The View from Tindouf: Western Saharan Women and the Calculation of Autochthony

Abstract

The International Court of Justice in the Western Sahara case determined autochthony, an anthropological and legal term, to legitimate and write the “local” Self into its indigenous historiography and sovereign territory. Simultaneously, the Sahrawi vernacular body and voice were forbidden in the court’s representations while the regional and global Other adjudicated upon it. This anthropological chapter looks out from Tindouf as just one indigenous “locale” and illuminates the web of many nomadic milieux across the region, to help explain how “the Sahrawi” has come about. Ethnographic insights into kinship demonstrate how nomadic social networks grounded in the “strength of weak ties” and women’s political architecture have maintained a resolute resolve for self-determination among a widely cast geographical assemblage of different tribes. While the war drags on in the regional and global domains, Sahrawi customary asabiyah continually generates ever-wider webs of kinship ties and strengthens ideas of self-determination at the local level.