Negotiation Nuances
Diversity and Division in American Indian Nations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raymond Orr
American Indian tribal power has typically expanded since the early 1960s. During this period, often referred to as the Self-determination Era, tribes have regained much of their earlier political centrality. As polities, tribes now wield considerable authority over their members and act as intermediaries between members and non-tribal governments. Despite such authority, scholars, leaders, and activists have identified multiple aspects of tribal authority that are imperfect or unduly limited. One rarely addressed limitation is that tribes as polities are “organizationally frozen” and mostly unable to break into smaller units while maintain recognition as legitimate. This essay identifies the inability of tribes to exercise what we call compositional flexibility and break apart to form new polities discrete of the previous tribe. We argue the absence of compositional flexibility is an important but under researched feature shaping politics. This is also odds with characteristics important to traditional forms of governance for many American Indian peoples. This essay examines how tribal division worked in previous periods and then considers how “freezing” tribes may impact political, economic and governance outcomes. It further looks at two instances in which one part of a tribe attempted to leave and be recognized as a new tribe: the Sacred Heart faction of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Ganienkeh faction of the Mohawk Nation. Though we are agnostic as to whether greater flexibility is an ultimately desirable political condition for tribes, the inability to divide is a central but less appreciated feature of contemporary American Indian politics.
Right to a New Home: A Pilot Study of Architectural Filmmaking with Syrian Refugees
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gul Kacmaz Erk
Right to life, freedom, security, equality, justice and privacy are amongst basic human rights articulated in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration (www.humanrights.com). While these concepts are easier to define for a long-term member of society, they are more complicated for new minorities who are forced to displacement because of conflict, war, climate change, economy, etc. Whether they perceive it as permanent or temporary, refugees stay in their new “home” for an average of 26 years (www.unhcr.org/576408cd7.pdf), which urges the need for integration and inclusion. The paper outlines a pilot study concentrating on migration, architecture and the arts (film). This study, which is the “trial and error phase” of a larger practice-based participatory research project, tests the scholars’ ideas about the refugees’ “lived spaces” including their homes, streets, workplaces, as well as the places they go for education, shopping and leisure. Carried out with refugees who are amongst 3,548,273 registered Syrians in Turkey (https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/113, updated: 16.08.2018), the study uses filmmaking to understand and share their architectural/urban needs and challenges in Balat, Istanbul. By proposing the refugees an opportunity to make short films about the public and private spaces in their (new) environment, it not only aims to provide them a skill and medium to be heard but also to invite their (Turkish) neighbours to see them as equals. This might be a step in defining misconceptions around these new members of the society, breaking down some of the barriers and, in the long run, towards integration and celebration of diversity.
Rising Global Awareness : Venezuelan Diaspora and the Current Refugee Crisis in Colombia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session J. R. Pico
Diaspora refers to involuntary mass dispersion of a population from its native territories. Current living standards in Venezuela are incomprehensible under President Maduro and his loyalists’ economic management. Oil prices are at an all-time low and inflation is the highest in the world. UN human rights experts reported that by the end of 2017, an average family needed sixty-three times the minimum wage to purchase basic staple foods for their household. Venezuelans feel the effects of devastating poverty in the form of malnutrition and malaria outbreaks, but the report claims they rarely receive treatment services because of medicine and health care shortages. Extreme resource scarcity has bred widespread violence and criminal activity. The disastrous economic meltdown in Venezuela has led to one of the largest refugee crises in Latin American history, with neighboring Colombia receiving the biggest amount of refugees. According to UN Refugee Agency report, Venezuelans irregularly present in Colombia has documented roughly 440,000 entering the country from April 6th to June 8th 2016. Twenty-seven percent of those refugees are children. They claim the numbers have increased to be over one million refugees by October 2018 since Colombia shares an extensive border of 2,219 kilometers with Venezuela and many refugees cross through the jungles because they cannot afford proper documentation such as a passport to leave Venezuela. I am a Humanities Professor from Colombia that lives in Indiana, USA who has researched and studied this human tragedy very closely and would like to share this experience with the world.
Deliberating Diverse Refugee Narrations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sivaram Vemuri
The purpose of this study is to shift the policy debate away from adopting a uniform perspective to refugee management based on the visions of the ‘fractured’ other to a more inclusive policy of managing diversities. Based on learnings from diverse refugee narratives and adopting an evolutionary perspective of human movements in the context of the history of human kind (Harari. 2005) refugee policy should be broadened and focussed more broadly on managing diversities of human populations. The paper is organized as follows: First, the study identifies the turning points in the symbiosis between refugees and their embeddedness in new societies. This is followed by an examination of the role of hope in such embeddedness. The important role played by hope is examined in the life of refugees when they pursue ways to make a better future for themselves and their families. The research draws upon business psychology literature to examine similarities between hope and entrepreneurial characteristics which leads to an investigation of what is recently referred to as refugee entrepreneurs. Refugee Entrepreneurs (RE) are refugees who are also entrepreneurs. Increasingly they are moving centre stage in deliberations in entrepreneurial literature. Based on the thematic analysis of the case-based topography of RE (Heilbrunn, Freiling and Harima.2019) the study suggests a broad spectrum of refugee narrations. Finally, the exploration focuses on the diversity of narrations of refugee experiences, including RE, and offers guidelines
