Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism by Samson Colin; Gigoux Carlos; & Carlos Gigoux

Author:Samson, Colin; Gigoux, Carlos; & Carlos Gigoux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2016-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Land grabbing and bootstrap capitalism

The frenzy for the world’s remaining fossil fuels and energy supplies now shapes how nations are conducting foreign and domestic policy. This ‘new colonialism’ (Liberti 2013) also involves wealthy states acquiring or leasing lands in debt-ridden poorer countries almost exclusively for the mass plantation, greenhouse and polytunnel production of agricultural products for industrialized countries that either have urbanized their lands or, like the fossil fuel producing Gulf states, are situated on lands unsuitable for agriculture. Lands in Latin America, Africa and large swathes of Asia, in addition to indigenous lands in industrialized countries such as Canada, are also used for dams and hydroelectric projects both for internal energy consumption and export.

A stark, but typical example of these processes predating the current discussions of land grabbing is the Kariba dam project on the Zambesi river in what is now Zambia. With World Bank financial backing, the colonial authorities in British Central Africa dammed the Zambesi river at the Kariba gorge in 1955. This precipitated an involuntary resettlement of some 57,000 people in total (World Commission on Dams 2000: 124), including the Gwembe Tonga farmers and hunters. Their homes, gardens, burial sites and areas of spiritual and cultural significance lie within the fertile Zambesi River valley that was flooded. The Gwembe Tonga lost all rights to their land – already eroded by British colonial authorities that granted them only usufruct rights – and they were subsequently partitioned into two groups resettled long distances from one another in Zambia and Zimbabwe. The project, which had only negligible benefits to Africans, was carried out by the British authorities with virtually no prior consideration for the indigenous inhabitants (Tischler 2013: 59–60).

Colson’s (1971) early study of the effects of the hurried resettlement of the Gwembe Tonga uncovered numerous adversities arising from the displacement, including a rise in factionalism, a breakdown in communal activities, a shift in gender roles as women assumed a greater workload, and an undercutting of indigenous forms of governance and leadership. Already the British colonial authorities had effected a change in women’s rights by refusing to recognize traditional female ownership in favour of male-only property rights, which were then transferred to the relocation communities (Colson 1971: 114). The health of the Gwembe Tonga also suffered from a ‘marked increase in drunkenness’ (1971: 27) in the years immediately after resettlement. The more recent World Commission on Dams report on the Kariba dam supports Colson’s findings, noting that the Tonga had no say whatsoever in either the resettlement itself or the conditions of it. Over time, Colson’s (1971: 70) bleak observation that the Tonga had a ‘fear of extinction of their humanity’ has been borne out in the elimination of the native language and epidemics of measles and cholera, along with malaria, dysentery, hunger and HIV/AIDS. Similar upsurges in problems such as pervasive alcoholism parallel the erosion of indigenous livelihoods in parts of North and South America where dams have been built (Weist 1995; González-Parra and Simon 2008: 1777). In fact,

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