Thinking with Indigeneity

Convergence 2 Field Trip Lindsay Skog Thinking with Indigeneity: Imperatives and Provocations 6 Introduction In the past two decades, much scholarship has focused on indigeneity as a globally circulating and rights-­bearing concept (Tsing 1999; Li 2000; Niezen 2000; Povinelli 2002; Karlsson 2003; Yeh 2007; Lucero 2008; Fabricant and Gustafson 2011; Keating 2013; Baird 2015). Within this critical scholarship, indigeneity is often traced to the 1957 International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 107 on “Indigenous and Tribal Populations ,” which rendered indigenous peoples legible in international law by categorizing culturally and geographically diverse groups of people as “indigenous” (Shah 2007; Bryan 2009; O’Sullivan 2012; Keating 2013; Yeh and Bryan 2015). Subsequently, the legal definitions of indigenous and the rights guaranteed to indigenous communities were expanded through the adoption of ILO 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). From this framework of international law, a global indigenous political movement has emerged through which some communities articulate their identities to support a variety of claims, including rights to access and control of resources, territorial claims, and inclusion or exclusion from the state. In 2013, and following this global movement, I set out to untangle why it was Sherpas in Khumbu, Nepal, were not mobilizing an indigenous identity in order to claim rights to representation, resources, and territory in the ongoing efforts to draft a new democratic constitution in Nepal (Skog 2015). Through interviews and conversations, I came to understand that there were fundamental questions still to be asked: Are Sherpas, an ethnic group who trace their ancestral homelands to both eastern Tibet and the southern slopes of Chomolungma (Mt. Everest), adivasi jananati Field Trip 3 (indigenous peoples) in Nepal? And, if so, what is at stake in mobilizing with the adivasi janajati movement? And more broadly, without a legacy of colonial domination from outside the state, is everyone in Nepal indigenous ? Is anyone? Today, in Nepal, the terms adivasi and janajati, taken together, are synonymous with indigenous, yet both terms are contentious and wrought with ambiguity. Adivasi is generally thought to refer to the original people to inhabit a place, whereas janajati translates to “peoples’ caste,” taken to mean “ethnic peoples,” with pejorative and derogatory connotations for some. While in some cases, ethnic groups in Nepal may claim both these meanings, in many other situations, they cannot. The joining of the two terms in this way emerged in the 1990s, following Jana Andolan I—­the first people’s movement and uprising, as some of Nepal’s marginalized peoples began mobilizing to demand greater social and political inclusion. With the growth of Nepal’s people’s identity movement, so did use of the term adivasi janajati. In 2002, the Government of Nepal officially recognized and defined adivasi janajati as “a tribe or community as mentioned in the schedule having its own mother language and traditional rites and customs, distinct cultural identity, distinct social structure and written or unwritten history” (Hangen 2007, 21, citing National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities). Today, adivasi janajati, originally forged in struggle and movement, is a highly politicized identity in Nepal and thus associated with a situated history of marginalization, disenfranchisement, exploitation, and discrimination. Yet, among my Khumbu Sherpa colleagues, friends, and informants, the understandings and meanings of adivasi janajati ranged from confusion over the joining of the two terms and questioning whether Sherpas fit this category, or not, to well-­ informed explanations of how the term relates to UNDRIP (Skog 2015). Some found the question of whether Khumbu Sherpas were adivasi janajati moot, as they saw little at stake in Nepal’s current political wranglings and little to gain by mobilizing with the indigenous people’s movement. And yet, like those claiming an indigenous identity elsewhere, Sherpas—­ regardless of where they travel or reside—­ are rooted by place-­ based attachments and kinships, have sustainably managed resources in the region for 550 years, identify the region as a sacred landscape, and experience similar discrimination and marginalization by the state and dominant high-­ caste hill Hindu elites as other ethnic groups claiming an indigenous identity in Nepal (Brower 1991; Sherpa 2008; Skog 2015). This lack of articulation of an indigenous identity among Sherpas

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