Struggles for Indigenous Education and Self-Determination: Culture, Context, and Collaboration

These comments—by a Singaporean and an American—-focus on four themes: roles of anthropologists; the pedagogy of culture; challenges in combining Indigenous and mainstream epistemologies; and reciprocal influences between social and political contexts, and struggles for Indigenous education and self-determination.     

The Indigenous People of the Caribbean

The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Samuel M. Wilson. ed. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997.254 pp.     

贵州地方猪种及三元商品猪氟烷基因的检测

旨在对贵州地方猪种"抗应激敏感基因专门化品系"的培育提供技术支撑,运用PCR-RFLP技术对白洗猪、黔北黑猪、宗地花猪、糯谷猪和从江香猪5个地方猪种及三元商品猪共151份样本进行了氟烷基因检测,筛选出猪群中应激敏感基因隐性携带型HalNn、抗应激敏感基因型HalNN和应激敏感基因型Halnn。结果表明,贵州5个地方猪种全为HalNN型;三元商品猪群无Halnn型,HalNn型检出率为52.63%,Haln型等位基因频率为26.32%。     

Geographic Distribution of Isolated Indigenous Societies in Amazonia and the Efficacy of Indigenous Territories

The headwaters of the Amazon Basin harbor most of the world’s last indigenous peoples who have limited contact with encroaching colonists. Knowledge of the geographic distribution of these isolated groups is essential to assist with the development of immediate protections for vulnerable indigenous settlements. We used remote sensing to document the locations of 28 isolated villages within the four Brazilian states of Acre, Amazonas, Roraima, and Rondônia. The sites were confirmed during previous over-flights and by image evidence of thatched-roof houses; they are estimated to host over 1,700 individuals. Locational data were used to train maximum entropy models that identified landscape and anthropogenic features associated with the occurrence of isolated indigenous villages, including elevation, proximity to streams of five different orders, proximity to roads and settlements, proximity to recent deforestation, and vegetation cover type. Isolated villages were identified at mid elevations, within 20 km of the tops of watersheds and at greater distances from existing roads and trails. We further used model results, combined with boundaries of the existing indigenous territory system that is designed to protect indigenous lands, to assess the efficacy of the existing protected area network for isolated peoples. Results indicate that existing indigenous territories encompass all of the villages we identified, and 50% of the areas with high predicted probabilities of isolated village occurrence. Our results are intended to help inform policies that can mitigate against future external threats to isolated peoples.     

Ex Bouillabaisse Lux: The Charm of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry

The successes in comparative physiology during the last 25 yearshave resulted from the study of those cellular or subcellularphenomena common to all animals, but approachable most easilyin a few model species. In contrast, complex systems comprisingmany cooperating tissues and organs are characteristic of narrowtaxa; analysis of such systems does not yield widely applicablegeneralities. An analogy between the distribution of commoditiesand products in biological systems and in marketing channelsis developed, and the function of the circulation is consideredin that context. The accumulation and assorting of productsby the flow of blood from the tissues to the collecting vesselsemerges as a particularly important role. The techniques thathave been developed for coping with man's highly complex organizationsand activities should be applicable to analogous biologicalsystems.     

The Politics of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Vietnam

Human Ecology - Studies of Indigenous environmental knowledge (IEK) provide valuable information helpful for resource management, yet there remain gaps for many countries. This paper reviews the...     

The Gendered and Racialized Pathways of Latina and Latino Youth: Different Struggles, Different Resistances in the Urban Context

This article explores the student resistances that shape orientations to schooling. Drawing on a study of Latina/o youth, I examine how race and gender influence whether they perceive education as oppressive or useful in resisting oppression. The key lever that may alter their perceptions is how school and society treat Latinos differently from Latinas. This study shows how ethnography can inspire pedagogical practices that bolster urban students' resistances to the oppressive forces negatively impacting their education. [Latina/o youth, race, gender, resistance, urban education]     

OPRM1 and EGFR contribute to skin pigmentation differences between Indigenous Americans and Europeans

Contemporary variation in skin pigmentation is the result of hundreds of thousands years of human evolution in new and changing environments. Previous studies have identified several genes involved in skin pigmentation differences among African, Asian, and European populations. However, none have examined skin pigmentation variation among Indigenous American populations, creating a critical gap in our understanding of skin pigmentation variation. This study investigates signatures of selection at 76 pigmentation candidate genes that may contribute to skin pigmentation differences between Indigenous Americans and Europeans. Analysis was performed on two samples of Indigenous Americans genotyped on genome-wide SNP arrays. Using four tests for natural selection--locus-specific branch length (LSBL), ratio of heterozygosities (lnRH), Tajima's D difference, and extended haplotype homozygosity (EHH)--we identified 14 selection-nominated candidate genes (SNCGs). SNPs in each of the SNCGs were tested for association with skin pigmentation in 515 admixed Indigenous American and European individuals from regions of the Americas with high ground-level ultraviolet radiation. In addition to SLC24A5 and SLC45A2, genes previously associated with European/non-European differences in skin pigmentation, OPRM1 and EGFR were associated with variation in skin pigmentation in New World populations for the first time.     

The Articulation of Indigenous and Exogenous Orders in Highland New Guinea and Beyond

One of the leading challenges for contemporary anthropology is to try to contribute to an understanding of the interaction between indigenous and exogenous socio‐cultural orders, especially at the frontiers of globalisation. Here I review three recent attempts to do so: (1) a model of structural transformation as developed by Marshall Sahlins; (2) a model of articulation as developed by James Clifford; (3) a model of ‘adoption’ proposed by Joel Robbins. As a test case for these models, I consider them in relation to some recent developments in local segmentary politics and verbal art in the Ku Waru region of Highland New Guinea. I show that all three models are in certain respects inadequate for understanding those developments, and offer some proposals as to what kinds of theory might be more adequate to the task.     

At the Edge of the State: Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination

At the Edge of the State: Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination. Maivân Clech Lâm. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 2000. 232 pp.