Stoking the Flames of Ethnic Politics? The Double Bind of Indigeneity in Post/Neo-colonial Myanmar.

INDIGENOUS ethnic identity; POLITICS & ethnic relations; FLAME; POLICY discourse; INDIGENOUS peoples

In this article, I discuss the challenges ethnically non-Burman activists in Myanmar encounter in articulating a politics of Indigeneity in the face of Myanmar's post/neo-colonial policies and discourse of national unity and equality. I highlight the limitations and potentials of efforts to reframe the global concept of Indigeneity in a non-European settler colonial context where the state dismisses that concept by declaring all its citizens "indigenous". I argue that Indigenous activists in Myanmar are caught in a particular kind of double bind that makes it difficult to make any claim of distinction as "Indigenous Peoples" relative to dominant ethnic Burmans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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