A century ago, the idea of indigenous people as an active force in the contemporary world was unthinkable. It was assumed that native societies everywhere would be swept away by the forward march of the West and its own peculiar brand of progress and civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indigenous social movements wield new power, and groups as diverse as Australian Aborigines, Ecuadorian Quichuas, and New Zealand Maoris, have found their own distinctive and assertive ways of living in the present world. Indigenous Experience Today draws together essays by prominent scholars in anthropology and other fields examining the varied face of indigenous politics in Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, and the United States, amongst others. The book challenges accepted notions of indigeneity as it examines the transnational dynamics of contemporary native culture and politics around the world.

Orin Starn is Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA.Marisol de la Cadena is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California at Davis.

Introduction; Part 1: Indigenous Identities, Old and New; one: Indigenous Voice; two: Tibetan Indigeneity: Translations, Resemblances, and Uptake; three: ''Our Struggle Has Just Begun: Experiences of Belonging and Mapuche Formations of Self; Part 2: Territory and Questions of Sovereignty; four: Indigeneity as Relational Identity: The Construction of Australian Land Rights; five: Choctaw Tribal Sovereignty at the Turn of the 21st Century; six: Sovereignty's Betrayals; Part 3: Indigeneity Beyond Borders; seven: Varieties of Indigenous Experience: Diasporas, Homelands, Sovereignties; eight: Diasporic Media and Hmong/Miao Formulations of Nativeness and Displacement; nine: Bolivian Indigeneity in Japan: Folklorized Music Performance; Part 4: The Boundary Politics of Indigeneity; ten: Indian Indigeneities: Adivasi Engagements with Hindu Nationalism in India; eleven: Ever-Diminishing Circles: The Paradoxes of Belonging in Botswana; twelve: The Native and the Neoliberal Down Under: Neoliberalism and "Endangered Authenticities"; Part 5: Indigenous Self-Representation, Non-Indigenous Collaborators and the Politics of Knowledge; thirteen: Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains; fourteen: The Terrible Nearness of Distant Places: Making History at the National Museum of the American Indian; Afterword: Indigeneity Today