AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

Across Oceania land is the mother. At its core, the practice of decolonial research and activism involves a commitment to the principles of Indigenous self-determination and repatriation of Indigenous land. Beginning with our understanding of decolonial practice and the meanings of land in Vanuatu, in this article we explore decolonization as practice: our collaborative practice of working to reform land laws to end the large-scale leasing of customary land without the consent of Indigenous landowning groups. We are commonly viewed as an Indigenous leader, Ralph Regenvanu, and a non-Indigenous legal advisor, Siobhan McDonnell. While we acknowledge these positions, we also share backgrounds in anthropology, law and a commitment to core principles around returning land to Indigenous control. We conclude this article by discussing our shared commitment to a practice of reciprocity between the researcher and the community engaged in the research.

This article discusses several anthropological dilemmas related to the researcher’s role in community development, the scholarly responsibilities to the discipline, and the tension between activism and academic vocation. I explore these issues in the context of my research and involvement in the production of pua kumbu, a traditional Iban textile. Since 2013, I have researched Indigenous and traditional knowledge as a development tool, focusing on the pua kumbu as a central artefact which is a cultural expression of ideology around family and community but is also a product for the commercial market. It is at this juncture that I engage with the community of weavers working with the women to perform an entrepreneurial collaboration by engaging the weavers to a commercial market platform with the emphasis on the conservation of the intangible aspect of the pua kumbu.

This article braids our personal and political narratives to examine approaches to creative ethnography as a technique of writing for activists’ goals. Using autobricolage—mixing art, activism and ethnography—we explore narrative as a decolonising strategy to centre Indigenous ontology. The insights carry implications for how we understand and engage with the experiences of others, particularly marginalised voices. The article also offers reflections on the current climate of protest and its new opportunities for social change and solidarity. These reflections are as important for defenders of climate change as for protesters of BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Shared histories of colonialism and migration can potentially provide the basis for productive settler-Indigenous social relations among current and future generations. By sharing our experiences as native migrants living in Australia—Harwood from Aotearoa and Guntarik from Borneo—we show how stories reinforce one another, trigger new memories and reveal parallel politics.

Reflecting on the violence in Papua and how this is shaping Papuan lifeworlds and triggers attempts to disengage from Indonesian and Dutch imperialism, we, I Ngurah Suryawan and Jaap Timmer, position ourselves as nationals from colonising states—one current, Indonesia and one historic, Netherlands—in relation to our anthropological research in Papua. We came to the long-drawn-out conflict and growing affirmations of cultural autonomy in Papua from different backgrounds, and this has affected the way in which we try to contribute to remedy decades of violence. Yet, as we will show, we converge in the way we recognise that a key role we can play as anthropologists is to contribute to a better understanding of Papuan cultures and more appreciation of their creative expressions and to enable, for Papuans, a decolonial epistemology.

This article theorises the question—what is the role and nature of Indigenous environmental defenders in Aotearoa New Zealand? We explore Māori—the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand—who act as environmental defenders of their lands and waters despite the perpetual insecurity of their constitutional rights and imbalances in power and resources compared with state and corporate actors. The environmental defence of Aotearoa New Zealand by Māori began with the arrival of European explorers’ intent on overturning Indigenous institutions of environmental management that has sustained their peoples for a thousand years. Stemming from case study analysis of Māori environmental defenders at Ihumātao in Māngere and Ōroua River in Manawatū, we propose whenua (land) resilience theory to explain the concomitance of environmental defence and development from an Indigenous perspective.

Indigenous communities in India, or Adivasis, have always been the object of anthropological research. However, knowledge production on Adivasi communities has created a civilizing discourse that has contributed to their marginalization. In following the need to reject anthropology’s savage, primitive, and native slot, we present a case study of a research project on Indigenous knowledge of the Koya peoples, an Adivasi community in India. We argue that this project is an expression of the agency of the Adivasis and constitutes a form of generative refusal, where new insights and possibilities are generated. Next, we reflect on how fieldwork with Indigenous communities is not merely extractive but can create a collaborative and reciprocal endeavour. Finally, we discuss the methodological aspects of co-producing scholarship on Adivasi communities and its implications.

Scholars have used terminal narratives when discussing Chamorro culture in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, especially in relation to its maritime connections. Researchers and administrators have done this explicitly by claiming that Chamorro people have lost touch with the sea because of long periods of colonization and implicitly through the routine omission of Chamorro people in studies of Micronesian cultures. Through a historical and archeological study that collaborates with contemporary Indigenous peoples, we argue that Chamorro maritime cultural identity, while it changed in response to the social environment, has persisted into the present. Maritime activities, particularly fishing and canoeing, have been a part of the daily lives of Chamorro people from 4,000 BP to the present, despite restrictions placed on these activities by four colonial powers. Furthermore, we find that asserting maritime connections have become a form of resistance in response to the current political climate.

This article is written from the position of eco-socialist scholarship. Given that anthropogenic climate change that is driven by the expropriation of the atmospheric commons constitutes a growing crisis for First Nation peoples around the world, it is imperative that engaged anthropologists, form linkages with anti-systemic movements, including Indigenous and ethnic rights movements, for social justice and environmental sustainability. In the Australian case, this article argues that there is a need to revisit and rejuvenate earlier black-red-green alliances with a push for First Peoples to receive public funds to own and control their own green energy projects, a process which has the potential to contribute to the decolonization of the Australian political economy. In some sectors, these alliances are already occurring with organizations such Original Power and the First Nations Clean Energy Network, as First Nation communities take matters into their own hands.