up against. ... Read more

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Much has been written about the forging of a British identity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The process, unconfined to the British Isles, ran across the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean and was played out in North America and the Caribbean. The identities of Irish Catholics or Highland Scots who took part in the imperial venture abroad were subject to constant renegotiation. In the process, the indigenous peoples of North America, the Caribbean, the Cape, Australia, and New Zealand were forced to redefine their own identities. Although the encounter was far from equal, it was by no means simple or monolithic

This collection explores the many complex ways in which identities were forged within Britain and among indigenous peoples through a process of collision and compromise. Contributions from Africa, Australia, and both sides of the Atlantic deal with different aspects of these encounters-for example, "Native Americans and Early Modern Concepts of Race" and "Hunting and the Politics of Masculinity in Cherokee Treaty-making, 1763-1775." Empire and Others provides a valuable study that will be of particular interest to students of Colonial American history and early modern British history.

Contributors to the volume include Philip Morgan, Christopher Bayly, Andrew Porter, Hilary Beckles, and Peter Way.

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In recent years, international attention has focused on the Arctic as a critical zone for global environmental change, due to concern over global warming, atmospheric pollution, ozone depletion, overfishing, and uncontrolled resource extraction. With the internationalization of the circumpolar north through quests for natural resources and the growth of capitalist markets, the importance of the correct use of natural resources and proper ways forward for Arctic environmental protection has given rise to intense debate. Yet, despite the diversity of the indigenous peoples and cultures of this area, science-based resource management systems designed to safeguard wildlife and the Arctic environment have, for the most part, ignored indigenous perspectives.
Protecting the Arctic explores some of the ways in which indigenous peoples have taken political action regarding Arctic environmental and sustainable development issues, and investigates the involvement of indigenous peoples in internationa ... Read more

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Since the Conquest, indigenous communities throughout Latin America have endured with astonishing restraint a multitude of impositions and indignities. Occasionally that restraint has been punctuated by cycles of rebellion and repression. Violent confrontations between Indian organizations and the state in the last two years indicate a growing frustration by indigenous peoples with political attempts to advance their demands. Major altercations have occurred in Mexico, Ecuador, and Bolivia, with smaller scale confrontations becoming a regular occurrence as Indian communities grow increasingly defiant of state authority in the wake of repeated violations of indigenous territorial and human rights. While in some countries such groups have been able to achieve recognition and protection through constitutional and legal reforms, Indians in general continue to be disproportionately the poorest of the poor and regular victims of human rights abuses. They are chronically under represented in political office in all countries of the Americas.

This paper explores the complex nexus of security issues that the governments of Latin America and the indigenous communities of the region face at the end of the 20th century. A better understanding of security issues from the perspective of indigenous communities should enable policymakers in the United States to estimate more accurately how U.S. policy plays a role in the aggravation or resolution of interethnic conflict in Latin America. Although the national contexts of indigenous-state relations differ markedly throughout the hemisphere, relevant issues of national security are strikingly similar -- maintenance of international borders, eradication and interdiction of drugs, suppression of armed insurgencies, and containment of rural unrest. National governments, state armed forces, and indigenous peoples, however, all have different conceptions of the meaning of "national security." ... Read more

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Ten essays explore the differences and similarities among various indigenous minorities of the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo. All concern the relationshop between indigenous groups and large societies as defined by the state. ... Read more

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In Canada, indigenous peoples and official-language minorities benefit from certain rights that are not available to the rest of the population, but exactly who can claim membership in these groups remains a controversial issue. Protecting a group's culture and resources is often seen to be at odds with the freedom of individuals to claim membership in that group. In "Identity Captured by Law", Sebastien Grammond explains how minority rights make identity legally relevant, providing a detailed account of struggles that have been fought concerning Indian status and admission to minority-language schools. Setting his analysis of the law in the wider interdisciplinary context of anthropology and political theory, Grammond assesses whether a group's membership rules are an accurate reflection of their ethnicity and are based on sound justifications of minority rights. He argues that membership rules do not violate equality rights if there is sufficient correspondence between the legal criteria that determine membership and the group's own cultural or relational conceptions of their ethnic identity.Comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and original in its comparison of indigenous people and linguistic minorities, "Identity Captured by Law" is an invaluable resource for legal and political scholars and students, as well as anyone interested in the controversies surrounding the legal recognition of identity. ... Read more

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Covers lifestyles of Southern African ethnic groups, Arab and European influences, religion, culture, and current problems facing Southern Africa. ... Read more