Guillermo Wilde
pp. 13–28
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This paper describes and analyzes the development of Guarani communities on the borders of Iberic Empires during the 17th century, according to the new mission model designed by the priests of the Society of Jesus. Said model involved the relocation of populations from diverse regions during a period of 150 years, and their concentration in mission towns (reducciones) that responded to uniform economic, political and cultural parameters. The first section analyzes the policy of population segregation implemented in the region and the population transfers during the formation of reducciones throughout the 17th century. The second section considers the transformation of the previous native political organization that resulted from this process. The last section examines the mechanisms of achieving internal heterogeneity in mission towns, taking into account the persistence of traditional principles of mobility, kinship, and leadership, recycled during the long lasting process of their adaptation.
Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez
pp. 29–42
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In July 1787, Paruanarimuco, the main leader of the Hupe Comanches, requested the help of Juan Bautista de Anza, the Spanish governor of New Mexico, to build a village for his followers. Such an unusual petition was readily accepted by the authorities of northern New Spain, who looked forward to setting a precedent among the heathen nomads of the frontier by turning the Hupes into a sedentary, Hispanicized people. Thus, construction of the village of San Carlos de los Jupes began on the banks of the Arkansas River, in present-day Colorado, in the summer of 1787, using Spanish funds and labor. By January of 1788, however, the Hupes abandoned the village never to return. This essay explores the founding and demise of San Carlos from an ethnohistorical perspective. I argue that the short-lived Comanche settlement was doomed to failure for diverse ecological, cultural, and geostrategic reasons.
Matthew Babcock
pp. 43–59
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This essay explores an ambitious and forgotten attempt by the Spanish empire to relocate thousands of Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Western Apaches from their homeland onto eight reservation-like establecimientos (establishments or settlements) along New Spain’s northern frontier beginning in 1786. Spanish military officers offered gifts, rations, and protection to Apaches in order to curb their livestock raids and transform them into sedentary agriculturalists. This paper examines the pros and cons of this resettlement program from Apache and Hispanic perspectives and argues that although a minority of peaceful Apaches (Apaches de paz) worked together with Spaniards and Mexicans to reduce violence in the region, the majority creatively adapted to reassert their independence and maintain dominion over their territory by 1831.
Christophe Giudicelli
pp. 61–82
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For 130 years, the Calchaquí Valley’s Indians succeeded in preserving their autonomy against all colonizing devices of the Spanish province of Tucumán. Over the course of two campaigns, between 1659 and 1667, the Tucumán governor dramatically put down the resisting enclave by denaturalizing all valley inhabitants and relocating them all around the province, and even as far as Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata’s shores. Until recently, it has been believed that those deportations had erased any traces of the Calchaquí Indians in the region. The main objective of the present study is to re-open the case and to go beyond such an oversimplified perspective which neither takes into account the 19th and 20th centuries processes rendering them invisible nor the documentary evidences testifying to their significant presence, even as collective entities. The recent Argentinian historical and ethnohistorical developments on the issue, as well as the current re-emerging Indian movements, which directly question the heretofore unchallenged and long-held assumption that they disappeared, both call for such revision.
Marie Mauzé
pp. 83–98
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The administrative relocation of the ’Nakwaxda’xw and Gwasa’la from British Columbia in 1964 led to a real social implosion whose deleterious effects are still felt 50 years after it took place. Moved to a new site under very precarious conditions because of the blatant incompetence of the representatives of the Department of Indian affairs both on the national and local levels, the ‘Nakwaxda’xw and Gwasa’la were suddenly expelled from their traditional territory. Cut off from their real, imaginary, spiritual and emotional relationship to their ancestral lands, they also lost their traditional knowledge grounded in their perception of the environment. In the legal framework of the Specific Claims, in 2008, the Band received monetary compensation, however its members need to gather enough strength to reclaim all the facets of their native identity to be able to live better in the modern world.
Frédéric B. Laugrand, Jarich G. Oosten and Üstün Bilgen-Reinart
pp. 99–116
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The Federal Government’s decision in the 1950s to force the Sayisi Dene and the Ahiarmiut to abandon their nomadic life out on the land and to settle in the communities of Churchill and Arviat resulted in disastrous consequences. The Sayisi Dene, who had been competent hunters and trappers, became a broken people living off the garbage dump at Churchill. Today, their children and grandchildren at Tadoule Lake are still trying to heal the wounds inflicted by the forced relocation. As for the Ahiarmiut who were relocated in a series of stages from Ennadai Lake to Nelting Lake, from Ennadai Lake to Henik Lake and from Henik Lake to Arviat, Rankin Inlet and finally to Whale Cove they are still awaiting the explanation from the federal government and acknowledgement of their painful experiences. Using oral and archival documents, this paper compares these two relocations, confronts the strategies, choices and decisions of the federal administration with the experiences and views of the participants and underscores the resilience of these caribou hunters.
