The term ‘Indigenous’ denotes the aboriginal residents of a particular area in a region. The Indigenous Peoples (IP) make up 6.2% of the world’s population with an estimated 370-500 million people living in 90 countries across all regions of the world and speak more than 4,000 languages. The largest concentration is in Asia with 70.5%, followed by Africa (16.3%) and Latin America (11.5%). What strikes out them as a community from the other cultures, is their perceptions of how they view themselves i.e., identity, cultures, language, belief system are inextricably linked with the land that they live in. The IP own, occupy about 22% of the world’s land which includes 11% of the world’s forests and 80% of the world’s biodiversity as they have developed their own knowledge system of the territories vis a vis management and sustenance of the natural resources.
However, many IPs have encountered gross social injustice because of historical factors such as forced relocation, prejudice, marginalizations, poverty and human rights violations. They are systematically excluded from the formal economy, international policies and institutions when they are the stakeholder in the world’s major issues of concern such as Climate change and environmental governance, extinction of languages and culture, human rights, rights to self-determination. These are issues which are an interplay of political, legal, historical and social factors as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, together with ongoing Indigenous mobilizations that the Indigenous Politics encompass and is forming an emerging area of study in the field of Political Science.
The panel invites any study on indigenous communities of/ around the world that academically engage using political concepts of sovereignty and self-governance, constitutional and legal status within nation-states, land rights, historical treaties and resource management, political representation and inclusion, politics of consultation and participation in the development of natural resources, cultural preservation, representation and participation, global indigenous movements, intersectionality of gender, sexuality and class in Indigenous Politics, economic sovereignty and development using either normative or empirical methods in the study of Indigenous politics