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Given the internal contradictions 43 and interstices of the patent law system, there is ample room for creative "fencing off" of unwanted appropriation and commodification of life forms. This is especially true now that the patent system has so significantly altered its basic concepts that its essential postulates, and the cultural milieu that gave birth to it, may no longer be invoked in preventing indigenous peoples from applying it, at least defensively. For example, the paradigm of the patent system as a normative relationship between the individual inventor and the state, as demonstrated in the classical "Signor Brunnelleschi v. Florence" confrontation, is now an anachronism. Similarly, the routine granting of patents on descriptions of genomes and "natural" products has blurred the distinctions between inventive step and improvement, discoveries and inventions.44 Ironically, arguments ostensibly based on the non-violability of the criteria for patentability have been vigorously employed to dissuade traditional communities and local providers of TKUP from obtaining patents on TKUP. However, the concept of Community Intellectual Rights45 has found legislative support in Brazil and a few other countries.46 Accordingly, indigenous peoples, with the active cooperation of their respective states, may create regimes of communal patents in which inventions related to TKUP may be protected with patents or modifications thereof granted to collectives or other identifiable groups of local innovators and inventors.47

B. Patents and the Concept of Patentability

The initial tenor of the debate was essentially critical and sceptical of the relevance and appropriateness of the IP system for traditional knowledge systems. Critics assumed the IP system to be diametrically at odds with traditional knowledge systems, and argued that it was little more than a tool of misappropriation and illicit commodification: that IP is atomistic, concerns only private individual rights, takes a narrow, culturally specific approach, and lacks applicability to intergenerational and collective forms of innovation and creativity. This critical agenda saw traditional knowledge systems as in need of protection from IP, and ruled out the search for solutions within the IP system as inherently inappropriate. The second phase — building on a richer, broad-based dialogue about the essential principles of IP law and legal mechanisms — identified positive avenues for the fulfilment of the needs and expectations of indigenous peoples and other traditional communities. The 2007 recognition, in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of the right of indigenous peoples to ‘maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over … cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions’ marked a significant insight into IP within the indigenous context. Partly this development entailed making practical use of IP mechanisms to provide immediate solutions, but at a policy level this shift in emphasis saw concerns about traditional knowledge acting as a point of pressure for reform, and for resituating the system — almost literally recentring the system on a wider geographical and social base to recognise the needs and context of knowledge-holders beyond the scope of those conventionally perceived as having an interest in the IP system. The traditional knowledge perspective provided a fresh perspective for the reconsideration, reform and refocusing of the IP system. The work of the WIPO IGC, drawing on the existing array of IP principles, adapting and applying them to traditional knowledge, and developing further cognate principles, is the epitome of this second stage.

The third phase, a kind of systemic consolidation of the second stage, is characterised by traditional knowledge forming part of the concrete interests that some countries bring to the table when they debate and negotiate on a fair and equitable IP system and seek to settle the conditions of international trade. For instance, the 2008 Economic Partnership Agreement between the CARIFORUM states and the European Union (EU) included a significant section on genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore. The later EU-Central America association agreement also recognised the significance of these issues, and the 2011 Multiparty Trade Agreement between the EU, Colombia and Peru included more detailed provisions. In 2008, a broad coalition of developing countries and European countries proposed that as part of the WTO’s Doha Work Programme, WTO members should agree to amend the TRIPS Agreement ‘to include a mandatory requirement for the disclosure of the country providing/ source of genetic resources, and/or associated traditional knowledge … in patent applications’. While the scope and practical impact of these measures is currently uncertain (and ongoing work on the link between the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD has not yielded substantive results to date), the immediate point to observe is that developing countries are now identifying interests in this domain as one element what, to them, should comprise an overall comprehensive deal on a host of trade issues.

Still, a balance between the public domain and stronger IP rights that recognizes Indigenous communities as the custodians of their traditional knowledge can help preserve this knowledge and ensure communities benefit when their knowledge is used elsewhere.

IP rights are an imperfect tool to encourage innovation and creativity, especially for traditional knowledge

