Indigenous Peoples in the Capitalist World System: Researching, Knowing, and Promoting Social Justice

The paper critically examines how indigenous peoples all over the world have been terrorized, exterminated, abused, and misused by those ethnonations that control nation-states in the capitalist world system. The homelands, economic and natural resources of indigenous peoples were expropriated and transferred to colonial settlers and their descendants and collaborators that have no interest to protect the political, economic, civil, and social rights that are articulated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Since the indigenous peoples are not represented in academia and media institutions, their voices are muzzled and hidden and most people are misinformed and know nothing or little about them. The paper attempts to inform the world community about the plight of these stateless peoples and to search for ways of implementing universal human rights and rights of indigenous peoples by supporting their respective social justice movements.