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CONSIDERING THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF INDIGENEITY FOR LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN CAMBODIA, THAILAND, AND LAOS
Ian G. Baird
The concept of “indigenous peoples”—which is today often linked to emancipatory support for ethnic minorities—is relatively new to Asia. Of course, the word “indigenous” has been used in Asia by Europeans since at least the nineteenth-century European colonial period, but during that time it was used to distinguish between colonial Europeans and colonized “natives,” regardless of ethnic background. In other words, it was an Othering tool of European colonialism, deployed in the defense of colonial power. For example, the British in Burma used the term “indigenous” to distinguish the British from Britain from colonial subjects (Keyes 2002). In French Indochina, the Garde Indigène (Indigenous Guard), a military unit made up of people of Asian descent, was specifically employed to help protect colonial power (Baird 2015). The United States government similarly applied the concept of “indigenous” during the postcolonial period, and in 1975—as the communists were taking over Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—Americans working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were ordered to assist with the evacuation of “Key Indigenous Personnel.”1 The CIA in Cambodia also referred to all Cambodians as “indigenous” during the same period (Conboy 2013). In both of these examples it was citizenship, rather than ethnicity, that was the focus. But since the 1980s and 1990s, some Asians have begun to adopt a new concept of indigeneity, one previously largely restricted to the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. This new concept is fundamentally different to those previously used. First, it recognizes and identifies groups based on ethnic difference, not on their country of origin. Second, it is based on self-determination (at least at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues),2 something that was not previously the case (see ILO 1989). Third, in Asia it is now frequently associated with those who have historically been “colonized people” (Baird 2008, 2011b; Erni 2008; Gray 1995). It is also a term that is becoming globalized (Dirlik 2003); thus, the concept of indigenous peoples is being exported to various parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. It is becoming increasingly translocal, with intensely global and local elements, hybridized in particular ways depending on the context (Baird 2015). These new meanings of indigenous peoples make it possible for even relatively recent migrants to cross present-day national borders and claim to be indigenous, especially if they were historically dominated or oppressed by those in neighboring countries. It allows for “indigeneity without borders.” For example, the Hmong in Thailand and Laos, even though they migrated from China one to two hundred years ago and were not the “first” or the “original” peoples in either country, are now considered by some to be “indigenous peoples” (Baird 2015; Morton and Baird forthcoming). Indeed, “indigenous” is often associated—among both Asians and non-Asians—with the concept of “original” or “first” peoples (Dirlik 2003). But what constitutes arriving first, or being indigenous, remains contested throughout much of the region. Looking at the issue on a scale of continents, or nation-states, some argue that all Asians, or members of particular countries in Asia, are indigenous. The Congress of World Hmong People, a group of Hmong in St. Paul, Minnesota, opposed to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) government, regularly sends delegations to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues’ annual sessions in New York. Even though they are based in the United States of America and not Laos, they still identify as indigenous peoples (Baird 2015).3
Indeed, throughout much of Asia it is not always easy to identify who is indigenous and who is not. As Charles Keyes pointed out in his 2002 Presidential Address to the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, “The efforts by others to classify peoples of Asia by race all have failed because of the fact that all humans can interbreed, and physical characteristics do not remain unchanged among the same people from one generation to the next” (Keyes 2002: 1,166). Nevertheless, most governments in Asia have adopted variations of what has become known in scholarly circles as the “saltwater theory,” which involves recognizing the concept of indigenous peoples in places where European settler colonization has occurred, but not in Asia where it happened to a much lesser extent. Thus, for many governments in the region, the designation of indigenous peoples is relevant globally, yet not in their own particular circumstances. It was with this understanding that many governments in Asia agreed to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in September 2007 (Baird 2011b, 2015). The debate regarding who should be considered indigenous and who should not has been coined by Benedict Kingsbury as the “Asian controversy” (Kingsbury 1998, 1999).
Nevertheless, over the last couple of decades, the concept of indigenous peoples has become increasingly accepted in parts of Asia, with some governments recently legally recognizing the existence of indigenous peoples in their countries, including the Philippines, Taiwan (Republic of China),
