Global indigenism : genealogy of a non-racial category

In 1991 the World Bank issued a directive on "the Indigenous" to guide development projects aimed at helping underdeveloped peoples. It spoke of projects needing to confer "culturally compatible social and economic benefits". Raising the possibility of cultural incompatibility, the Bank thus conceded that "development" might be a process from which people seek protection.' In speaking in these terms the World Bank evoked global indigenism, a modern and postcolonial tradition which refers to both the political practices of certain human beings who represent themselves, their historical experiences and their rights as "Indigenous peoples", and the policies and statements of organisations, including governments, that recognise indigeneity as a distinct form of human experience. To recognise Indigenous peoples is to raise the possibility that they are entitled to special consideration of some kind.