Kuper

) Kuper, Adam. (2003) “The Return of the Native.” Current Anthropology 44(3):389-402.
The author claims the dangers of the discourses of the indigenous movement as long as it reinforces notions of essentialism, primordiality and belonging that can exacerbate interethnic conflicts rather than fostering solidarity. He points to the fact that indigenous is articulated with meanings of primitivism, race and culture as correspondent terms, along with ideas of a belonging to a particular location, having a harmonic relation to their environments as a fundamental cultural value. He also points to the problem of showing the correspondence of indigenous populations with their pre-colonial ancestors and the ambiguity of making land claims on this basis. Primordiality or an essential belonging to land is an argument widely rejected by progressive academics when it is made by conservative groups rejecting in the face if immigration. He claims that either primordiality is an argument that should be criticized in all cases (and thus accepted as valid when conservatives use it) or either is a problematic political statement in any case. The same type of critique is applicable to the notion of biological continuity of indigenous people as pre-existing groups and the notions of racial purity and their consequent processes of discrimination, classification and event violent attempt of extermination what threaten a racial purity. Likewise the claims for collective and special rights both discriminate among individuals of different social groups as well as homogenise people within such group. In any case in postcolonial contexts marked by processes of interconnections between settlers and colonized, to support the distinction of natives and “new comers” and attributing the need of special rights to the former, especially when a particular relation to land as part of a hunter gather system is claimed, is problematic as long as it can only contribute to generating rivalries and inequalities between interdependent groups. Ultimately to think of social groups as indigenous is problematic as it can only stress political divisions among equally marginalized groups, and the establishment of even greater inequalities between ethnically different groups.