a) A continuous pattern of settlement over a wide area (more than 50 000 ha), with unified ethnic groups.
b) Territories of indigenous populations are interwoven with settlements of exogenous and non-indigenous populations, but a few areas remain unoccupied.
This is the most frequent pattern.
c) 'Island' indigenous settlements : other non-native populations dominate most of the area, deforestation is far advanced, indigenous groups are a minority and confined in small areas.
This is the most dangerous situation because indigenous territory is coveted by others and gradually reduced.
Generally speaking, most constitutions do not draw a distinction between indigenous populations and other groups in the national population, and, in most countries, all have citizen status. But having said this, one must add that the application of civic rights is far from being systematic : there is a huge discrepancy between the law and its application.
One of the best criteria to assess the will of a government to integrate these populations is the more or less protracted business of acquiring identity papers, for indigenous people, the materialization of their status as citizens.
Obtaining official citizenship can easily be a Kafkaesque process for illiterate natives if local officials are unwilling to help (this is the case for the Pygmies in various Central African countries).
A precondition to the access to citizenship may require adopting the customs of a dominant population (e.g. becoming sedentary), or converting to a national religion (Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia for example).
One solution would be to set up a form of citizenship that would recognize and take into account the needs and preoccupations of minority groups, and thus make room for them within the national community.
Despite their undifferentiated status, indigenous populations suffer from the widespread negative prejudices about their life-style and values, prejudices that dominate the attitude of majority groups all over the world.
The overall attitude is one of misunderstanding (if not malevolence) and their techniques and values are always compared unfavourably to those of the dominant society :
- swidden agriculture versus permanent agriculture (irrigated rice cultivation for example) ;
- seasonal mobility versus permanent settlements ;
- small scattered communities versus coming together in big villages ;
- 'pagan' religion versus the official religion (Christian or Muslim) ;
- linguistic diversity versus a national language
(the 'mosaic of languages' is alway put forward as disrupting national unity).
Their subsistence economy is also judged negatively, but the comparison is based on false premises :
- indigenous populations, minority groups, are considered poor because they do not produce any surplus and do not save up any form of wealth for further investment ;
Ethnic minorities are often approached using the same socio-cultural criteria as apply to the national society (considered homogeneous) and, for example, the produce of hunting activities or traditional agriculture are not taken into account when calculating the average income per capita. These people are often declared 'unemployed' because their traditional activities, such as hunting, fishing and agriculture, are not considered professional occupations.
- minority societies occupy what others consider wild areas, i.e. areas that are inefficiently managed, underdeveloped, and that may well contain undreamt of resources ; the dominant society will try to integrate or even deport or eliminate local inhabitants so as to occupy the land themselves.
This whole set of unfavourable prejudices leads to development programmes that are often inadequate and ill-adapted to the needs and demands of indigenous populations whose response is seen as a sign of ungratefulness (which leads to further prejudice, etc).
These programmes are to be found in all these countries and include among other things :
- setting up profit-yielding agricultural systems that are not based on shifting agriculture ;
- restructuring 'insalubrious' habitat and bringing together scattered groups ;
- fighting against population mobility linked to shifting agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering activities ;
- attempting to promote literacy with badly designed programmes set up in a hurry...
An important consequence of these attitudes is that these communities are quite systematically pushed aside when programmes are being set up to develop or protect the environment in which they live.
Projects are designed in the capitals, or even abroad, without consulting the indigenous populations who, at the very best, will be informed when people come out to set up the boundaries of the project in the field (e.g. when the limits of the national parks were being set up in Equatorial Africa).
What is far worse is physically excluding traditional cultivators from the forest areas that they use, in order to develop the forest for industrial purposes :
- example in Sumatra where swidden cultivators were dispossessed of their agroforests which were replaced by eucalyptus plantations for paper pulp production ;
- example of a forest project in Cameroon where most of the forests seem to have been allocated to companies to exploit timber, and the indigenous populations deported in the same process.
Excluding forest farming populations from the plans devised for the area is depriving oneself of their active participation in the project and of their ancestral knowledge of forest ecology.
Excluding farming populations from their forests leads to an increased urban underpriviliged class of poor and easily manipulated people.
