Autochtonie(s) et sociétés contemporaines. La diversité culturelle, entre division et cohésion sociale

If historical approach which enables us to understand that behind the substantive indigenous which commonly refers to «the people who live on their place of origin», very different realities have existed throughout the time, nowadays, this notion is only partially valid since the situation of Indigenous people in America and Oceania is quite different from those in Africa or Asia. Ethnography and sociology and even political science cast a different light on this topic. The apparition and evolution of the term «indigenous» in law can also be an indication of the way the dominating power has looked upon populations considered as marginal and the place which is attributed to them in a given society. This could result in a potential right to specific institutions, to an education following the tradition of the group which provides the indigenous with a right to be different. The formal recognition of the indigenous statute thus gives access to a specific treatment and even to new sources of funding. If such a process, at a local level, can encourage new forms of appropriation of the collective memory and tradition, at a more global level, it stimulates the emergence of categories and social partitions associated with specific and more often than not exclusive rights which may have little to do with the notion of a State. However, far from reducing itself to the latter, such a cultural diversity can also constitute a major input to the organisation of the social and political life. The Cosmo visions and the social organisation which they suggest sustain the perspective of a social link which could be (re)activated while rethinking the Nature/Culture relationship