ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the dynamic scholarship following the rise of the indigenous rights movement in the 1980s and 1990s. At the beginning of the indigenous turn in the 1980s, scholars and activists devoted substantial energy to defining indigeneity. The chapter explains four themes that are animating scholarship today: neoliberal multiculturalism; indigenous relations to natural resources; gender and intersectionality; and the ontological turn. In each of these areas, scholars have questioned naturalized notions of difference, pointing out that the category of indigenous can only be understood in relation to other discourses (like neoliberalism or modernity) or other categories (like gender or class). The fact that indigenous visions of human/nature relations are silenced or seen as totally exterior to politics or science is further proof of the hegemony of Western notions of modernity. For scholars following indigenous peoples' struggles over natural resources, difference plays a more complicated role.