There is huge discrepancy as far as land rights are concerned : most indigenous forest populations have kept their traditional land rights, whereas the Nation States have adopted modern legislations concerning land, and, legally, the latter have replaced customary rights. This implies that customary law is only tolerated tacitly by the governments and that they are free to use the land according to whatever priority they choose and without having to refer to the indigenous people living on it.
The consequence of the historical colonial process has been to dispossess the natives of their territorial rights, most of the forests having been classified as belonging to the state.
Many of the problems and conflicts these days arise from the fact that indigenous populations are absolutely astonished to see their land suddenly invaded and transformed by external activities, without them being able to take part in such activities or enjoy some of the benefits ; conflicts also stem from the efforts natives make to have their right of property over their ancestral land and vital territory recognized as such.
Two fundamental differences separate customary and modern (i.e. of European influence) ground law :
- for indigenous communities, land belongs to the group, never to an individual (for 'positive'[5] law, property belongs to the individual) ;
- for indigenous communities, land is not alienable, and belongs to the group forever (for 'positive' law, all land is transferable).
As it is, several equatorial countries have, within their legal apparatus, texts that would allow land to be attributed as community property to indigenous populations. But in fact, the governments, either of their own accord, or under pressure from economic and political lobbies, do not accede to the legitimate demands made by the community, and refuse to grant common land or land reserves to the indigenous populations.
Logic and plain justice would require that indigenous populations receive some benefits in return for what they give. Generally speaking the benefits that ought to be guaranteed are : decent cash incomes, access to better living conditions as far as health and schooling are concerned, and recognition of their citizenship. But the situation is actually more confused than appears at first sight. There are three cases.
- Land. The main cause of injustice stems from the fact that most of the areas on which the majority of indigenous populations live are considered by the State as national property (see preceding SS). Often therefore, the communities receive no compensation. Governments consider, tacitly, that any form of 'development' in an area is to everyone's advantage, something which is by no means obvious.
Several factors have to be taken into account : will priority be given to indigenous workers or to those coming in from other areas ? Will wages be decent and independent of a worker's geographical origin ? Does the implementation of the development project include building schools and health centres for the indigenous population ? Will communities deprived of their ancestral land benefit in any way (e.g. monetary income) from the industrial activities taking place on their territory ?
- Production. Participation of indigenous populations in trade, whether regional or international, is often unfavourable to them because of intermediaries who alter the value of the products exchanged to their own advantage.
There is a whole variety of intermediaries of this kind : dealers in meat or ivory in the African forests who take advantage prevalent illiteracy to plunge Pygmy hunters into debts with alcohol distilled locally for example ; or peonage of Indians in the Amazon Basin who engage in intensive extraction of forest products for traders on the outside.
There is no doubt that the development of trade in non-timber forest products would seem favourable to the evolution of forest societies towards a modern economy, theoretically ; but in practice, participating in such development can turn out to be very treacherous because these minority forest populations often have an inferior social status (see SS 2). These projects must therefore include measures ensuring that the forest populations themselves benefit from their work.
- 'Intellectual products'. This is part of the problem of research on non-timber products, and especially medicinal plants. We all know that a lot of pharmacological research begins with inventories of traditional medicines used by forest populations. In some cases this then leads on either to particular plants being collected for pharmaceutical industries or to the latter being able to isolate the relevant molecules which can then be synthesized. But at present there are no procedures guaranteeing that indigenous populations obtain a share in the proceeds when this kind of research is successful.
One should investigate possible contracts and regulations that would not be so rigid as to impede ethnobotanical scientific research (not all research is for the pharmaceutical industry, far from it), but which would guarantee monetary revenues to the population concerned should the research end in successful results.
The governments of tropical countries and expert westerners have their own idea on what an indigenous population is, what it should become, on what kind of economic 'development' is 'necessary' for the good of the country and in terms of forest resources. But the natives who live in these forests also have their own ideas about their life and their destiny, though they are rarely asked to voice their hopes.
It is very important that one should listen to what indigenous populations have to say : in many tropical countries this simple sentence might appear as a revolutionary and subversive statement, but it ought to be a fundamental principle.
There are two ways of assessing the wishes of indigenous populations : by observing and analysing their way of life and behaviour and by listening to what they say.
