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Kabila

From first contact to self-determination

A pattern repeated on several continents over the past five centuries. Dates and details differ from place to place.

is met bywinsopens the way toIndependent peoplesContactColonisationForced assimilationResistanceLegal recognitionSelf-determination

  1. Independent peoples. Before colonisation, peoples ran their own affairs. They farmed, hunted, herded, traded over long distances and made alliances. They were not waiting to be discovered.
  2. Contact. Contact often began with trade. It also brought diseases such as smallpox and measles, to which people in the Americas and Oceania had no immunity. Many communities lost most of their members.
  3. Colonisation. Colonial powers claimed ownership. In Australia the land was treated as belonging to no one, an idea later called terra nullius. Elsewhere treaties were signed and then often broken.
  4. Forced assimilation. Many states then tried to absorb indigenous people. In Canada about 150,000 children were sent to residential schools, where their languages and customs were forbidden.
  5. Resistance. Resistance never stopped. In India the Santhal rose in 1855 and Birsa Munda led a rising around 1900. In the twentieth century peoples took their case to courts and the United Nations.
  6. Legal recognition. Law slowly shifted. In 1992 Australia's High Court rejected terra nullius in the Mabo case. In 2007 the United Nations adopted its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
  7. Self-determination. Self-determination means a people freely deciding its own political status and development. Examples include Nunavut in Canada and the Sámi parliaments. In most places the work is unfinished.

Read the lesson

  1. A short history: from contact and colonisation to self-determinationThe position of indigenous peoples today makes sense only in the light of the past five centuries. You will follow the common arc from independence, through colonisation, to the modern movement for rights.

Seven peoples, once a week

Every Monday: seven peoples you may never have heard of, who they are and where they live.