Decolonial theory has critiqued Western epistemology for presenting itself as neutral and universal – as from a God’s eye view –, exterior to the relations which constitute the modern world system. As argued by Grosfoguel, the appearance of neutrality obfuscates the ego-politics inherent to Western secularism which enabled the colonial control and exploitation of the globe. This raises a question: how does Decolonial theory ground its own position? Endorsing an epistemic relativism, Mignolo has argued that Decolonial theory is only one option. In this framework, the decolonial position could be a perspective, or standpoint, designating a certain social location and experience. I am sceptical of these claims, because, despite the argument to be “de-linking,”Footnote5 Decolonial theory articulates these claims in a moral, universalising axiology that presupposes neutrality, which turns on the injunction to produce subaltern epistemology. Before addressing the self-defeating nature and incoherence of epistemological critique in Decolonial theory, it is essential to reiterate its central, yet contradictory claims. The thesis that knowledge is relativistic, as it is a perspective reducible to the lived experience (Erlebnis) of a subject situated in a geo-political locale. Consequently, all epistemic traditions are of equal standing, with each aspiring to be the planetary centre. Thus, each tradition attempts to articulate its “particular” perspective as universal (Mignolo and Walsh Citation2018, 194). The secular West is the only epistemic tradition which has violently imposed itself as universal, employing a rhetoric of neutrality in order to obfuscate the ego conquiro, an ideal of subjectivity, which is primarily concerned with conquering and controlling the planet: consequently, all Western disciplinary knowledge is reducible to ego politics, the coloniality of knowledge and the colonial matrix of power (cmp) (Grosfoguel Citation(2007) 2010; Maldonado-Torres Citation(2007) 2010; Mignolo Citation2011a, 6; Walsh Citation(2007) 2010). An ontological thesis that Decolonial theory has conceptualised as the coloniality of being. This ontological distinction separates the lived experience of the planet and consequently knowledge production into two halves defined by colonial difference: salvation (the coloniser) and damnation (the colonised). Decolonial scholars lament the fact that many colonised scholars have become mentally colonised by using Western frameworks and concepts. Although it appears that all knowledge is reducible to lived experience, Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s analysis of Mamdani is critical of epistemic reductionism, as it presupposes that non-white scholars have the capacity to choose, presupposing neutrality, which side of the racialised power spectrum (or epistemic colonial difference) they write from. The same is not the case for white, Western men (apart from Mignolo and Grosfoguel) who, it appears, can only write from one side from the colonial divide: a structural and systemic argument. Despite this emphasis on the systemic, Decolonial theory’s position is undermined by the claim that the West is morally at fault for constituting the colonial matrix of power: the essential principle here is the ego conquiro. Although decolonial scholars have presented all knowledge as relativistic, its practitioners have agreed on a unitary, factual or objective account of colonial reality and a stereotypical conception of European identity over 500 years meant to incentivise virtuous de-linking. For the decolonial project to even considered to be an option, would it not rely on an objective or truthful account of colonialism? Furthermore, is it an accurate account of epistemic relativism? This account relies on two notions, coloniality and the ego conquiro. The concept of coloniality falsely elevates a particular experience of the colonial condition, epistemic violence as forced assimilation and direct rule, into a universal analysis of our global present. As a historical concept, it unifies vastly different practices, discontinuous ruptures and singular modes of human differentiation into continental racial geo-political stereotypes. Instead of challenging the historical logic of colonial discourse as historicism, it conceives of modern history as a white mythology, treating the West as the systemic subject of a continuous unilinear history (Young Citation2004, 1–32). It does not transform Dussel’s critique of historical developmentalism, but merely inverts it. The only difference is that this subject is conceived negatively, as the evil ego conquiro. Friedrich Nietzsche argues that morality presupposes that the consciousness or intellect can abstract itself and adopt a neutral position, that is free will, from the sensuous relations of power which define the natural world (Nietzsche Citation[1886] 2010, 19). He claims that, instead, there is only deed or action. Although this idea seems controversial, following Kant’s response to the success of the natural sciences and mathematics, any event or phenomenon is subsumed in a series of conditions. The attempt to articulate an unconditional agent (unconditioned) in the form of the ego conquiro is, in Kantian terms, the attempt to articulate a condition that is not conditioned. This condition, the ego conquiro, is an attempt to provide an objective account of colonial reality by taking recourse in a transcendental illusion, contradicting Decolonial theory’s claim to only be providing a relativistic or partial perspective (Kant Citation[1781] 2003, 156–180). As an unconditioned agent, the ego conquiro can be read as a transcendental signified, an ancient principle within the Western metaphysical tradition dating back to Plato. It is an organising agency that engenders structures, such as the colonial matrix of power, but remains unaffected by the structuration of the structure– – a metaphysical principle that Heidegger identified as ground, for which there have been many terms “God, consciousness, man,” and so on (Derrida Citation[1967] 2001, 353). Demonstrating how the West has been misled by grammar, Nietzsche and Foucault’s genealogies diachronically exhibit how Christian and moral culture separate agent from action, creating immoral figures like the sinner or criminal (Foucault Citation[1977] 1991; Nietzsche Citation[1887] 1989). The explication of social phenomena as conditioned has been an important part of refuting and transcending the pre-scientific religious and moral metaphysics of the pre-modern Western tradition: it was essential to overcoming the superstitious and animistic problem of evil. Twentieth-century anticolonial politics relied on a conception of an essentially good black subject, which provided much of the impetus for the strategic essentialism of the decolonisation struggles around the globe (Hall Citation1996). For postcolonial scholars, the fatwa that was declared against Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran on February 14 1989 was the major turning point, which led to a critical problematisation of the trajectory of postcolonial nation states: a practice Said had hitherto dubbed secular criticism (Said Citation1983, 2–30; Citation1994, 89).Footnote6 If Mamdani is the exemplar of intellectual de-linking, then Rushdie is arguably its antithesis – the figure that transformed the postcolonial intellectuals’ attitude to’ The Wretched of the Earth. It is not only poststructuralism that divides postcolonialism and Decolonial theory, but also the problem of secular identity and its relationship to de-linking. In this context, Hull’s notion of the epistemic comprador (Hull Citation2022, 141) perfectly applies to the case of Rushdie who was born Muslim (E1), but now “describes himself as a wholly secular person” (E2) (Bradley and Tate Citation2010, 13–14). In the postcolonial world, being a comprador can have deadly consequences, for prior to Rushdie’s fatwa the Iranian state executed students, communists and any opponent to its theocratic regime (Ahmad Citation2000, 34). More recently, this includes the murder, torture and internment of many women who protested the compulsory wearing of the Hijab. Interestingly, in Mignolo’s latest book, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (2021), he treats the Iranian state as an exemplar of de-linking from the colonial matrix of power and spends a confoundingly large proportion of the text defending Iran’s policies from Islamophobia (Mignolo Citation2021, 107). The question is, can Iranian state policy be considered subaltern epistemology? How is Iran’s theocratic persecution of its internal dissidents and minorities any different form the decolonial depiction of totalitarian colonial states during the formal colonial period? Because Decolonial theory has stereotyped the West as the singularly, evil sinister force in human history, it becomes incapable of addressing the religious, gendered and economic violations of human dignity in spaces that are morally anti-Western. I conclude by suggesting that Decolonial theory’s exclusive and moralistically exclusionary anti-Westernism begins mirroring the rightist tendencies it sought to locate solely within a fabricated Western essence. It is merely an inversion of the moral imaginary of colonial discourse and in Nietzschean terms presupposes a neutral position that can only be exterior to the colonial matrix of power, a contradiction that is ultimately incoherent and self-defeating.

