Defining “authentic indigeneity” perpetuates stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as pristine and unchanging, limiting their rights
Claire Smith and Graeme K. Ward 2k, Smith is a lecturer in Archaeology at Flinders University, South Australia. An active field archaeologist, she has had extensive experience with Indigenous communities in Australia and Asia. She is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Australian Archaeology and Rock Art Research. Ward is a senior research fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra., xx-xx-2000, "Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World", Routledge, https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.4324/9781003116097 //MRK
Each of these chapters challenges the stereotype that Indigenous societies `live in the past' and are unable to shape their culture to adjust to new challenges and situations. Indigenous societies before Contact were both dynamic and flexible, possessing a creative strand that both then and now `repeatedly generates new variants of cultural practices and ...transforms the cultural structure itself' (Layton, page 66; see also Chapters 5 and 7). This raises another core issue underlying much of the discussion in this book: the notion of authenticity. As many others have pointed out, authenticity does not reside in a past that is unchanging, lacking any internal dynamic (Edwards 1997: 63). By proliferating and perpetuating stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as pristine and unchanging, globalisation may become a tool for disempowering Indigenous peoples on the ground that the practices of a contemporary present may not be the same as those of an idealised (and unrealistic) past. The creation of influential images of what constitutes `authentic' Indigeneity can constrain Indigenous peoples in real and material ways, limiting their social, economic, and political capacities. That process is made manifest in the statement by Jimmie Durham (cited by Gough in Chapter 5) that 'none of us feel that we are real Indians ...for the most part we feel guilty, and try to measure up to the white man's definition of ourselves'. On the other hand, authentic representation can also become an important aspect of Indigenous empowerment. In particular, as both Morphy and Layton demonstrate in Chapters 7 and 3 for the northern Australian Yolngu and Alawa people respectively, and as Dransart makes clear in Chapter 8 for the Aymara people of Chile, the notion of authenticity is central to the production of Indigenous art, the negotiation of Indigenous identity through art, and the explicit assertion of rights that can flow from this.