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by
Rudolph C. Ryser, PhD
Fourth
World nations (known also as “indigenous peoples,”
“ethnic minorities,” “tribes,” “First
Nations,” “natives,” “aboriginals,”
“Indians,” “tribals,” “small peoples,”
and “minority nationalities.”) are a modern geopolitical
reality yet they are consistently left outside the social,
economic, political and cultural dialogues that affect all
of human kind.
Long denied a place at the decision-making table, relegated
to the “disappearing past” by progressives; and
opposed still by political, religious, corporate and civil
society, organizational thought leaders of Fourth World
nations have begun to claim their right to speak and act
for themselves. Will the efforts of Fourth World thought
leaders succeed in establishing normalized and constructive
relations with members of civil society and with states’
governments and the international community?
Fourth
World Geopolitics
 Understanding
the dynamic interrelationship between Fourth World nations
and states’, and other corporate interests requires
a careful understanding and thorough knowledge of Fourth
World geopolitics. In the Americas there are more than 1000
Fourth World nations, in Africa 2,011, Europe 225, Asia
2,165 and in the Pacific there are 1300 or more nations.
Together the more than 6700 nations have an estimated combined
population of 500 million people living in territories claimed
by 193 international states. Fourth World nations living
on virtually every continent except Antarctica live in relation
to more than 70% of the world’s remaining undeveloped
natural environment where most of the world’s richest
natural resources and biodiversity are located. Their cultural
relationship to the natural world guarantees the health
of the deserts, forests, jungles, rivers, oceans and mountains.
Their separation from those lands often guarantees the destruction
of desert, forest, jungle, and savannah habitats.
Statists, modernists and progressives working actively in
states’ governments, corporations, religious institutions,
multi-lateral states’ organizations, universities and
non-governmental organizations force “development”
into Fourth World territories and programs to convert the
“backward” to modern ways. These efforts destroy
Fourth World nations’ national identification, cultural
adherence and tenacious hold on lands and environments.
Most do not even question the right or the rightness of
development. While there is nothing inherently negative
about “development” per se, the forced imposition
of development on peoples who have not invited such change
can be profoundly negative and dangerous to people and to
the environment.
Fourth World peoples seek to engage the process of mutually
setting the agenda for dialogue on a wide range of social,
economic, political and strategic issues as equal participants.
They seek to participate as self-directed parties to future
agreements in constructive and cooperative discussions with
statists, modernists and progressives. Failure to undertake
constructive dialogue with Fourth World peoples on terms
mutually defined and agreed to will leave the modernists
outside the Fourth World and the Fourth World outside the
modernists’ First, Second and Third Worlds.
The more than 6700 Fourth World nations are the source of
all known natural foods and medicines used to nourish and
heal 90 percent of all human beings (many in the metropolitan
regions of the world have begun turning to “alternative”
and “complementary” medicines as well as organic
and wild foods owing to the failure of orthodox medicine
and food systems). Fourth World nations directly determine
the sustainability of the world’s undeveloped environments
and directly figure in 8 of 10 internal and external state
conflicts. These nations are made among the poorest of the
poor peoples in the world, often due to their forced separation
from lands and environment—the same lands and environment
that make them self-sustaining and even wealthy. Many Fourth
World nations have their own economic systems outside the
market economies of states while others actively participate
in market economies. Researchers in genetics recently discovered
that peoples who make up numerous Fourth World nations have
genetic markers that account for their immunity to certain
diseases and they have markers that specifically account
for certain ailments and physical conditions. Left outside
the important dialogue on these and many other subjects
Fourth World peoples can only attempt to protect themselves
by closing off their territories to outside access, committing
mass suicide, engaging in defensive wars, or capitulating
to progressivist development schemes that threaten and even
destroy the cultural integrity of Fourth World nations.
The
Question of Participation
 Yes,
it is true that Fourth World peoples have been increasingly
invited to international meetings and more meetings are
taking place involving states’ government representatives,
non-governmental representatives and Fourth World leaders,
but the reality is that these meetings are being set on
terms defined by the states’ governments or other progressivist
bodies. There is no mutuality in the definition of agendas
and schedules. Indeed, when Fourth World peoples are asked
to participate in meetings, invitations come only after
long and difficult efforts by Fourth World peoples to demand
an invitation. Once meetings have been called, Fourth World
peoples are set to meet in “parallel meetings”
where they have no access to actual decision-making. (Consider
the Inter-American Congress on Indian Life – quadrennial
meetings of western hemispheric states and the International
Labor Organization meetings on revising Convention 107.)
