Abstract
This chapter points to the difficulty decision makers have in categorising peoples and places. National parks are areas governed by specific rules, which generally prohibit human beings from living within their borders: their categorisation in terms of both spatial boundaries and management rules can either label local dwellers as “encroachers” or legal inhabitants. Similarly, the category of “indigenous peoples” is the product of a political decision that gives or denies certain rights to the groups concerned. This paper is about the links between these two categories of space and people, urban national parks and indigenous peoples. It compares the spatial and political impacts of the categorisation of peoples in Mumbai, Nairobi, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. Ethnicity is explored as a marker of environmental governmentality. As such it can be used, recognised or refused in various commercial, political or social enterprises.
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- 1.
Writ petition no. 925 of 2000, judgement September 15, 2003.
- 2.
Opening ceremony of the National Khoisan Consultative Conference, March 29, 2001. The term “Khoisan” is a relatively recent invention, coined in 1928 by Leonard Schultze as a collective category for early hunter-gatherer and herding peoples in southern Africa. It increasingly prompts tension and controversy.
- 3.
The reinstatement of traditional authorities (Chap. 12 of the Constitution) did not originally refer to Khoisan authorities, because of their “non-survival” to colonisation and apartheid (Mukundi 2009). Yet the Khoisan Renaissance led to the creation of the National Khoisan Council in 1999. Its negotiations with the South African government resulted in the Traditional Leadership and Khoi-San Bill. Revamped repeatedly, the Bill presented to Parliament is strongly disputed.
- 4.
http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/o-brasil-indigena-ibge, visited on 26/04/2016.
- 5.
Some San communities, claiming that their people have been especially marginalised, even in comparison with the Khoikhoi, are beginning to assert a distinct identity, encouraging the use of “Khoi and San” as opposed to “Khoisan” or “Khoi-San” in official references.
- 6.
The issue of Coloured registration and identity is a complex one. Within the Coloured category, there existed various subgroups, including Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua, Nama, and “other Coloured”. The Khoisan community was not neatly categorised within one of these groups, but instead individuals with slightly different heritages were classified in different subgroups. Those of Khoikhoi and Afrikaner descent, for example, often classified themselves as Griqua, whilst those with a stronger slave heritage tended to be classified as Cape Malays (Mitchell 2012).
- 7.
Tijuca and Table Mountain are intermediary cases: their original population was evicted during colonial times, as happened in Nairobi, but that process took place long before the creation of the national park, even though, in Tijuca, conservation was already the reason given for the eviction of the local (rich non-Indian) population between 1845 and 1860.
- 8.
For an overview of the tensions between the park and traditional healers over plants, see http://livelihoods.org.za/projects/informal-economy-of-biodiversity.
- 9.
True, the Maasai Mara National Reserve, not very far from Nairobi, has its name linked with the Maasai tribe. But it is a “national reserve”, not a “national park”, with a status that allows more local management by the county and the neighbouring communities.
- 10.
Recent developments show some schools beginning to revive the Khoi or San language use, and new books in these vernaculars are being published. In Schmidsdrift, there is a Khoisan radio station, XK-FM, with an estimated 5,000 listeners concentrated in the Northern Cape. Programmes are broadcast in the !Xhu and Khwe languages. Furthermore, the Pan South African Language Board currently claims to promote the development and use of Khoi, Nama and San languages (Mitchell 2012).
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Belaidi, N., Gaudry, KH., Landy, F. (2018). Categorisation of People and Places, Indigenous Peoples and Urban National Parks: Between Eviction, Instrumentality and Empowerment. In: Landy, F. (eds) From Urban National Parks to Natured Cities in the Global South. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8462-1_5
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