The persistence of subsistence economies is often seen as an archaic and reactionary attitude due to ignorance, and people are seen as resisting or even fighting against so-called progress. But on looking closer at these ways of life maintained at subsistence level, with prevalent mobility, hunting and gathering, and no intensive agriculture, we can see that they are the result of a deliberate choice.
By observing the constant elements in their life-styles, whatever the degree of acculturation, one was able to show that the Pygmies of Central Africa were aspiring to several things, though they did not actually voice their wishes : to become fully-fledged citizens while remaining Pygmy (i.e. continue hunting and being mobile), to stress how much they value their own culture (language, social organization, choices in terms of techniques and culture) and have access to the same rights as others (citizenship, justice, health) (see BAHUCHET, 1991). The "Amerindian Peoples Association" in French Guiana have similar claims.
More and more often nowadays, traditional societies are sending out messages stating their choices and wishes. The Penan of Borneo for example express it in the following words :
"As a forest nomad, I find it difficult to understand why I should waste time clearing the forest or growing food when sago and other edible plants are available, just standing there waiting to be picked and protected for our children and their children. Why should I waste time breeding animals when so many are available in the jungle and I can hunt them ? And why waste time growing cash crops when the jungle produces as much rattan as I would ever want to cut ?" Such are the words of an old Penan quoted by LANGUB (1990).
Another example is the document that was written up by an assembly of people from different forest areas in the world (they were not actually official representatives appointed by their community) who met up in Malaysia. It is called the Chart of the indigenous populations of the tropical forest (Penang, Malaysia, February 15th 1992). This document is significant in itself and contains, among others, the following declarations :
- the indigenous populations of the tropical forest see the destruction of their environment as linked to the destruction of their society ; they therefore request that the destruction of the forest be considered a crime against humanity.
They demand :
- the right to continue their own way of life which they consider as a vital relationship between man and nature ;
- the delimitation of adequate land areas ;
- that these boundaries be respected ;
- that a common tenure of land be maintained, imperatively ;
- the application of written law.
Such texts show how lucid traditional populations are and their wish to participate fully in the establishment of such projects as will set the conditions for their own future and that of their children.
International authorities are beginning to be preoccupied with the fate of indigenous populations and the latter are now mentioned in several documents. But it is now especially important to go beyond mere principles, and mentioning these populations is no pretext for not going any further.
The ITTO (International Tropical Timber Organization) takes local communities into account among its criteria for the assessment of long-term plans for tropical forests : the organization advocates consulting local communities (p. 5, 7) and requests that planning also include "measures that would take into account traditional forest exploitation" (ITTO, Forest Policy ndeg.3, 1992).
In the Declaration on Forests, signed at the Rio Conference (CNUED) in 1992, local governments were called upon to include "native populations" in the planning process, in the elaboration and application of national forest policies (SS 2d), to recognize and protect, within national forest policies, the identity, culture and rights of native populations who ought to be involved economically in the development process (SS 5a) ; finally, attention was drawn to "the abilities of the natives" and to "local knowledge" that ought to be "recognized, respected, registered, perfected and even used" (SS 12d). However, it seems to us that such comments are tempered by the paragraph stating that "states have sovereign right to exploit its own resources according to its environmental policies"... (SS 1a, 2a).
International authorities, and especially the EEC, have a part to play and responsibilities to take on : they ought to guide developing countries in the exploitation of their equatorial forests and in their search for long-lasting planning policies. But it also implies that they themselves must have the means (economic, diplomatic and financial) to provide such guidance, guidance which could be taken as interference in some contexts.
The following are possible courses of action among others :
- The EEC can (must) make its aid conditional, and direct the markets of its member countries towards the implementation of such legislations as exist concerning the rights of populations or even forest exploitation and nature conservation in the relevant countries, whether the latter be suppliers or buyers.
- It can (must) direct its markets towards resources produced by stable durable activities.
- It can (must) stimulate the markets for products collected by indigenous populations and keep up the prices.
- More particularly, it must stop financing projects that obviously destroy the environment or that do not respect the populations living in these environments.
[5] 'positive' according to legal terminology, i.e. occidental !