Aboriginality, Identity and Belonging in South Africa and Beyond

• Main Author: Brown, Duncan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://oro.open.ac.uk/7717/; http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/staff-profiles/staff-profile-duncan-brown.htm

Amongst the most pressing, and apparently intractable, problems facing postcolonial societies are the rights of peoples known variously as aboriginal peoples, first peoples or first nations: rights to land, self-determination, natural resources, mineral deposits, the preservation of sacred sites or customs, and so on. While some claims for aboriginal rights have been successful, they are often considered - in contexts of modern democracy, global capitalism and advanced technology - to be at best atavistic, or at worst completely incommensurable with their context. In this article I wish to consider whether the nature of such claims, indeed the nature of the societies which make them, is so 'different' - so removed from the concerns of modernity and postmodernity - or whether there are not also important aspects of 'identity'. Such a consideration may shed light not only on 'their' claims and concerns, but also on 'our' society and its often hubristic assumptions.