ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the consequences of contemporary global events on Indigenous peoples. While the overwhelming forces that threaten Indigenous peoples cannot be simplified, over looked or ignored, it is also worth analysing the extent to which globalization has provided a space for resistance and contestation. In 1994 the United Nations General Assembly launched the first International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples and subsequently the second one, which aims to promote a whole range of social, cultural and economic initiatives concerning Indigenous peoples. Kuper argues that the INGO Survival International reflects a move back to regarding Indigenous peoples as primitive peoples or 'noble savages', whose fragile, primordial and ancient way of life must be protected. Denouncing it as a threat to Indigenous ways of lives and the environment, local Mapuche communities and the nearby non-Indigenous towns of the Region de Los Rios, southern Chile, have raised stiff opposition to the building of hydroelectric power plants.