With great affection and conviction, Moten summons a space of fugitivity, infidel poetics, jazz, social obscurity, and what might be called tavern talk. (One of his collections is called Hughson’s Tavern.) Yet, in contrast to the patois of a black demimonde, the word “commons” also designates a fashionable academic topic these days—an affiliation disclosing the class tensions at the very core of Moten’s Rousseauian project. The “undercommons” is at once the verbal and ideological space of a demimonde and of the academic elite. In terms of its divergent class affiliations, Moten’s project goes both over and under mainstream tastes. The mainstream appears to be the enemy here, but is the relationship between the two “commons” complementary or antagonistic?

To use a phrase coined by sociologists—brought to my attention by Prageeta Sharma and developed in her poem, “She Did Not Want to Embody Cheap Signaling”—Moten’s conjuring of the “undercommons” through a synthetic vernacular, and its veiling of class conflict, could be identified as an instance of “cheap signaling” (a circumstance in which the social “cost” of transmitting a message is low enough that senders can transmit it fraudulently without risk). At the same time, Moten’s poetry privileges the black vernacular as somehow authentic or genuine—a presumption undermined by the long history of vernaculars forged at once by dominant and marginal classes. (Sharma’s poem, I should note, is subtitled “After Undergloom”—borrowing the title of one of her books—a neologism modeling a variant of the fugitive verbal substance over-written by Moten as intrinsically black.)

As Chapter 2 argues, indigenous languages were not always known as “indigenous” languages; they were produced and colonised simultaneously. The notion of “indigenous” is a colonial creation that marks the rupture “between the pre-Columbian world and the world that is established after the Conquest” (Gros 2000: 35, my translation). The notion of indigenous as original native or aboriginal is problematic because it tends to produce an imaginary of fixedness and homogeneity. Moreover, indigenous peoples and indigenous languages were only labelled as indigenous in relation to outsider colonisers. More specifically, indigenous languages were described by the colonisers and chroniclers as chaotic noises and stutters. The apparent lack of unity and systematicity of the “unknown languages” and the existence of countless varieties and multiplicities was often described as overwhelming.77

