Resumen de Indigenousness, human rights, ethnicity, language and power

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

• Skutnabb-Kangas agrees here with Fishman in asserting the important place that power holds in cultural autonomy. But, at the same time, Skutnabb-Kangas disagrees with Fishman’s optimistic claims regarding the growing acceptance of the right of Indigenous/tribal peoples and minorities/minoritized groups to public resources to operate institutions in their languages. To do so, SkutnabbKangas refers to how the different conventions and frameworks in support of minority languages create only minimal legal obligations and offer minimal public State resources, if any. Specifically, she uses the case of the Kurds in North Kurdistan to describe how the Turkish state’s rejection of the rights of Kurds to self-rule and self-determination has resulted in strengthening the link between their language, ethnicity and land/territory. And the case of the tribals in India and Nepal illustrates how multilingual education has been increasingly embraced as important to their cultural survival, as well as their structural incorporation. The question of power is essential to any discussion of cultural autonomy.