Yes, the concept of ownership of land is not always congruous with various tribe’s ways of understanding the world, it may be seen as grossly immoral to many of them! Unfortunately, disappropriation of land is the global norm when it comes to indigenous people, it’s a real struggle. Many NGOs try to fill the gap of lobbying on behalf of indigenous peoples to influence government policy, which is often geared towards allocating concessions of land to industry/conservation.

Yes, cash is complicated. However if they have been forbidden to hunt and restricted in their traditional roaming lifestyle then the other alternative if cash is not to be involved is to farm (which they may not have the culture and skills to immediately assume) or to directly receive food without cash transaction, or I guess starving is also an option. In the living history museum project I mentioned it was really good that a percentage went to communal use whilst a percentage went to individual incomes. That the quality of food might not be the best is definitely an issue. Take for example the Guarani in Rio de Janeiro where I just spent a couple of years, they receive the “basic basket” from the government, and the quality of food is very poor! Cheap white flour, cheap white rice, cheap rape seed oil… basically loads of empty calories. I think the “nutrition transition” concept is quite an interesting one to think about this change in traditional diets. Having said all that I am actually rather fascinated about the complexities of how interacting with cash changes the dynamics within indigenous culture. For example, I’ve heard of several cases where projects were set up to try to help people make money from crafts (or pick x,y and z from possible NGO development activities). In the end the men coerce the women to work away at these crafts and then the men just spend the money on cigarettes and alcohol, and because the women have been working so hard on the crafts they are forced to neglect other homesteading activities that keep things ticking over for healthy well-fed families. So in the end they end up worse off. So power and gender considerations are really important to investigate.

I suspect with the code of ethics that many of them will be rather similar. At the end of the day most people just want to be treated with a bit of basic respect!

Hmm, I hope I covered all the points you raised! Thanks for the comment!