Negotiated Agreements,Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industry in the Salar de Atacama,Chile: When Is an Agreement More than a Contract?

While acknowledging advances in legal recognition of Indigenous rights, much of the research literature positions negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and corporations simply as ‘neoliberal technology’ that gives the appearance of Indigenous consent while allowing exploitation to continue. This analysis is flawed in considering agreements as discrete, stand-alone phenomena. It ignores the possibility that Indigenous peoples may use agreements as part of broader strategies to achieve control over extractive industry activity and to secure a share of ‘development’ benefits — strategies that involve selective engagement with the state. This article supports its argument by locating an agreement between the Chilean lithium mining company, Albemarle, and the Council of Atacameño Peoples within a broad and sustained strategy by Atacameño people to address the negative impacts of mining in the Salar de Atacama, Chile, while securing its economic benefits. This strategy includes using the agreement to voice Atacameño territorial claims and environmental concerns to the state, and to insist that the state lives up to its responsibilities. The analysis leads to a fuller appreciation of the agency exercised by Indigenous peoples in dealing with the sustained expansion of extractive activity on their territories, and a more nuanced understanding of negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and mining corporations and between Indigenous people and the state.     

When History Hurts

Book reviewed in this article:
Amy J. Elias, Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction     

Scotty Martin's Jadmi Junba: a Song Series from the Kimberley Region of Northwest Australia1

Barwick (1990) finds that, in Central Australian performance, whilst text and melody in isolation are relatively fixed, ‘there is immense variability in their combination, which is accomplished by what may be crudely characterised as a process of expansion and contraction of the melody to accommodate texts of different lengths’ (Barwick 1990:61). Following musicological examinations by both Barwick (Barwick 1989, 1990 and 1995) and Keogh (Keogh 1995) which focus on identifying principles that underlie this process of expansion and contraction, the paper presented here looks at songs of the junba genre, composed and performed by Ngarinyin elder, Scotty Martin, in the North central Kimberley. In addition, it is suggested in this paper that the style of musicological analysis developed by Barwick and Keogh has relevance beyond the discipline of musical analysis, as its results allow the analyst and reader to begin to trace relationships between creative processes active in the moment of performance with ‘patterns and rules’ evident in other aspects of the music‐makers' ways of being in the world.     

出土饱水云南松的超微构造特征

对云南剑川县出土的木质文物进行了研究,从超微结构层面更深入地解析了饱水古木的降解情况。出土的云南松(Pinus yunnansis)古木在饱水环境中淹埋了4 000多年。降解主要发生在晚材管胞,而且降解在晚材部分并不均匀:一些未降解的完好管胞分布在降解严重的管胞中。透射电镜观察显示:降解从S1/S2和S2/S3的界面开始;对于一些降解较严重的管胞,到腐朽后期细胞次生壁全部发生降解,只留下复合胞间层;细菌侵蚀是云南松饱水古木降解的主要原因。固体核磁共振结果表明:纤维素和半纤维素降解严重,木质素也出现了一定程度的降解。本研究可为其后续的加固保护提供科学的参考依据。     

Archaeology of middle Pleistocene lacustrine and spring paleoenvironments in the Kapthurin Formation,Kenya

A number of key events occur in Africa during the middle Pleistocene including the disappearance of the Acheulian, the appearance of the Middle Stone Age, and the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. However, little is known about either the fossil or behavioral record for this critical time period. Excavation was undertaken at two middle Pleistocene archaeological sites, GnJh 42 and GnJh 50. These sites are located in close proximity to a large fresh water spring, a focal point on the landscape that supported a diverse plant and animal community. The lithic assemblages are dominated by flakes and cores, and lack all formal tools. However, the oldest evidence for systematic blade production can be found at these sites, indicating that important technological innovations were appearing at this time. Tendency to focus on the presence or absence of formal tools, means that assemblages of this age, lacking diagnostic artifacts, are typically subsumed within the Acheulian technocomplex. This practice disguises actual patterns of innovation and technological evolution. It is critical not to overlook this, as small-scale technological innovation allowed for more behavioral flexibility in response to rapid environmental change in a arid, mosaic environment.     

Boats on Bark: an Analysis of Groote Eylandt Aboriginal Bark-Paintings featuring Macassan Praus from the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition, Northern Territory, Australia

This paper examines a group of Aboriginal bark-paintings featuring Macassan prau s that were collected in 1948 during the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. These paintings were studied in an effort to understand issues related to Aboriginal and Macassan cross-cultural interaction, stylistic adaptation and change, and maritime technologies. Furthermore it is one example in which the collaborative efforts of maritime and Indigenous archaeologies can achieve a more holistic technological and stylistic cross-analysis of watercraft imagery.
© 2009 The Authors