In this article, I employ the concept of “liminality” to answer the question, why is pain, something invisible and experienced by everyone, so often stigmatizing in its chronic form? Various authors' work on liminality argues that “betwixt and between,” ambiguous beings are seen by those around them to threaten prevailing definitions of the social order. I show that certain features of chronic pain result in the perception of sufferers as transgressing the categorical divisions between mind and body and as confounding the codes of morality surrounding sickness and health, turning them into liminal creatures whose uncertain ontological status provokes stigmatizing reactions in others.

This review examines literature on indigenous movements in Latin America from 1992 to 2004. It addresses ethnic identity and ethnic activism, in particular the reindianization processes occurring in indigenous communities throughout the region. We explore the impact that states and indigenous mobilizing efforts have had on each other, as well as the role of transnational nongovernmental organizations and para-statal organizations, neoliberalism more broadly, and armed conflict. Shifts in ethnoracial, political, and cultural indigenous discourses are examined, special attention being paid to new deployments of rhetorics concerned with political imaginaries, customary law, culture, and identity. Self-representational strategies will be numerous and dynamic, identities themselves multiple, fluid, and abundantly positional. The challenges these dynamics present for anthropological field research and ethnographic writing are discussed, as is the dialogue between scholars, indigenous and not, and activists, indigenous and not. Conclusions suggest potentially fruitful research directions for the future.

In this article I use Edward Sapir's (1924) famous phrase as a theme to explore how Tukanoans of Colombia's Northwest Amazon are learning to change their notions of their own history and culture to achieve a better fit with received wisdom about Indianness. Situated in a highly politicized context, this process involves local and national Indian rights organizations and sympathetic international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). I also briefly address the issue of ethnographic authority—the confrontation between anthropological and native visions of indigenous culture and history. [Northwest Amazon, indigenous mobilizing, identity politics, construction of culture, ethnic nationalism]

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