Indigenous Peoples Worldwide: Survival, Resistance and Resurgence

Survivance

Indigenous peoples are the first peoples of their lands: First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada; the Sámi of northern Europe; the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia; the Maya, Quechua, Aymara and hundreds of other nations of Latin America; Indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia; and many more. Today there are about 476 million Indigenous people in more than 90 countries, according to the United Nations.

In the twentieth century, many states tried to make Indigenous peoples disappear as distinct peoples, through land seizures, bans on languages and ceremonies, and the removal of children. Indigenous peoples resisted and organized, and in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries they won important recognition of their rights. The Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor uses the word survivance, combining survival and resistance, for this active presence.

Assimilation policies

Governments in several settler states used similar policies, aimed especially at children:

• Canada: the federal government funded residential schools, mostly run by churches, from the 1880s; the last closed in 1996. More than 150 000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended. Children were punished for speaking their languages, and many suffered abuse, hunger and disease; thousands died. In Grade 10 (CHC2D) you studied the schools, the Sixties Scoop and the 1969 White Paper.
• The United States: federal boarding schools (Carlisle, founded 1879, was the model) aimed, in its founder's words, to "kill the Indian" in the child. A U.S. government investigation (2022–2024) identified more than 400 federal schools and documented the deaths of many children.
• Australia: governments removed many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families from the early 1900s to the 1970s. A 1997 inquiry report, Bringing Them Home, named them the Stolen Generations.
• Norway, Sweden and Finland: Sámi children were sent to boarding schools where their language was suppressed. Norway's Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported in 2023 on the harms of its "Norwegianization" policy.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) called the residential school system cultural genocide and issued 94 Calls to Action. In 2022 Pope Francis apologized in Maskwacis, Alberta, for the role of members of the Catholic Church, and the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion recognizing the residential schools as genocide.

Organizing across borders

From the 1960s, Indigenous peoples organized locally, nationally and internationally:

• In Canada, First Nations organizations defeated the 1969 White Paper. In the U.S., the American Indian Movement (1968) demanded treaty rights.
• In 1975, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples was founded at a conference hosted on Nuu-chah-nulth territory at Port Alberni, British Columbia, inspired by the Secwépemc leader George Manuel. The Inuit Circumpolar Council (1977) unites Inuit of Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Chukotka.
• At the UN, Indigenous delegates worked for decades on a declaration. The International Labour Organization's Convention 169 (1989) recognized Indigenous peoples' rights to land and to be consulted.
• The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted on September 13, 2007: 144 countries voted in favour; Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. voted against but later endorsed it. Article 3 states: "Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." Canada passed a law to implement UNDRIP in June 2021.

Land, self-government and resurgence

• Canada: Nunavut, an Inuit-majority territory, was created on April 1, 1999, from a land claim agreement. Modern treaties and court decisions (such as Tsilhqot'in, 2014, which recognized Aboriginal title to land) expanded rights.
• Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), where most people are Inuit, won home rule from Denmark in 1979 and expanded self-government in 2009.
• Australia: in the Mabo decision (1992), the High Court rejected the idea of terra nullius ("land belonging to no one") and recognized native title. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to the Stolen Generations on February 13, 2008. In 2023, voters rejected a proposal for an Indigenous "Voice to Parliament" in a referendum.
• Aotearoa New Zealand: the Waitangi Tribunal (1975) hears Māori claims under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi; Māori (te reo Māori) became an official language in 1987.
• Latin America: Brazil's 1988 constitution recognized Indigenous land rights; Bolivia elected Evo Morales (Aymara) in 2005 and adopted a plurinational constitution in 2009; Guatemala's Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Nordic countries: Sámi parliaments were set up in Finland (1973 as a delegation), Norway (1989) and Sweden (1993).
• Languages and cultures: communities are revitalizing languages through immersion schools, such as Māori kōhanga reo ("language nests", from 1982), which inspired programs elsewhere, including in Canada. The UN declared 2022–2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
• Movements: Idle No More (founded in 2012 by four women in Saskatchewan) and protests to protect land and water, such as at Standing Rock (2016), connected Indigenous rights to environmental issues.