Meetings are called by states’ governments, corporations,
religious bodies and non-governmental organizations to “consult”
with Fourth World peoples to “hear their views”
even after decisions have already been made that Fourth
World peoples oppose. Despite thirty years of intensified
efforts to establish constructive and mutually defined dialogue
between those who seek to promote “development”
and Fourth World peoples, the gap remains wide indeed.
One reason for this historic failure to establish a mutually
defined forum where all parties are “inside” the
decision-making room is the mistaken view that human beings
can be defined individually and as groups on an evolutionary
line of progress. In this view there are primitive and backward
peoples and there are modern peoples and it is the job of
the enlightened, modern people to either see the primitive,
backward people disappear or to “help the primitives”
become modern. This notion creates a position of superiority
for the “moderns” and rationalizes aggressive
social, economic and political behaviour as evidence of
“progress.” The fact is there is no “higher”
society nor is there a “lower” society—there
are only “different” societies.
Identifying
the Invisible People
 Many
people quibble over the definition of the word indigenous
as it is applied to various peoples and complain that there
ought to be a strict definition so “We know whom we
are dealing with.” Fourth World thought-leaders have
urged that the term not be defined because it will create
a class of human beings in much the way the terms “primitive,”
“aboriginal,” “First Nations,” and “native”
have been used. The use of the term indigenous has become
fairly universal as a term of art applied to distinct peoples
not integrated into the social, economic and political life
of the state, but it is often used as a substitute for terms
like “savage,” “tribal,” “aborigine,”
and “native” originally used by colonizers and
emigrating settlers in a country.
Fourth World nations are modern geopolitical realities whose
actions, decisions and mere presence in the neighborhood
affect and regularly determine the success or failure of
each of the world’s 193 international states. Their
official status in relation to states’ governments
is often subordinated to that of the civil society. International
bodies fail to deal with Fourth World nations as distinct
political identities and instead choose to deal with them
as “groups,” “organizations,” or “mere
individual persons.” The Catlans, Welsh, Basque, Sami,
Abkhaz, Chechens, Jura, Georgians, Faroese, Frisians, Even
and Tartar are some of the Fourth World peoples, which with
many others populate Europe. While their names occasionally
appear in the popular press – usually in a context
of violence – as peoples and distinct cultures they
are made invisible by the historical cover of modern state
names (France, England, Russia, Rumania, etc) and the increasingly
invoked general identification of people as “Europeans.”
In the Americas, Africa, Melanesia, Asia and the Pacific
and Atlantic Fourth World invisibility follows the same
pattern.
Anishabeh
Dené, Inuit, Lakota, Tiwa, Shoshone, Cora, Maya,
Sumo, Kuna, Naga, Aymara, Hawai’ian, Maori, Tamil,
Ladakhis, Baltis, and Mapuché are some of the peoples
not commonly referred to in social, economic or economic
discourse. In Russia the Fourth World peoples are seen as
yet
their visibility in the state dialogue concerning the social,
economic and political life of peoples in the Russian Federation
is virtually non-existent. As peoples they are not considered
part of civil society nor are they considered one of the
international players along with states, trans-state corporations,
trans-state religions, organized crime or non-governmental
organizations. People who assert their status outside of
state control are subject to pejorative references such
as “nationalism” or anarchists. The status of
Fourth World peoples in discourse is further clouded by
the obscure reference of their place in an even more obscure
civil society.
The
Relationship of Fourth World Nations to Civil Society
Rodney
Bobiwash, Director of the Center for World Indigenous Studies
Forum for Global Exchange notes, “Civil Society, as
a movement, has a tendency to be open to co-option by state
governments and by corporations. Keep in mind that civil
society itself, as defined by the United Nations and in
other international forums, includes as one of its constituent
stakeholders, business.” Bobiwash notes that the Malmo
Declaration produced from the Global Environment Ministerial
Forum in May 2000, devotes one-third of its text to the
interests and responsibilities of corporations. He finally
asserts: “The United Nations Millennium Forum, the
World Trade Organization, the meetings of the Organization
of American States, the Commission on Sustainable Development
have all defined Civil Society in a very different way than
the bottom-up process of the “local” transforming
the state envisioned by social theorists like Gramsci.”
Fourth World nations could hardly play a role as members
of “civil society” if the interests expressed
in that environment fail to incorporate the ground-up influence
that would be most typical in the Fourth World.
James Manor of the Institute of Development Studies, University
of Sussex, England (1999) notes the difficulty with the
term “Civil Society” in this way:
“…one can discern two underlying understandings
of the term – the political and the sociological conceptions.