Peoples may be a debate-provoking term in international law, but more so is the term indigenous. Indigenous peoples, like peoples, has no definition in international law. The absence of a universal definition that expresses the heterogeneity of indigenous cultures, their histories, and realities due to the antagonisms and ties between indigenous peoples and the political majority differ from state to state.2 The International Labour Organization (“ILO”) Convention 169, 3 which trailblazed the usage of the term indigenous peoples consequently failed to include a definition for the term4 because of the nescience of general consensus as to its meaning.5 The gains of indigenous peoples in the international arena, the recognition of their self-determination rights by various United Nations (“UN”) bodies, and the overwhelming adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (“UNDRIP”) have sparked hopes for a comprehensive theory of equity creating a more inclusive and just international community. For one, by reproducing the language of the International Bill of Rights on self-determination, it affirmed the selfdetermination rights of indigenous peoples long denied them. But the conceptual conundrum attached to indigeneity encumbers the domestic elaboration and promotion of indigenous rights, which are left in a state of suspended animation in legal vacuums- real or artificial. Whether indigeneity should be defined or not is in itself a controversy as much as who should define it. Divergent conceptions of indigeneity protracted debates during the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.6 While scholarly and political discourse grapples with definitional issues, states are left with a wide berth of discretion to affirm or reject indigenous claims under the banner of the politics of recognition. As a result, this has negated the utility of international norms developed as a prophylactic against human rights violations targeting indigenous people. Furthermore, this negates the remedies of international norms which has been regarded as a power to resist structural oppression committed by states through “an entrenched and continuing pattern. . . jeopardizing the group’s pursuit of their way of life, consigning them to a situation of internal colonialism.”7 Jose Martinez Cobo, the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the issue of discrimination against indigenous peoples, has established most of what is known on the existing definitions of indigenous peoples: those which, having a historical continuity with preinvasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.8 In 1996, the indigenous representatives to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations endorsed the Martinez Cobo’s working definition9 even if Cobo himself expressed doubts as to its applicability to Asia and Africa.10 Cobo’s definition highlights “having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories” as a key feature of indigenous peoples. Later, Erica-Irene Daes, as Chairperson of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, recommended priority in time with the use and occupation of a specific territory as a material consideration to the understanding of indigenous. She articulated that aboriginality is indigenous peoples’ most dominant identifying feature.12 It is propounded that the term indigenous suggests historical originality13 even if there is no commonly accepted definition in contemporary international law discourse.14 Indigenous peoples are described as descendants of the first occupants of the land to which they are strongly attached.15 However, aboriginality is amorphous if applied in Asia and Africa, where majority and minority groups are all autochthonous.16 The requirement of “historical continuity with preinvasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories” harkens back to the phenomena of European colonization and invasion. Aboriginality or prior occupancy remains a lingering assumption in scholarly literatures, political and legal discourse as the main criterion to establish indigeneity. It is alleged that ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples are distinct in that the former are settler populations while the latter are autochthonous.17 However, a number of scholars have also questioned this distinction. Waldron dismissed it as “universal valorization of territorial precedence.”18 It is argued that displacement from prior occupancy as historical injustice should not necessarily justify restitution demands of groups claiming indigeneity if it produces present injustice.19 Justice, after all, should serve the living, not the dead whose sufferings are beyond rectification.20 Some states conflate indigeneity with minority or even prefer the usage of the latter. For example, in the 1970s, indigenous peoples in the Philippines were legally called national minorities.21 The term has since been legally replaced by indigenous cultural communities22 and indigenous peoples. 23 However, some indigenous groups may prefer national minorities to indigenous peoples. 24 Indigenous peoples may qualify as minorities.25 In fact, it is asserted that they are the perfect prototype of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities.26 Many states with indigenous peoples prefer using minorities instead of indigenous peoples. UN practice have treated indigenous peoples as minorities and their issues had been taken cognizance of by the Human Rights Council Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination Against Minorities.27 The jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee on right of minorities to culture under Article 27 of the ICCPR is mostly on claims raised by indigenous peoples.28 Under international law, the guaranteed rights of minorities include cultural, language, and religious rights, and the right to equality and non- discrimination. However, indigenous peoples’ rights regime goes beyond cultural rights since they are peoples with self-determination rights. Conceptual challenges inspired proposals to surface a characteristic of indigeneity that transcends aboriginality and minority. This paper looks at the proposals and further proposes that to definitively segregate indigenous peoples from non-indigenous, it is necessary to look at the bases for the indigenous claims. Moreover, it argues that indigeneity is a construct of structural oppression arising from grossly unjust policies imposed on distinct peoples occupying or claiming resource-rich ancestral domains. These policies ultimately seek to wrest control of such resources under the rubric of economic globalization.

Although the terms ‘Indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Torres Strait Islander’ are commonly used now, it is important to note these names are the legacy of colonisation. Before, during and after colonisation the First Nations of people in Australia identified themselves by their country such as Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri, and An ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ is a way of showing respect and awareness to the traditional custodians of the land on which you meet Wiradjuri and so on. The names Indigenous, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander are colonial labels imposed on a range of people with diverse cultures and languages (NSW Department of Community Services, 2007). The term ‘Indigenous’ is generally used when referring to both First Nations people of Australia – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. You will find Indigenous is generally used by the Commonwealth Government as they have a charter for providing services and programs to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a national level. The term ‘Aboriginal’ refers specifically to the Aboriginal people of mainland Australia and does not necessarily include Australia’s other Indigenous population – Torres Strait Islanders. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are opposed to the term ‘Indigenous’ being used as it is considered too generic and because it’s main origin is in describing plant and animals. (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, year unknown) It does not express the diversity of the peoples by grouping them under a generalised term. It is best not to use this term where possible, in fact it is always best to politely ask rather than assume. The use of ‘Indigenous’ may be used however if you are quoting or referring to another source where the term is used (e.g. Commonwealth document, National data collection).

