As healthcare and March Madness dominate the headlines in the U.S., the world of indigenous peoples goes on just the same. Here are some of the events that have occupied Native communities over the past few weeks.
From the blog site Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology, we have this sad news of the passing of a major scholar in Pacific Studies, Teresia Teaiwa. Professor Teaiwa was the director of the Va‘aomanū Pasifika (Pacific Studies Center) at Victoria University in Wellington, the first and only place where you can earn a Ph.D. in Pacific Studies. [https://savageminds.org/2017/03/21/remembering-teresia-teaiwa-an-open-access-bibliography/]
Teresia Teaiwa
My job as an educator is to help my students make sense of the world they live in, . . . In Pacific Studies, that involves exposing our students to complex and messy histories of both colonisation and decolonisation — even colonisation negotiated by indigenous leaders, and decolonisation championed by foreigners.
In Guatemala, Maya weavers are pressing the government for intellectual property rights, introducing a bill in the Guatemala Congress to protect their textile patterns and techiques from appropriation. Intercontinental Cry: A Publication of the Center for World Indigenous Studies reports,
The bill has two objectives. First, it calls for a recognition of a definition of collective intellectual property, which is linked to the right of Indigenous Peoples to administer and manage their heritage. Second, it asks that indigenous nations be recognized as authors, in which case they would automatically benefit from intellectual property law. Recognizing indigenous nations as authors just like individuals or companies means that corporations that benefit from the export of Maya hand-woven goods will have to pay royalties to the communities who are the authors of huipiles.
AFEDES Weavers with their legislation.
We must protect our textile knowledge just as we protect our territories . . . intellectual property protection is a fundamental dimension of autonomy.”
March 21st also marked the 400th anniversary of the death of Pocahontas (Matoaka) in England. Indian Country Media Network reports that “English citizens have devoted themselves to a year of festivities to celebrate this history under the banner of the Pocahontas 400 – Peace and Reconciliation project. The initiative is a collaboration between the council and her final resting place, St. George’s Church in Gravesend.”
The BOOTON HALL PORTRAIT likely 1700s, unknown English artist
In their reporting, Indian Country Media contrast the reconciliation story promoted by the English celebrants with Vincent Schilling’s research into the historical Pocahontas, a story that Schilling calls “a tale of tragedy and heartbreak.”
The article’s juxtaposition of the words of the English “Pocahontas 400 Celebration” narrative with Schilling’s account transforms the occasion of Matoaka’s death from a jubilee of reconciliation to a plea for repatriation—of both the historical realities that the young woman endured (rape and kidnapping), as well as her remains, which still rest in England.
Virginia tribes have requested that Pocahontas’ remains be repatriated; English authorities claim that the exact location of her remains are unknown.
