Reconstructions of the Indigenous

A letter to my fellow pragmatic dreamers and co-designers of new realities

AI generated, author prompted: hotpot AI. Honor to all artists who made this possible.

There is a strong sentiment, almost a movement, across the West and among progressives around the world — even some traditionalists: to reconnect to the ever-present tribal origin; to make life and society come alive again, to make the universe into a more human homestead once again.

This is in and of itself an understandable and honorable impulse. If modern life, or modernity, has disconnected us from nature, from our direct surroundings, from one another, from our bodies, from spiritual life, from the cathedral that is always present in earth and skies, the longing for and admiration of the remnants of tribal and animistic ways of life seem to offer a vital remedy. While we appreciate the freedoms and comforts of modern life, we all notice that we have piece by piece become creatures of the Internet, electronically mediated and photographically constructed cyborgs. No wonder we cannot save the environment from ourselves — and no wonder we feel alienated and lost in a world too artificial and confusing.

Our Problematic Longing for “the Indigenous”

Let us, before we go on, briefly reconstruct this newfound popular fascination with indigenous cultures. It entails:

• A shift in aesthetics, with expressions such as Afropunk (like the Afropunk festival which attracts as many as 60k visitors.) On a wider scale yet, you have the increasing tendency to mimic (or co-opt or appropriate) native costumes and rituals in hippie/hipster festival occasions, not least as a part of the Ayahuasca tourist industries.
• An appreciation and honoring of indigenous lifestyles in the books of anthropologist David Graeber and aboriginal professor, Tyson Yunkaporta.
• The growth of a vibrant scholarly counter-narrative to the economic “development” under the leadership of thinkers like anthropologist Arturo Escobar. Briefly stated, this position holds that it is a mistake to think of indigenous roots and cultures around the world as “under-developed” and that development itself cannot be thought of solely in terms of “extractive” economic growth. Rather, it is often the indigenous life forms…