presumed betterment that comes with ‘civilization’.

irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.

Critics of tribal peoples’ rights often assert that those who support them want the people to remain poor. But that is not what is at stake at all: it is rather a case of trying to prevent people being driven away from self-sufficiency and towards impoverishment by others taking their land and resources.

Ideas, things and even individuals can cross in both directions, but however porous and elastic the boundary is – and both are major components in its strength – it must retain its integrity if the group is to survive as a definable people.

When Margaret Thatcher famously declared that there was no such thing as society, she meant that the population should be looked at only as individuals, that there was no underlying social fabric which bound them into something which extended beyond themselves.

a group which has had ultimate control of their lands taken by later arrivals: they are subject to the domination of others. Used in this sense, descent is less important than political perception.

prehistory,

enforced schooling is the most powerful weapon used by governments and missionaries to instil in tribal children values which are different, often contradictory, to those held by their own societies.

Real culture is not a dead mask. It is alive,