WHO ARE THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE?

Today on our Planet there are approximately 5000 aboriginal communities for a total of 370 million individuals. They live in more than 70 countries and all members of United Nation. The poor represent 75% and they are indicate as aboriginal people of the rural areas. The aboriginal people are often defined as “ethnic minorities”. This coincidence can be arbitrary. From a numerical point of view, the alikeness between the two realities is certainly very well-marked; the aboriginal communities represent 4% of the whole  world population and on a national level, groups of a few hundred people are very likely. In the regional context, the quantitative analyses of the aboriginal reality has no more value; the least presence of aboriginal people on a very vast region is considered as a “minority” of that country. Actually, in some vast but desert areas, the aboriginal people represent the majority. “Indigenous” and “tribal” people are characterized by some familiar elements; anyway, in 1957 the Convention 107 of the ILO (International Labour Organization) made a formal distinction between them. Both the groups are different from the rest of the community from an economic, political, social, juridical and especially cultural point of view. They have been both discriminated and overwhelmed by the society over the years. If we can claim that all the indigenous people are also tribal people, we cannot affirm the exact opposite. Minorities are very likely in tribal groups. The deep difference between the aboriginal communities is based on their history before the colonization and on the transformation of  this last one from a territorial colonization to a mental colonization.

ABORIGINAL PEOPLE IN EUROPE.

THE SAAMI.

In Europe, the aboriginal condition has a marginal place:  the Saami (50.000) who live in Norway, in Sweden, in Finland and in Russia are defined “indigenous”. In the other European countries, the minorities are subordinates to a different juridical “treatment” compared to the aboriginal communities. The minorities have some different “requests”, that the local jurisdiction manage more easily.

In Italy, the Saami are well-known as “Lapponians”. But “lapponian” is a depreciative term; it means “to wear bad cloth”. The story of this people is rich in folkways. The Saami are a wandering people. In Sweden live 17.000 Saami and they have been incorporated as “indigenous” by the Swedish Parliament /Riskdag). The majority of the Saami live in the forest but about 2500 of them attend to deer fosterage (deerfarm).  In the Cernobyl disaster (26 aprile 1986) the last Norwegian Saami died and the infection of deers and plants has continued to decimate the saari over the years.

UFFICIAL DEFINITION OF “ABORIGINAL PEOPLE” José Martinez Cobo

The United Nation made official the definition of “aboriginal people” during a study over the years 1981-1983 and supported by the ambassador of Ecuador Martinez Cobo in his Cobo’s Report :

“The communities, the people and the aboriginal nations are those who, having an historical continuity with the existing societies before the invasions and the colonization process that  developed  on their territories, are considered different from the other fields of the societies that today are prevailing in those territories or are part of them. Today they don’t constitute  the dominant fields of the society and have a decisive role to preserve, to develop and to transmit to the future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity like base of their existence as people in agreement with their cultural traditions, the social institutions and the systems lawyers (...)”.

Cobo, who was at that time a member of  the Subcommittee against the Discrimination of the Minorities, continues supporting the importance of the acknowledgment of the aboriginal individual like member of a community.

Edmund J. Osmanczyk:  according  to Edmund J. Osmanczyk’s definition on the official Encyclopedia of the United Nations, the indigenous people are those people who, at the moment of the arrival of the conquerors, were gradually overcome  in all aspects of the life, above all in the way to think.

L'UNDP The UNDP (Program of the United Nations for the Development) applies four criteria in order to distinguish the aboriginal people from the minorities, being gained them from the definitions of the ILO, the World Bank and from the theory of the international right :

1) the aboriginal people usually live in ancestral territories geographically distinguished; 2)  they have the tendency to maintain their social, economic and political institutions within their territories; 3) aboriginal people desire to save their cultural, geographical and institutional identity and they don’t want to be totally assimilate in the national society; the 4) aboriginal people empathize as aboriginals or tribal people.

MAIN ISSUES

Right to self-determination- The system of the aboriginal communities is substantially different from the system that identifies the national societies.

More and more often people discusses about the relation between the right to the self-determination and the aboriginal identities; the questionability becomes noticeablewhen it is necessary to evaluate how this right has to be practised in according to those aboriginal people claim: the right to the ancestral earth and the resources; the right to the self-determination; the right to the expression; the right to the own languages and cultures. Such rights are intrinsically belayed by a common thread: that one of the acknowledgment not only of the aboriginal individuals but also of the communities that they compose.

The right to self-determination is a democratic and inalienable principle that allows everyman to be recognized as part of a territory, defined “state” or “nation”; the right to express totally own identity by the support of the states. The self-determination  has to assure individuals freedom and integrity and the responsibility of the application of such right is a duty of the guarantor states of the participation and the involvement of all members of a national territory.

