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Indigenous at last! Ainu Grassroots Organizing and the Indigenous Peoples Summit in Ainu Mosir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Ann-Elise Lewallen
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On June 6, 2008, Ainu people across Japan achieved a long-sought goal: they were unanimously granted recognition as an indigenous people by both houses of the Diet with passage of the “Resolution calling for the Recognition of the Ainu People as an Indigenous People of Japan.” Although the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) was approved in September 2007 with a “yes” vote from Japan, the government continued to refuse indigenous recognition for Ainu people, citing the absence of an international standard for indigeneity. This June lawmakers forced the government's hand by adopting the resolution; the Cabinet Secretariat accepted the resolution on the same day. It would seem that the Cabinet Secretariat was the last to realize what international society and indigenous peoples across the world had acknowledged since the 1980s and what Hokkaido governor's Utari Affairs Council had determined in 1988; that Ainu rightfully belonged to the community of indigenous peoples. Japan ‘s plan to host the G8 Summit in Hokkaido during July and much-anticipated global attention were undoubtedly the primary factors in the hasty adoption of the resolution; the Indigenous Peoples Summit in Ainu Mosir created added pressure vis-à-vis grassroots mobilization. As such, the G8 Summit made possible a critical moment – a moment for articulating agency – whereby a new generation of grassroots Ainu leaders were able to launch new initiatives, by harnessing the wave of international attention focused on Hokkaido in early July to articulate a new politics of Ainu indigeneity, which this time had received the imprimatur of Japanese officialdom.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 11 , November 2008 , e27
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
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Copyright © The Authors 2008

References

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