Prof Laura Rival (University of Oxford)
Alejarse Is Not Aislarse: Constructing Anthropological Solidarity With Indigenous Strategies For Legal Empowerment
This paper builds on the expert witness statement I was asked to write as part of my work for the Petitioners’ legal team that is challenging the state of Ecuador in the Case No. 12.979, Tagaeri-Taromenane Indigenous Peoples vs. Ecuador. The case was publicly heard at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Brasilia on the 22nd of August 2022 during its 150th Regular Session. It was the first time in the history of the Court that a state was being judged for failing in its duty to protect the Human Rights of Indigenous peoples in ‘voluntary isolation.’
The paper explores the process of preparing the expert witness statement in response to the needs for cultural expertise of both the legal team and the Court. It details the ways in which anthropological knowledge was mobilised in the process. On the basis of this experience and the ethnographic rendering of it, the paper goes on to revisit older debates about the demands of activist research and cultural critique, as well as recent calls to reposition engaged anthropology.
Bio
Professor Laura Rival has researched and taught the Anthropology Nature, Society and Development at the University of Oxford for over twenty years. The empirically grounded, theoretically oriented, and policy-relevant research she has carried out aims to renew anthropological questions about the relationship between environment and society. Empirically, this work is grounded in ethnographic research with the Huaorani (or Waorani, Ecuadorian Amazon); interdisciplinary research with the Makushi (central Guyana); and policy-oriented research with a number of Central and South American Indigenous and peasant communities.
Both her writings on the interface between anthropology and interdisciplinarity and her current thinking about the climate emergency explore the ways in which Indigenous and peasant struggles defy received ideas about modernity. By opening the world to new rights and moral claims, they lead to the emergence of novel political subjects and cultural subjectivities.
Huaorani transformations in 21st century Ecuador. Treks to the future of time, her latest book on the Waorani, was published by University of Arizona Press in 2016. She is currently finishing a book on the contribution of agroecology movements to climate adaptation and cultural evolution.