Bastien Sepúlveda
pp. 117–128
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After the conquest of their territory by the Chilean army in the late nineteenth century, the Mapuche people had to submit to a vigorous migratory process which led most of them towards the major urban areas of Chile. This phenomenon never decreased over the last century, to such an extent that the majority of Mapuche society has now became urban. According to the 2002 Chilean census, almost 65 % of the indigenous population would be resident in urban areas. If this kind of mobility can be interpreted as a forced departure, it reveals at the same time an extraordinary capacity of adaptation to a new reality. Based on fieldwork undertaken with Mapuche organizations from the city of Concepción, in central Chile, this article examines the ways in which Mapuche identity is being realized in the urban context and how the city is being integrated into the indigenous territorial framework.
Carolina Andrea Maidana
pp. 129–138
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The term Qom is the way the indigenous people known as Toba refer to themselves. They were a people who were living before the devastation generated by the conquest, with the settling and expansion of the nation state into the Southern Cone, the geographical region known as Gran Chaco. Migrations were one of numerous responses and/or resistance of the people in the face of white settlement. These processes involved profound existential changes, complex processes of ethnic redefinition and/or reaffirmation of identity that, in many cases, were expressed in urban spaces, redesigned in ethnic terms. An ethnographic study of the “Toba neighbourhoods” found at the edge of large cities permits an analysis of these spaces in relation to the territorial expression of social networks. It clarifies what is local and accounts for the complexity involved in new forms of organization and territoriality, resulting from access to urban land by indigenous migrants.
Florence Dupré
pp. 139–150
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Relocations played a fundamental role in the settlement policies of the Canadian government and the formation of several Arctic communities. Since the 1950’s, they have had a significant impact on the social organization of Inuit communities. They still play a major role in the construction of identities, and they may be the source of new moves of peoples and strategies of land occupation at community and regional levels. This paper focuses on what the federal records identify as the “relocation” of the main South camp of the Belcher Islands (Hudson Bay, Nunavut) to the North of the archipelago in 1971. From testimonies of displaced Qikirtamiut and researchers involved in the process, the author explores a few aspects of the genesis and progress of the relocation to stress some of the social dynamics related to the transfer of families.
Lionel Simon
pp. 151–161
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The inhabitants of Media Luna – a village located in the North of Guajira peninsula – were displaced in the beginning of the eighties. At that time, the construction work of the company El Cerrejón started with a preliminary phase which consisted in displacing the communities of Media Luna (in particular). These removals remain in the memory of the inhabitants as a time of violence and profound injustice. The houses and the cemeteries were displaced and the pasture lands were seized. This major event in the historical trajectory of these populations, in other words, this uprooting has had grave consequences. This article explores the factors which led to the denial of Wayùu’s social and cultural reality during the negotiations over their territory and, analyzes the current situation of Media Luna inhabitants with regard to the consequences of their displacement.
Julie Hermesse
pp. 163–174
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Based on an historical approach to land ownership, this article’s goal is to present the joint evolution in modes of mobility chosen by the populations of the Western Altiplano of Guatemala, or imposed on them. The general data on the history of property and mobility characterizing the Western region is presented in connection with local data gathered in ethnographical research in the town of San Martín Sacatepéquez. The concept of territory indicates a system of space appropriation presenting symbolic as well as economic aspects of history and culture. In its economic dimension, land remains par excellence the means of material survival in Guatemalan society. It is the foundation of indigenous peasant identity as well. Also significant of their rootedness in the land of their ancestors, is the fact that historically these indigenous populations have been actors in seasonal and temporary migrations. Current transnational migrations testify to the historical evolution of this phenomenon of mobility, which must be analyzed in light of transformations in land ownership and economic constraints. In its symbolic dimension, the land bears, inter alia, the image of spoliation.
Laurent Jérôme
pp. 175–184
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August 1961. The North Pioneer ship came alongside the coast of Unamen Shipu (La Romaine). Sixty-five Innus of Pakuashipi (Saint-Augustin) landed with their goods to settle in Unamen Shipu, their new community recognized as a reserve since 1954 where a permanent missionary was officiating since 1953. Spring 1963. Some of these ‘migrants’ decided to return to their original territory on foot, with women, children, dogs, boats and sleds. The ‘journey back’ would last one month and around two hundred and fifty kilometres. A few months later, other members of the group would return by plane and boat. Others would never leave Unamen Shipu, where they still live today. The aim of this paper is to document this aborted relocation project and to examine the Innu perceptions with respect to that experience. Indeed, the Innu speak of ‘deportation’: Ka atanakaniht.