About the Book

A collaboration between indigenous leaders, social activists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, In the Way of Development explores the current situation of indigenous peoples enmeshed in the remorseless expansion of the modern economy.

The volume assembles a rich diversity of statements, case studies and wider thematic explorations all starting with indigenous peoples as actors, not victims. The accounts come primarily from North America, but include also studies from South America, and the former Soviet Union.

In the Way of Development shows how the boundaries between indigenous peoples‘ organizations, civil society, the state, markets, development and the environment are ambiguous and constantly changing. This fact makes local political agency possible, but also, ironically, opens the possibility of undermining it.

The volume presents these complex, power-laden, often contradictory features of indigenous agency and relationships. It shows how peoples do not just resist or react to the pressures of market and state, but also sustain ‘life projects‘ of their own.

Commendations

"This superb book builds on the illuminating contrast between the ‘life projects‘ of indigenous people and the ‘development projects‘ funded by global capital. ‘Life projects‘ are about the right of any people to define the meaning of their life and their place in the cosmos. The book is filled with ambiguous but sometimes hopeful examples of indigenous peoples working with NGOs, governments, and corporations to defend their autonomy, and in the process shaping human rights and development agendas nationally and globally" - John H. Bodley, Professor of Anthropology, Washington State University, author of Victims of Progress (1999) and The Power of Scale (2003).

"A comprehensive account of relations between agents of globalization - corporations and states - and indigenous peoples worldwide. The book provides a unique synthesis of indigenous peoples‘ strategies of active resistance and approaches to living autonomously. It indicates lessons for us, both about the importance of supporting indigenous peoples who are at the front lines in this struggle, and for the ways we orient our own agency as we come to grips with similar forces." - Michael Asch, University of Victoria, Canada

'Contains a wealth of instances of indigenous suffering, resistance, resilience and courageous bridge-building that should be part of the basic training of educational researchers working among any subordinated and local population (urban as well as rural) suffering from current global market forces...The book's critique of Western development assumptions, its emphasis on subordinated people's own agency and its insistence on holistic, context-driven understandings are all highly relevant to the human endeavour of acquring knowledge in general and improving teaching and learning, especially among those not succeeding in today's hegemonic culture and market.' - Richard H. Daly, Studies in Continuing Education

Contents

Introductions
1. Indigenous Peoples and Development Processes: New Terrains of Struggle - Mario Blaser, Harvey A. Feit and Glenn McRae
2. Life Projects: Indigenous Peoples‘ Agency and Development - Mario Blaser
Part 1: Visions: Life Projects, Representations and Conflicts
3. Life Projects: Development Our Way - Bruno Barras
4. ‘Way of Life‘ or ‘Who Decides‘: Development, Paraguayan Indigenism and the Yshiro People‘s Life Projects - Mario Blaser
5. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Sustainable Development: Toward Co-Existence - Deborah McGregor
6. James Bay Crees‘ Life Projects and Politics: Histories of Place, Animal Partners and Enduring Relationships - Harvey A. Feit
7. Grassroots Transnationalism and Life Projects of Vermonters in the Great Whale Campaign - Glenn McRae
8. ‘The People Had Discovered Their Own Approach to Life‘: Politicizing Development Discourse - Wendy Russell
Part 2: Strategies: States, Markets and Civil Society
9. Survival in the Context of Mega-Resource Development: Experiences of the James Bay Cree and the First Nations of Canada - Matthew Coon Come
10. The Importance of Working Together: Exclusions, Conflicts and Participation in James Bay, Quebec - Brian Craik
11. Defending a Common Home: Native/Non-Native Alliances against Mining Corporations in Wisconsin - Al Gedicks and Zoltán Grossman
12. Chilean Economic Expansion and Mega-Development Projects in Mapuche Territories - Aldisson Anguita Mariqueo
13. Hydroelectric Development on the Bío-Bío River, Chile: Anthropology and Human Rights
Advocacy - Barbara Rose Johnston and Carmen Garcia-Downing
Part 3: Invitations: Connections and Co-existence
14. Revisiting Gandhi and Zapata: Motion of Global Capital, Geographies of Difference and the Formation of Ecological Ethnicities - Pramod Parajuli
15. A Dream of Democracy in the Russian Far East - Petra Rethmann
16. The ‘Risk Society‘: Tradition, Ecological Order and Time-Space Acceleration - Peter Harries-Jones
17. Conflicting Discourses of Property, Governance and Development in the Indigenous North - Colin Scott
18. Resistance, Determination and Perseverance of the Lubicon Cree Women - Dawn Martin-Hill
19. Restoring our Relationship for the Future - Mary Arquette, Maxine Cole and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment
20. In Memoriam: Chief Harvey Longboat (1936-2001)

About the Author

Mario. E. Blaser is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Since 1991, he has been researching the inter-ethnic politics of Paraguay, with a particular emphasis on the Yshiro people of the Chaco region. During 1999-2000 he collaborated with the Yshiro leaders in the creation of Union de las Comunidades Indigenas de la Nacion Yshir, a supra-communal governing body in charge of land claims, the defense of Yshiro rights and the improvement of the Yshiro people's quality of life. He continues as an external advisor for the organization.

Harvey Feit is Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University in Canada. He has worked extensively as an applied researcher with Indigenous peoples across Canada, and he was senior advisor to the James Bay Cree during negotiation and initial implementation of the "first modern treaty" in Canada, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in the 1970s. He has published widely, and served as President of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA), and founding Chair of the Indigenous Studies Program at McMaster University, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Glenn McRae is an applied anthropologist who has worked extensively throughout the United States, India, South Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America as an environmental consultant. He has worked extensively with advocacy organizations on environmental health issues, and continues his research on the transnational connections between local social movements in United States and those around the globe. He has a PhD from the Union Institute & University, and he teaches at the University of Vermont.

The Contributors: A mix of social scientists from a very wide range of disciplines, plus a significant number of indigenous peoples' leaders themselves.

Academic Adoption Information

This book is used for teaching at the following institutions:

University of Ulster