The right to the self-determination appears, anyway, extremely restrictive if it is a request of communities that not necessarily empathize with the state. This right  must be placed side by side other rights to recognize and that they can support the value of the right of self-determination rather than to being determined; it must happen above all when it refers to different ethnic groups . The right to the earth and the right to the culture must be seen as two things joined from an unavoidable tie: the earth represents the place in which the value of the culture and of the language are expressed in a total manner. The earth is “maternal” and the nature tie that combines the aborigines to the resources that the earth offers them must be interpreted like irrevocable: aboriginal people would not exist without the ancestral places in which the tradition is handed on generation in generation. The attachment to the birth place and the self-recognition of this condition is often interpreted as folkloristic phenomenon by who cannot comprise that spiritual union which, if compromised, it risks  to lose the perception of the condition of “indigenous” either inside of the group either outside. It cannot be thought to respect the rights of the aboriginal people if it is already decided to reserve them some established places for their existence. The reservoirs in fact exist as places of grouping but sure not as identification places. There is a pressing request on the part of the aboriginal people of a “linguistic self-determination” that can assure them cultural origins and that identifies them. At this point, a short definition of the right to self-determination would be useful.

Right to self-determination

How does self-determination mean? In the first place the identification is a social process that leads  an individual to acknowledge himself/herself like a member of a specific social segment, independently from the characterization that connotes it. Focusing the attention on the cultural sphere (and identity) this right must be reported exactly . In the case of the aboriginal people the tie between the right to the self-determination and the right to the self-recognition is sequential. The right to the self-recognition in fact allows to combine the rights guaranteed from the self-determination (straight characterizes them) and those rights that are seen like peculiar of the collectivities: the right to the earth in fact is considered like a collective right. The identification to own territorial and cultural context must allowed without discriminations and constrictions. The aboriginal people see in the group their primary reference.

Individual and collective rights

The term  “collectivity” indicate a groups composed by individuals. Such logical process allows to emphasize the composite aspect of the group without losing  cognition when the attention of the human right is centralized on a specific individual (first subject of right). In the Convention no.169 of the ILO (International Labour Organization) is eenlightened the principle of the self-determination connected to the collective right

 A no dominant position.

The aboriginal people are characterized by the position of not dominance. Such position compromises the resistance of the aboriginal identity which meets daily with a direct and indirect intellectual oppression that more and more risks to nullify millenarian and very important traditions for the survival of inimitable cultures.

More frequent violations.

It is possible to synthetize which are the more frequent violations towards the aboriginal people: from the repression of own manifestations to the violation of their territorial rights, from the exploitation of the natural resources presents in their habitat to the negation of autonomy. The imposition of a standard method of education that damages the cultural identities and the  forced integration in the majority society of the belongings country are two of the violations on which our association is concentrating its theoric and practical efforts.

A hard comunication.

Analysing the rights claimed by the aboriginal people we can realize the complexity in the communication: the search of an intercultural dimension that allows an equal dialogue without to place one of the two interlocutors in one disadvantage position. We wonder if it is possible to obtain a solid solution if conceptual and oral categories are yet used that belong to our national societies and that must be comprised by the aboriginal people who live in an different social and cultural dimension. Today the native communities should become involved because, using western parameters,they must withstand the lack of local references and the introduction of suitable instruments that can support the development political performance. We are convinced instead that the truth must be found on the midway of the interactive distance between “we” and “they” in order to avoid an operation of paternalistic degeneration of welfarism. The goal of the cooperation is a compromise that supports the aboriginal revendications without to perceive them like something far from our parameters. The sharing of a culture and a language focuses the attention on the need of an acknowledgment of the collective right placed side by side to the individual right; the collective right will be recognized, it would allow the aboriginal people to feel the paradigms more well-known and a greater understanding of their necessities.

 Right of language.

Unesco has previewed  that, by the end of this century, more than  70% of the 6000 existing languages on our planet is desappearing. The phenomenon of annihilation of the languages and the forgetfulness of the cultural identities is provoking the destruction of a heterogenous and multiexpressive cultural and linguistic system. The natural right to preseve the cognition of the own originsis a truth. According to Unesco the language is “the more vulnerable aspect of our cultural patrimony”. At the beginnig of the 2006 languages in extinction were 417. The regularization of a method that saves languages and people is needed. The conveyanceof own culture through just the language is a primary need to preserve  the integrity of an individual and the people whose he/she belongs.

The preservation of the heterogeneity.

An other important issue concers the heterogeneity  that enriches the aboriginal existance. If it is true that, in a country, the differences between the aboriginal people and the majority societies are obvious, is equally true that the approach to the  aboriginal problematics through a standardization of the “tipology”, brings to ambiguos elaborations. Thinking of all aboriginal as a sort of “superposable” populations is a mistake because everyman possesses elaborations and simbology that diversifies him/her. This aspect emerges above all when documents concerning aboriginal communities  have to be redacted and when definitions and denominations have to be chosen. People, populations? (People, Peoples or Populations) The variation of a definition can modify the intensity of the denomination. “Population” is a term that reminds the idea of a shapeless mass, without any particular characteristics; “people”, is a term that has a more specific connotation but at the same time it nullifies the variety of every aboriginal peole. are more narrow but homologous the variety that inborn in the aboriginal identity.  The term “people(s)” allows to identify the heterogeneity in the aboriginal community and at the same time it supports the legal value of the aboriginal identity.