Indigeneity as political category

Abstract

Indigeneity is a category of analysis to read the world. Indigeneity is not a culture and much less a race; it is not a linguistic or biological feature. People have long identified through their nations, such as Tikuna, Kaqchikel, Aymara, Naga, or Chumash, before states labeled them Indian during various processes of land-grabbing. The concept of indigeneity is a category invented by the western modernity that produced a world-system hierarchizing life. Indigeneity is a useful lens to understand why some nations have sovereignty to speak at the UN, while others do not. It sheds light on who owns and who is owned, who has citizenship and who is framed as savage. Indigeneity is a category of political analysis that matters for what it reveals about the modern states that use it, more than the people called Indigenous. Indigeneity operates on three levels: as a political identity, as a relation to the state, and as co-constitutive of political modernity. It matters to understand how we got here, and how to get out of it. Today, Indigenous peoples protect water to restore public life, to enrich our polities with relations of non-domination centered on sustaining life.