Indigenous people and regional resource rights: insights from three mining regimes in north-eastern India

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the socio-geographic assertions of regional resource rights by indigenous people in a demarcated indigenous region in north-east India. It analyses local media content to gain insights into the process of discursive (de)legitimation targeting three mining regimes. The results uncover (de)legitimation attempts using multiple themes that are grounded in the physical and institutional features of the region. These themes are flexibly deployed to advance the overarching discourses of protective separation and developmental integration. Further, the results demonstrate how the process of discursive (de)legitimation influences, and is influenced by, significant internal disparities, leading to varying degrees of indigenous convergence.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous regions
• tribal regions
• regional mining rights
• regional resource rights

JEL:

• O13
• R1
• Z1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the media reporters on the ground whose work is used extensively in this paper. I also thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their insightful comments and suggestions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.