In my writing, I studiously avoid the word ‘indigenous’ or ‘Indigenous’. I understand very well why some (rightly) talk about indigenous rights in reference to land, sea beds, fishing and hunting rights: these are moral, human and legal rights arising out of prior occupation as a people who had forms of governance and a reign of law. But such rights, indigenous rights, must not be confused with the names by which peoples call themselves and wish to be known. ‘Indigenous’ is plainly not the name that these peoples call themselves. Nor do they wish to be subsumed into a commonality of history, culture, language, and geography that they hardly share.

A. The Evolution of Conceptual Obfuscation: From America and Oceania to Asia and Africa One scholar claims that “one of the most remarkable feats in (international law’s) self-construction has been its overwhelming Eurocentrism.”29 Thus is the case with indigenous peoples. Consequently, [t]he current concept or the theory of 'indigenous' has been shaped by the dialogue between academics and activists of Western Europe and North America, as well as the power structures of Western Europe which lent their support to the concept in and outside the UN. The concept, therefore, has its origins in a colonial historical perspective. When it is applied to the people of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand it creates no confusion, but when the same concept is applied to the peoples of Asia and Africa, it creates confusion.30 Other terms have since been used to refer to indigenous peoples such as aborigines, autochthones, natives, first nations, first peoples, or original peoples. 31 In the Northern Hemisphere and in Oceania, indigeneity simply means occupation predating European settlers and that indigenous peoples are necessarily colonized peoples.32 In these regions, there is no issue that every people who was there prior to colonial contact was autochthonous. The story of the acceptance of indigenousness, however, took a different turn when indigenous organizations expanded its conceptual coverage to peoples in Asia and Africa. Prevailing definitions of indigenous peoples from a colonial perspective restricts the concept of indigeneity to peoples in the Americas and Australasia. It excludes similar groups in Africa and Asia whose oppression was at the hands of natives of neighboring territories who assumed a position of political dominance in the aftermath of nationbuilding. In both continents, claims of territorial precedence can be scathed by the fact that history itself cannot state with final certitude who came first in a place.33 If indigeneity refers to aboriginality, then all peoples in Asia, after the colonials have shipped out, would be considered indigenous.34 Any definition or approach to segregate the indigenous from the non-indigenous in Asia or Africa requiring chronological territorial precedence overlooks the early diaspora and migration of different groups. Claims of prior occupancy are hardly fool-proof in view of recent anthropological and historical evidence, which casts a cloud of doubt on previously held truths. For instance, questions have been raised if some pastoralist groups asserting indigenous status are the aboriginals of the territories they now occupy.35 Additionally, some groups wearing indigenous badges have never been subjected to European colonization.36 However, there groups have suffered from structural oppression tantamount to internal colonialism either by neighboring countries or by states within which they were assimilated.37 Thus, while international law progressed in terms of developing norms to oversee domestic treatment of indigenous peoples, translation of these norms into actual protection became a casualty of theoretical debates. Asian and African states exploited conceptual nebulousness by dismissing indigeneity as something alien to their regions, 38 claiming they have no indigenous peoples.39 They condemned its application in their regions as neo-colonialism,40 an imposition of universalism rooted in Western imperialism. Most Asian states abjure the term opting to adopt ethnic minorities,41 tribal groups,42 small nations,43 scheduled tribes,44 or hill tribes45 to eschew the burden of recognizing collective rights inherent in peoplehood. Thailand dismisses its indigenous peoples as migrants. 46 As a consequence, thousands are denied registration, which in turn results in denial of access to social services.47 Indigenous peoples in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other countries in Southeast Asia are similarly circumstanced.48 China makes the same denial49 and prefers to use the term minority ethnic groups or minorities with the categorical characterization that they are not indigenous.50 India insists on equating indigenous with autochthonous, recognizing all Indians as indigenous since it is impossible to say who settled first due to its history of epochs of migration, cultural amalgamation, and dispersion.51 Echoing India’s position, China claims that all its nationalities have lived within its borders for ages, and since all of them are aboriginal, it has no indigenous issues.52

