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Relations of Power and Domination in a World Polity
territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now
prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant
sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future
generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their
continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social
institutions and legal systems
(Cobo, 1983: 50, paragraph 379).
They were granted the permanent right to exist, which was to make it possible for them to live
according to their way of life and pursue independent economic development, use the land they
occupied, as well as preserve their identity, language, and culture. Still today the attribute of
indigenous peoples having a special affiliation to their land is paramount (Daes, 2001).
Up to this point in time the discourse on indigeneity targeted the cultural otherness of the groups
concerned (in comparison to mainstream society upon which the nation-state is based) as well as the
right to independent development and to land use. The 1980s brought a fundamental change. In
1980 the IUCN presented the study
World Conservation Strategy
together with the UN Environment
Program (UNEP) and the WWF (IUCN, UNEP, & WWF, 1980). In this strategy for global nature
conservation, the authors pursued the goal of protecting natural resources to preserve essential
ecological processes that were considered vital to human survival, ensure genetic diversity, and
guarantee environmentally friendly and sustainable exploitation of species and ecological systems.
The term
sustainable development
was put forward as the global solution formula to combine nature
conservation and development. In a chapter of the
World Conservation Strategy
(IUCN et al., 1980) on
rural development based on nature conservation, the problems of developing countries are discussed
– countries that are forced to clear their forests, overfish, or hunt excessively because of their
poverty. However, in the same chapter the term of ‗traditional knowledge‘ can already be found, that
is, a knowledge that is ascribed to rural communities. The term successfully gained international
political significance in the following period (IUCN, 1985, 1986; IUCN et al., 1991), not least in the
report
Our Common Future
(World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) or in
conjunction with the
UN Convention of Biological Diversity
(United Nations, 1992) and the
Agenda 21
.
Consequently, a culture based on respect for animals (Søby, 1969/70; Sowa, 2013b) and the
conception of animals as non-human persons (Fienup-Riordan, 1990), as was attributed to ‗primitive
peoples,‘ was thus transformed into the notion of knowledge specific to indigenous people, a
knowledge that is equal to scientific and academic knowledge (Berkes, 1993, 1999; Hobson, 1992).
In political discourse of sustainable development, the projection of the environmental saint evolved
into the ‗noble eco-savage‘ (Kaiser, 1987; Whelan, 1999) recognized in treaties, with a status between
nature and culture. Former colonized and societies not formally constituted as nation-states were
seen as not (yet) modern, not (yet) enlightened, and not (yet) developed. In my view, indigenous
peoples are an expression of the global model of indigeneity in the
world polity
(Sowa, 2013b). The
advocates of this theoretical approach assume that cultural and structural patterns based on the
principles of rationalization will become established worldwide (Meyer, 1987; Meyer et al., 1997).
They lend legitimacy to certain structural forms while rendering others illegitimate. With the help of
the advisors of
world polity
, the global model of indigeneity has come to prevail as the counter-model
to nation-state societies. The overtones of this model are a musealized conception of communities