The political conception of civil society is rooted in the
Anglo-American tradition of liberal-democratic theory, which
identifies civic institutions and political activity as
an essential component of the emergence of a particular
type of political society based on the principles of citizenship,
rights, democratic representation and the rule of law. The
sociological conception of civil society is that of an intermediate
associational realm situated between the state on the one
side and the basic building blocks of society on the other
(individuals, families and firms), inhabited by social organizations
with some degree of autonomy and voluntary participation
on the part of their members.”
 Manor’s
political and social conception of civil society leaves
no place for Fourth World nations at all. Indeed, by virtue
of their population size (most often smaller than 5000 people,
but occasionally in the hundreds of thousands and tens of
millions) Fourth World nations will have no influence in
the context of majoritarian politics or civic institutions
that rely on majority voting. Democracy in the “winner-take-all”
environment ensures that Fourth World peoples will always
lack a political voice. This condition is equally true in
the social definition since Fourth World nations have political
identities rooted in culture, territory and history—similar
in some ways to international states. While Fourth World
nations are not “states” (and most do not want
to organize into states) each is the cultural equivalent
of a state though most are not generally hierarchical, centralized,
territorially bounded, or recognized by a state. From a
Fourth World geopolitical view, these nations are distinct
human, social, political, economic and cultural organisms
that are a major player in the international arena and they
are a significant determinant in the health of the modern
state and the state system.
Everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s that Chief George Manuel
(founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples)
traveled in search of support for his people he found Fourth
World nations were desperate to protect their own use and
access to land from outsiders. Marginalized by immigrant
societies formed as states and other newly formed states
in only the last two centuries (most were established in
only the last forty years) the nations Chief Manuel visited
were denied the human courtesy of respectful participation
in the formulation of public policy and veto authority in
decisions that affected their livelihood. The peoples of
these nations suffered from confiscation and degradation
of their territories and outsider use of their sources of
food, shelter and clothing. In the Americas, the Pacific
Islands, Europe, Africa and Asia Chief Manuel, leader of
the in eastern British Columbia, Canada declared the peoples
he met peoples of the Fourth World — peoples sharing
a common relationship to the land and natural world, and
peoples internally colonized by the formation of a state
entirely or partly covering their territory without their
consent. Chief Manuel spoke frequently that the Fourth World
peoples were the wealthiest people as long as they lived
their culture, but when the Fourth World nations became
separated (by force or circumstance) from their land they
became the “poorest of the poor.”
Where
Progress Can Be Made
 There
are some appropriate ways that Fourth World nations can
and should become included parties in the public policy
dialogue within existing states and the discourse establishing
global policies. Fourth World nations in Europe are increasingly
recognized as parties in public policy discourse as a result
of the Principle of Subsidiarity — a principle where
the State and the Fourth World nation recognize that “decisions
must be made by those most directly affected by the consequences
of decisions.” This permits Fourth World nations to
make social, economic, and political decisions autonomously
or in consultation with the State. The principle is well
applied in Spain where the Catalans, Euskadians and Galicians
have a great deal of power to decide matters directly affecting
local interests. With the emergence of parliamentary government
in Wales and Scotland it is apparent the government of England
has come to recognize the importance of subsidiarity. Were
variants of this principle applied in states around the
world, it would be more likely that Fourth World nations
will take direct decisions that ensure their inclusiveness
at the State level.
At the international level there ought to be greater emphasis
placed on regional organization and communications instead
of massive global conferences that have to do with the interests
of Fourth World nations. Bodies already established by Fourth
World nations should be recognized as “quasi-governmental
bodies” exercising authority granted them by individual
nations until an internationally recognized political status
is defined as a result of mutual agreement between nations
and states. The political status of Fourth World nations
should become the subject of central importance to states
and nations alike. Without a clear political status Fourth
World nations are left to fall between the categories of
international organizations. Since Fourth World nations
are not states, corporations, religious institutions or
non-governmental organizations they must be defined with,
perhaps, the political status of “nation.” That
designation would, naturally, carry responsibilities in
relation to international legislation as well as have obligations
consistent with their status.
Fourth World nations must have an identified status within
and outside states to ensure their inclusion in the policy
dialogue that affects all humanity. Without such a defined
political status distinct from existing bodies and entities
the Fourth World will remain invisible and excluded to the
disadvantage of all peoples.
Dr.
Rudolph Ryser [rcryser@cwis.org]
is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for
World Indigenous Studies and originally conceptualized Fourth
World Geopolitics as a field of study. He has written numerous
essays including the Fourth World Geopolitical Reader (1999,
DayKeeper Press). He is a Taidnapum from the Cowlitz Indian
Nation, the Editor in Chief of the Fourth World Journal
and he writes a monthly column entitled the Fourth World
Eye which appears on the world wide web at www.cwis.org.
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