The Long Shadow of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous Autonomy Demands

How resistance to extraction shaped Indigenous demands for autonomy, integration, or assimilation

From the onset of colonialism, Indigenous communities have faced seizure of their land, labor, and resources by non-Indigenous actors. In The Long Shadow of Extraction, Christopher Carter argues that the native groups’ resistance to extraction took distinct forms, and that this variation explains why some communities demanded autonomy while others demanded integration or assimilation. Countering existing scholarship that assumes a universal demand for autonomy, Carter shows that some Indigenous communities in fact refused government offers to recognize their local political authority and longstanding economic institutions.

Carter argues that contemporary Indigenous demands were forged in early twentieth-century efforts to resist extraction. Drawing on two emblematic Latin American cases, Peru and Bolivia, Carter shows that in communities where traditional Indigenous leaders organized resistance, ethnic mobilization occurred and gave rise to enduring demands for autonomy, or state recognition of Indigenous identities and institutions. In communities where unions and leftist parties organized resistance, class-based mobilization became the norm. This led communities to reject autonomy and demand instead integration (state recognition of Indigenous identities but not Indigenous institutions) or assimilation (state recognition of neither Indigenous identities nor institutions). Carter’s groundbreaking account of Indigenous resistance has important implications for understanding not only the historical emergence of autonomy but variations in identity-based mobilization in multiethnic democracies.

Christopher L. Carter is assistant professor of politics and the John L. Nau III Assistant Professor in the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia.