By Dr. Ashesh Ambasta
The chronicles of indigenous peoples the world over record a dismal
history of systematic disenfranchisement – economic, political and social.
It is a history that goes back a long time: first to an expansionist
frontier cultivation by neighbouring communities, followed in more recent
times by hostile colonisation by settlers from far away. Both acts of
aggression were accompanied by forcible (often brutal) acquisition of land
and attempts to invalidate customary rights to use natural resources.
The current attempts to usurp traditional knowledge are thus only the
latest manifestation of the piecemeal subversion of historical rights to
land and natural resources.
The challenges before Diana Pombo and Pedro Garcia, the two activists
profiled this month, are formidable. For they are engaged not only in
correcting centuries of injustice but also in converting attitudes and
prejudices that have hardened into concrete blocks of resistance.
