ABSTRACT
Introduction: historical and intellectual development of indigeneity in the contexts of colonialism and post-colonialism ‘Indigenous identity’ is paradoxical. On the one hand, it refers to the ancient, distinctive, localised identities and ways of life of typically small, ‘traditional’, pre-industrial cultural groups closely tied to (or, rather, intertwined as identities with) lands occupied since ‘time immemorial’. On the other hand, it also refers to a very modern, global political movement that has emerged through recent globalising phenomena including the development of international human rights fora, frameworks and discourses. Indigenous representatives claim that indigenous cultures are ‘oral cultures’ and that oral traditions are still central to their identities and forms of cultural organisation and transmission. And yet, since the 1990s indigenous groups have become a major presence on the Internet, which has become a textual, electronic vehicle for indigenous resurgence, for survival and revival of language and traditions (Niezen 2005). Indigenous people have also made extensive use of the research and writings of ethnographers and anthropologists to reconstruct and reinvent their traditions in the present.