Steven Newcomb of the Indigenous Law Institute takes a closer look at the word "indigenous" and how it's being used to perpetuate a system of dominance within the United Nations: Given that the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is about to convene in New York for its 14th session, it seems fitting to once again revisit the term “indigenous” in the context of the United Nations. In his amazing book A Poetic for Sociology (1977), Richard H. Brown say that “the ‘thing itself’ is emergent in the process of its being named.” (p. 148). We might say that we became “emergent” as “indigenous” when others began to apply that word to us, and especially when we made the decision to begin applying the word “indigenous” to ourselves. Interpretative implications followed when we “became emergent” as “indigenous,” for it is not possible to use a word without also using the interpretations that accompany that word in different contexts and for different purposes. In the context of the U.N. the word “indigenous” means “colonized.” And the phrase “indigenous peoples” means, peoples that have been colonized (forced under domination) and never decolonized. What is typically called decolonization is partly a mental process which involves becoming highly conscious of the way in which dominating colonizers have used their language and their meanings to dominate us. Given that our nations and peoples have been metaphorically “woven” into a deceptive language “web” of domination, there is much to be gained by examining each linguistic strand, along with the metaphor “indigenous” in the context of the United Nations. Becoming highly conscious requires ending self-deception wherever it exists. We need to become hyper conscious of when and the extent to which we have named ourselves with words that benefit the colonizers, while maintaining the processes and patterns of domination. The word “Indigenous” is an example of how using dominating words to name ourselves can serve to reinforce rather than end the colonization and domination of our nations and our lives

There has been opposition by various tribal groups and ‘first nations’ peoples to the terms ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Aborigine’ (and its cognates), although governments around the world continue to use both terms. Increasingly, the favoured term is ‘First Nations’ although this term is increasingly used in legal discourse especially in Canada to refer to members of legally recognized reserve communities. Accordingly, some scholars argue that the collective nouns used to name the world’s tribal groups have become increasing problematic and that at source the terms have often been derogatory, historically inaccurate and contaminated by a colonial past based on the demeaning notion of ‘primitive’ peoples with its assumption of western cognitive superiority. One example—the collective noun ‘Maori’—was introduced, according to Rangihau (1992), to destroy the heterogeneity of the indigenous tribes of New Zealand. Most indigenous peoples prefer to be named or referred to by their specific nation or tribe names which themselves are sometimes contentious. It has been noted that the term ‘indigenous’ (or ‘aborigine’) is not itself indigenous. The word ‘tribe’ itself has a troubled history. Béteille (1998) notes that even after the intensive ethnographic fieldwork embarked on during the decades up to the 1950s anthropologists never questioned that what they were studying was ‘tribes’ but finding a suitable definition that covered all cases proved difficult. Finding a definition that transcended the old ideological uses of the term it had inherited from its nineteenth century colonial disciplinary meanings where the concept tribe represented a particular type of society and a stage of evolution proved even more difficult. In the human sciences, as the French philosopher Foucault (1980) demonstrates so convincingly, even the most basic terminology is a discursive construction of ‘knowledge/power.’ The common currency of all of these terms—Aborigine, Indian, Indigenous, or First Nations—their uses and valency in government, legal and scholarly contexts, are often offensive to tribal groups especially when used in an international, totalizing and universal way to define radically different groups because they have the effect of homogenizing peoples in ways that early imperial anthropology created ‘others’ as ‘indigenous’ in differentiation and opposition to colonial settlers, often using these labels for legal, educational, adminstrative and policing purposes. The term ‘indigenous’ derives from the late Latin ‘indigenus’ and ‘indigena’ (native) and from the Old Latin ‘indu’ that is derived from the archaic ‘endo’ (a cognate of the Greek ‘endo’), meaning ‘in, within’ and the Latin ‘gignere’ meaning ‘to beget’, from the root ‘gene’ meaning ‘to produce, give birth, beget.’ ‘Indigena’ in Latin means ‘native’ used of plants, animals, peoples who come from a particular region. Its first known use was in 1640s when it was applied to plants and cultures in the New World. The general sense of the term applied to that produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment; also sometimes used as a synonym for ‘native,’ ‘innate,’ ‘aborigine,’ ‘endemic,’ and ‘inborn.’ There is a strong sense of replication to the term, with the evolution of the indigenous group being self-derived. In indigenous perception, there could quite likely be a fit here between the linguistic label for the group—who, according to the term, have a tendency to rampantly self-populate—and the genocidal tools historically used to stop them from self-populating, or more current attempts to understand them through collecting their genetic material (see for instance Gardiner (1999)). Moreover, their tie through the term to the natural world sits well with a racist belief that these populations are more basic, unreliable and generally barbaric. The word ‘indigenous’ was first used officially by the United Nations in 2002 in its political declaration of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Prior to this time, the term was regarded as ‘still under debate’ for use in UN official documents. Béteille (1998, pp. 190, 191) suggests that in the US, the idea of indigenous people has acquired a certain moral charge, partly because of the awakening of old memories of usurpation, spoliation, and exploitation but also because many contemporary anthropologists seem to enjoy being in a state of moral excitation. Yet Béteille’s comment only emphasizes ‘meaning as use’ and the significance of political, legal and social contexts in shaping acceptable usage of terms that are contentious because of a tainted past. It shows also the need for constant philosophical and linguistic scrutiny for terminology recognizing that language is both dynamic and infinitely revisable.

