Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)

industry, like bed and breakfasts and restaurants, but
the indigenous population is largely resistant. 143 When
interviewed, they say that they are not interested in
the market economy and just want enough food and
money for their expenses; what are most important to
the Taroko people are their land and their traditional
lifestyles, which are unlikely to be returned to them in
the near future. 144
There are a number of indigenous organizations
that have been fighting for local land rights, most
notably those in Latin America. In the 1990s,
indigenous rights non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) throughout the region made significant
attempts to map, demarcate, and title the lands of
the indigenous populations. These efforts were fairly
successful in certain parts of Colombia, Peru, and
Brazil, but they ran into resistance in other countries,
like Chile and Argentina. Unfortunately, even in the
countries where these efforts had some success, the
indigenous populations did not win full land rights. in
many instances where these NGOs won indigenous
titles to local lands, the territories that were granted
to the indigenous peoples did not cover all of the land
that they utilized for their economic activities, leaving
many in the same situation in which they began.
Additionally, armed conflict in some countries, most
notably Colombia, has forced indigenous populations
off of their lands, erasing any benefits they had won
from gaining title to the land. 145
Limited progress has also been made in certain
countries in rectifying past disregard for indigenous
land. A new land policy in uganda, for example,
promises compensation for past and future land
seizures, though the exact method and amount of
compensation have yet to be determined. This new
land policy also seeks to increase indigenous land
ownership by simplifying the process for members of
indigenous communities to apply to gain official title
for the land. this land policy has not yet passed the
Uganda legislature, however. 146 Nevertheless, this
first step gives hope that governments in the future
will take indigenous land rights into account when
determining national policy.
Some suggest that the international community
should not focus on local land rights when seeking
to improve the economic situation of indigenous
peoples. Roger Riddell, for example, argues that
so many indigenous people have already forsaken
their ancestral lands and traditional occupations
for urban life and employment and that our efforts
should primarily attempt to help indigenous migrants
in those urban locations. 147 The reason, however,
that so many indigenous people have migrated to
urban areas at an increasingly rapid pace is that they
have been forced off of their ancestral lands or that,
because of the global economy, they are unable to
subsist on these lands alone. If the international
community works to protect indigenous lands and
make them viable for economic subsistence, then the
problem of indigenous populations in urban areas will
lessen.
Lack of Indigenous Civic Participation
One of the major problems that anthropologists
and activists have discovered with previous failed
attempts to assist the economic and human
development of indigenous peoples is the lack of
participation by indigenous peoples in the drafting
and debate of plans that are intended to assist them.
When indigenous populations are excluded from
the development discussion, subsequent policies
either fail to recognize their interests at all or initiate
action that is harmful to them. Policies that promote
general economic growth, which primarily affect
the wealthy and the majority ethnic population, are
different from those that assist the development
of indigenous populations, but many poverty
reduction strategies do not make this distinction
and only involve plans to increase general growth. 148
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