China’s Indigenous Peoples? How Global Environmentalism Unintentionally Smuggled the Notion of Indigeneity into China

Abstract

This article explores how global environmental organizations unintentionally fostered the notion of indigenous people and rights in a country that officially opposed these concepts. In the 1990s, Beijing declared itself a supporter of indigenous rights elsewhere, but asserted that, unlike the Americas and Australia, China had no indigenous people. Instead, China described itself as a land of "ethnic minority" groups, not indigenous groups. In some sense, the state's declaration appeared effective, as none of these ethnic minority groups launched significant grassroots efforts to align themselves with the international indigenous rights movement. At the same time, as international environmental groups increased in number and strength in 1990s China, their policies were undergoing significant transformations to more explicitly support indigenous people. This article examines how this challenging situation arose, and discusses the unintended consequences after a major environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), carried out a project using the language of indigeneity in China.

Spicy red in Shrimp Town: Smart farming and settler colonialism in Guizhou province

“…Some scholars have argued that indigeneity has less valence in China because it was imported through Western influence (Hathaway, 2016). However, it is important to recognize that many ethnic minority activists in China and those critical of the state's Han assimilationist policies have made the bridge between questions of autonomy, environment and land rights that China's ethnic minority groups face as beyond isolated ethnic minority struggles in the shadow of a socialist state.…”

Should Uyghurs be considered an Indigenous people?

“…Attempts to prevent Uyghur activists from participating in the UNPFII demonstrate how sensitive this issue is to the Chinese state. While the politics of indigeneity have been nominally present in the PRC at the encouragement of environmentalists, especially via international NGOs working in the region of Yunnan (Hathaway 2016), indigeneity has not been embraced by the Party, especially in relation to larger groups like Uyghurs and Tibetans. Emily Yeh (2007) notes that indigeneity has been largely peripheral to Tibetan activism precisely because the dis-course has no "uptake" within the PRC.…”

Indigenous Efflorescence: Beyond Revitalisation in Sapmi and Ainu Mosir

“…Adherence to the blue water thesis has had some paradoxical outcomes, such as presented by the case of China, which supported such a measure as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, precisely because it claims to have no Indigenous peoples, instead recognising its population to consist of nominally isomorphic 'nationalities', without any having the precedence of indigeneity (Elliot 2015). Nonetheless, although the Chinese state does not support domestic indigeneity, it has, in some cases, turned a blind eye to the growth of Indigenist discourses in certain restricted domains, for example, in association with environmental campaigns focusing on traditional ecological knowledge (Hathaway 2016).…”