This suggests that the problem is not simply ‘out there’, with the creativity or radicality of social movements. It’s also ‘in here’ in the concepts deployed to make phenomena intelligible, political, and significant. In this sense, theory is itself a practice, and traditional theoretical concepts are actually the remains of old political struggles.7 Concepts of social movements, revolution, reform, politics, and resistance have emerged out of historical struggles, and the fact that they often appear natural or fixed is a symptom of their reification. For example, the concept of ‘social movement’ itself carries its own history and intellectual baggage, often married to the concept of revolution and ‘progressive’ social change.8 My purpose here is not to do a genealogy of the concept of ‘social movement’, however. What I want to suggest is that the concept of social movements is one way of tunneling into a broad set of problems about representation, intelligibility, transformation, politics, universality, and experimentation. From another perspective, these more philosophical debates are one way of tunneling into the problems of rigidification, oppression and transformation with which activists are often concerned.

The conceptual complexity of the storytelling framework increases with the intersection of counter-narratives; a concept that has gained an increasingly firm foothold within the storytelling field (Bamberg & Andrews, 2004; Frandsen, Kuhn, & Lundholt, 2016). According to Andrews and Bamberg (2004), counter-narratives can be identified as positional categories in tension with other categories playing out at multiple layers of positioning. Counter-narratives are thus defined as relational categories that only make sense in relation to that which they are countering.

The intersection of the prefix ‘counter’ gives rise to new questions such as: What is meant by ‘counter’? What is the nature of a counter position? Does the meaning of ‘counter’ change when the prefix is related to narratives, to living stories, or to antenarratives? Furthermore, the prefix ‘counter’ is unavoidably associated with the idea of tensions and contradictions appearing in the middle between something. Hence, the prefix seems to foster a natural call for dialectics as a relevant perspective that, in addition to Bakhtin’s dialogue, may contribute to shedding more light on the dynamical forces involved in the three middles of the storytelling framework. The use of the prefix ‘counter’ and its associated middle thus need further scholarly attention.

What makes the hegemonic analytic so convincing, and what is it that allows counterhegemony to appear as an irreducible necessity? I will suggest that counterhegemony is so seductive because it achieves an ontological monopoly on connection. Attempting to move beyond ‘particular’ groups (towards their connections and alliances) tends to mean conceiving of connections between molar totalities. These are the connections made intelligible through the logics of equivalence and difference, allowing them to form a counterhegemonic bloc, conceived as a new, never-fully-sutured totality. Chains of equivalence always connect molar totalities. The feminist movement ‘as a whole’ can be articulated in a chain with anti-racist and socialist movements ‘as wholes’ as well, forming a chain of equivalence in which feminism=antiracism=socialism). Or, these chains can be thought in terms of particular groups, in which a particular union is articulated together with a women’s shelter, for example. In both cases, these groups (or movements) are already conceived as bounded totalities, with insides and outsides, which are then open to rearticulation as totalities in a chain of equivalence, often united by a common goal, interest, or aim.

In conclusion, I would argue that Antonio Gramsci saw in the education and cultural formation of adults the key toward the transformation of hegemony. Many would use the term “counter-hegemony” here, which I would avoid, given that Gramsci himself did not use it—my sense is that there is the danger that this term posits some kind of a binary opposition regarding “hegemony” and “counterhegemony,” the kind of binary opposition that Gramsci’s conceptualization of the term avoids. The relationship is a dialectical one, involving internal relations between the two, relations that need to be renegotiated within the interstices of the hegemonic structures themselves. The attainment of an “intellectual and moral reform,” which Gramsci regarded as necessary for such a transformation to occur, entailed a lengthy process of education characterized by what Raymond Williams would call the “long revolution.” The process involved education in its many forms, formal, nonformal, and informal. Organic intellectuals engaged in this lengthy process of working for social transformation were to explore a number of sites with the potential to serve as sites of transformative learning. Gramsci was a role model with his constant, indefatigable immersion in projects and his creation of opportunities for adult learning during his years as a political activist/leader and politician and during his imprisonment, especially the time when he awaited his trial on the island of Ustica where he is believed to have left a mark among the islanders. However his major legacies are the various theoretical insights deriving from his own revolutionary praxis, insights that continue to make Gramsci a constant source of reference in political theory. As we have seen, his contribution was not lost on Freire with whom he shared political pedagogical insights and which Freire, like other many leftwing intellectuals and practitioners, took on board in his quest for an educational contribution to “the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love” (Freire, 1970, p. 24; see also Allman et al., 1998).

