Do we fetishize indigenous people?

http://newint.org/features/2018/12/17/do-we-fetishize-indigenous-people
Date Written:  2019-01-14
Publisher:  New Internationalist
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23231

Although well-intentioned, Western representations of and interactions with Indigenous people can undermine their humanity.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt: Without having ever asked for such a noble role, and having had much taken from them that might have allowed them to fulfil it more comfortably, the Moken are expected to serve as custodians of the traditional soul in an industrial, digital age. 'Sea Gypsies Saw Signs in the Waves' was the mystic rendering CBS gave to explanations of how the Moken of Surin largely survived unscathed the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami, an event that helped birth a vast output of reportage about them which failed to detail structural threats the Moken are less equipped to resist, while fetishizing their supposedly unmediated relationship to the natural world.

Subject Headings

• Indigenous Peoples