'Indigenous People' as a Legal Status: Theory and Practice
On February 3 the fourth session of the Diversity Research Laboratory was held on the topic 'The Plurinational State and Politics in Relation to Different Ethnocultural Groups: Discourses and Practices.' Sergei Sokolovsky, the chief researcher at the IEA RAS (Institute of Ethnology and Antropology, Russian Academy of Sciences), spoke about the legal peculiarities and contradictions of the status of indigenous peoples.
Indigenousness is the property of «being native». In the legal context, its carriers are identified as 'indigenous peoples.' Their main distinguishing feature is the lack of desire for integration into modern civilization. There are two models for understanding indigenousness. According to the cultural-economic model, indigenous peoples are distinguished by their traditional way of life and an appropriating economy: they are engaged in hunting, gathering, and fishing. The chrono-territorial model is based on the principle of primordial population. In other words, we are talking about the earliest population or peoples living in the territory before the appearance of the colonists.
In different contexts, indigenous peoples recognition policies are implemented differently. For example, the UN distinguished self-reference as a key principle of recognition - representatives of such peoples should identify themselves as 'indigenous.' However, they can already be integrated into the modern society and not depend on the resources of the natural environment. In this case, they have no need for special rights and guarantees, which the legal status of 'indigenous people' gives. In practice, recognition policies are often inconsistent and Russia is not an exception.
Sergei Sokolovsky brought up several topics for discussion at the seminar. The most controversial was the question of who should be the subject of recognition as an indigenous people. The listeners concluded that this question cannot be answered unambiguously. At first glance, considering the community as a subject of recognition seems to be the most promising, but it may entail the construction of enclosed groups. It is also important to consider the diversity of cultures. Thus, it is necessary to have a diversified representation of those who claim the status of 'indigenous people' in the first place. Avoiding a unified system, which is formed under the influence of only one optics, will take into account their specific interests.
Ekaterina Matveeva