Contemporary readings of hegemony and counterhegemony tend to rely on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, in which dominant groups maintain their dominance less by overt repression than by subtle forms of control that manufacture the consent of dominated groups. For Gramsci, hegemony was an attempt to understand the ways in which the bourgeoisie was able to present itself (and its interests) as universal, “capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level.”68 Gramsci showed how the State was not simply a ‘night watchman’, whose functions are limited to safeguarding public order and respect for the laws; the State also has a hegemonic function, in its “production of the will to conform.”69 Gramsci is not always consistent on the precise meaning of hegemony;70 however, I am more interested in the way hegemony has been taken up and deployed in analyses of social movements. There are significant differences in the ways in which hegemony has been taken up as a form of analysis, but there are also shared tendencies.71 As Stuart Hall suggests, hegemony tends to be intertwined with the question of “what strategies and forms of political action/organization could unite concretely different kinds of struggle?”72 In this sense, counterhegemony opens the possibility of a more systematic transformation of hegemonic structures. The apparent need for counterhegemony follows from the ontological assumptions of the hegemonic analytic. Hegemonic practices remain in place until they are displaced by new practices, which become hegemonic. Movements must become unified into a counterhegemonic bloc so that they can challenge and displace currently dominant practices and institutions.

In its contemporary formulations, ontology of hegemony and counterhegemony is often combined with much older and common-sensical notions of scale, suggesting that local resistance is too small and too weak to challenge massive hegemonic regimes such as transnational capital.73 From this perspective, social movements are made intelligible through their (potential) effects on these hegemonic structures. This has led some neoGramscians to insist that only a unified bloc would be capable of challenging the immense powers of transnational capital.74 This undergirds Stephen Gill’s claim that Foucault’s account of “localized, capillary forms of power/knowledge” lacks a connection to “macro-structures” of power.75 What’s needed is a coalition between currently dispersed movements, such as workers and environmentalists. For others, this requires articulating common interests across progressive movements, rather than emphasizing differences.76

In political spaces, the naturalized imperative of counterhegemony often crystallizes in a prescription for a coherent alternative to the hegemonic order. Social movements are seen as too fragmented, disorganized, and vague, lacking a coherent strategy that could challenge neoliberalism. Singular problems are often translated into claims or demands for a solution; to explain what movements want, where they’re going, what they’re struggling for. This process of articulation is always a reduction of the complexity of political spaces. There is no escape from articulation and coding; we always need to be able to make sense of our lives and our practices in order to accomplish even the most basic tasks. The problem lies in privileging articulation, so that the intersections of molarization and singularization are unintelligible and depoliticized.

I will suggest that hegemony—and the political imperatives it generates—gets it backwards. Privileging hegemony and understanding movements based on their capacity to confront this hegemony leads into a trap. Hegemony is about the production of common sense, and the ways in which dominant institutions use this common sense to maintain their hold on us. So isn’t counterhegemony just a different common sense? Is it possible that the imperative of counterhegemony reproduces the problems of discipline and homogenization that the new social movements seemed to be disrupting? If one assumes a need for unity, is one asking social movements to reify themselves?

I will argue that representation isn’t simply the way social movements advance their aims by explaining themselves, but also a dangerous trap that makes them amenable to judgment, containment, and absorption. It naturalizes a particular way of conceiving social movements where ‘aims’ either exist from the outset or are formed as the social movement ‘matures’. But is it possible to orient ourselves to social movements without reifying representations of them? Without representing them ourselves? How else would it be possible to think about them? From the perspective of hegemony and the state, social movements that do not represent themselves may be simply unintelligible. Or, they maybe intelligible only in negative terms, as an amorphous ‘outside’ that disrupts, subverts and resists but has no positive content. Can one think about their positivity in ways that don’t reify them? Are there practices that are not geared towards representation and intelligibility, and can they be thought without resorting to merely negative terms (the non-representative, the unintelligible)? Are representation and coherence coextensive with intelligibility? What would it mean to think about social movements that aren’t advancing any claims or demands at all?

The ontology of hegemony and counterhegemony produces a particular grid of intelligibility that places hegemonic structures at the forefront, assessing social movements by their capacity to constitute a counterhegemonic alternative and challenge hegemonic structures. Counterhegemony enables judgements about the significance and importance of social movements, based on their (in)capacity to transform hegemonic structures. From this perspective, social movements will only be effective if they can articulate a basis of unity, creating broad-based alliances and translating their struggles into a mass movement, capable of effecting changes in the State and other institutions.

In this context, Richard Day criticizes what he calls “the hegemony of hegemony” which, he argues, produces the commonsensical assumption that meaningful social change can only be achieved through alterations to the nation-state and other institutions.84 Hegemony produces a certain conception of what meaningful social change must be: that which is intelligible as an alteration of (or alternative to) a hegemonic structure.