Indigeneities in the 21st century

From ‘vanishing people’ to global players in one generation

Seventeen years after the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, Indigenous stakeholders act as global players in arenas such as the UN Convention on Climate Change, the Dakota Access pipeline in the USA, and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Yet, until the 1960s, anthropological inquiries considered the same people as ‘vanishing’ and doomed to disappear.

The so-called Indigenous renaissance presents a remarkable phenomenon of late (post)modernity. How can this surprising process be understood and explained? The objective of this project is to study how Indigenous actors evolved from ‘vanishing people’ to global players. The project is located at the disciplinary intersections between anthropology, art, history, philosophy, and politics; and aims at making a future-oriented contribution to (re)emerging Indigeneities and the (re)negotiation of their (post)colonial legacies in and with Europe.

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