Three news stories from different regions allow us to read a single tension. In the Ibero-American space, Indigenous languages are being organised as a question of governance and not only of heritage. In South Africa, African migrants whose lives are deeply rooted are once again produced as internal foreigners. In Thailand, the forest appears as a living archive, a community territory and an object of conservation funding.
The shared question is only simple in appearance. Who has the right to name, belong to and care for a place.
Indigenous languages and regional governance
The Regional IIALI Report 2024-2026, published by FILAC on 19 May 2026, presents the Ibero-American Institute of Indigenous Languages as a regional language-governance space that is still consolidating. It is best not read as if it spoke of a homogeneous Latin America. The IIALI operates within a concrete Ibero-American architecture, with the participation of Indigenous peoples, organisations, international bodies, academic networks and states with varying degrees of involvement.
What matters in the report is not only the defence of Indigenous languages. It is the way that defence is framed. The document identifies a shift from state-centred approaches towards more polycentric schemes, a territorialisation of language policy and a more direct connection between technical diagnosis and public action.
From linguistic anthropology, this approach helps avoid a frequent mistake. An Indigenous language is not merely a grammatical system, nor a fragile piece of cultural heritage. Nor can it be reduced to a number of speakers. The notion of speech community, developed within the tradition of linguistic anthropology and gathered in texts such as María Concepción Gómez Rodríguez’s “Breve aproximación a la antropología lingüística”, reminds us that languages live in practices, norms, variations, situations and social relations.
That nuance matters. To speak of Indigenous languages is not to speak of closed objects, but of communities that use, negotiate and transmit ways of life under unequal historical conditions. That is why the strength of the IIALI is not to celebrate diversity as a slogan. It is the attempt to translate it into capacities, institutions, data, programmes and funding.
Recognising a language is not enough. Conditions must be created so that those who speak it can go on building a world with it.
South Africa and the production of internal foreignness
The recent xenophobic violence in South Africa shows how far belonging can be broken even when a person has grown up, worked, studied and built their life in a country. Polity.org.za, carrying the Reuters wire, documented the case of Princess Adjei, born in Ghana and raised from childhood in South Africa, whose salon in Durban was looted during anti-migrant protests. Her story condenses a wider violence, in which African people are treated as intruders in a society that is also part of their biography. Human Rights Watch had warned in May of new waves of attacks in South Africa. New Waves of Xenophobic Attacks.
The March and March movement appears in several reports and complaints as one of the channels of pressure against the foreign population, with an unofficial 30 June ultimatum directed at undocumented migration. That deadline does not belong to the South African state, but its circulation has produced real fear. The border, here, is not only in the law. It is also manufactured in rumours, marches, neighbourhood checkpoints, accusations and threats.
The death tolls must be treated with caution. Mozambique has reported five nationals killed in xenophobic attacks, while South African sources have confirmed fewer cases or have disputed the attribution of some deaths. The Reuters wire distributed by Polity also recorded the South African government’s warning about the diplomatic and regional damage of these attacks, in a report on the position of Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, available in this dispatch. The dispute over the figures is not a minor detail. When violence affects already precarious bodies, public accounting also becomes contested ground.
The case is not new either. Human Rights Watch recalls the violence of 2008 and the later rise of groups such as Operation Dudula. Laura Planas Gifra’s study, “Securitizing Migration in South Africa”, helps read the turn that converts migration into a security threat. From the anthropology of politics and of migration, South Africa forces us to think about how a post-apartheid nation can reproduce new forms of exclusion within the continent itself.
Internal foreignness does not appear all at once. It is produced through discourses, bureaucracies, everyday surveillance and tolerance towards vigilante groups.
Thailand and the political economy of the forest
In Thailand, UNESCO Bangkok and the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre have promoted the Field School model with Karen Pgakenyaw/Pwo and Chao Lay communities. The 2023-2025 pilot project worked with seven communities and documented knowledge linked to mushrooms, rotational farming, place names, ecological memory, intergenerational transmission and relations with species such as the dugong. UNESCO explains this work in Lessons from the field. Safeguarding biocultural diversity in Thailand.
This approach makes it possible to move beyond a poor idea of heritage. Living heritage is not only dance, ritual or craft turned into an inventory. It is also situated ecological knowledge, territorial practice, local classification, accumulated experience and a way of relating to non-human beings.
But the Thai case demands care. Conservation should not romanticise ethnic communities as if they were natural guardians of the forest. A recent article in Human Ecology, “Psychological and Social Impacts of Top-down Conservation Initiatives on Indigenous Communities”, shows how Thai public discourse has idealised Karen communities as forest protectors while blaming Hmong communities for deforestation. Both images simplify reality. They serve to order the territory morally and to decide which communities seem compatible with conservation and which are presented as a threat.
The 2026 call for proposals on Thungyai-Huai Kha Khaeng adds another layer. UNESCO proposes strengthening community governance of forests and territories in a landscape of very high biodiversity, but the programme is funded by Cartier for Nature within Investments in Tiger Landscapes. The call itself, published by UNESCO Bangkok, presents the tiger as an umbrella species and community governance as part of a conservation strategy.
That fact does not invalidate the project, but it does open a key question. Who funds community participation, with what grammar of value and under which conservation priorities. The tiger works as a global emblem, biodiversity as a language of funding and territorial rights as a management instrument. For an anthropological gaze, that mixture cannot be read only as virtuous cooperation. It is also part of a political economy of conservation, where private philanthropy, international bodies, the state, communities and biodiversity markets negotiate what counts as protectable nature.
The name of Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen, a Karen activist last seen on 17 April 2014 in the custody of staff of Kaeng Krachan National Park, reminds us that the relationship between conservation and community rights can involve coercion, criminalisation and violence. Billy had supported Karen communities in litigation against Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn over forced evictions and the burning of homes inside the park, as AP documented.
In September 2023, almost a decade later, the Central Criminal Court for Corruption Cases acquitted the four accused people of the most serious charges, including abduction and murder. Only Chaiwat, the former park chief and by then head of the National Parks Office, was sentenced to three years in prison for failing to report Billy’s detention to the police. The three subordinate officials were acquitted of all charges.
Punishment, then, came not for the disappearance but for an administrative breach. That nuance reinforces the central point of this block. Speaking of community forests in Thailand requires holding two dimensions together. Living knowledge and political risk.
Closing
In the Ibero-American space, Indigenous languages are calling for institutions of their own. In South Africa, the nation produces foreignness within the continent itself. In Thailand, the forest appears as a living archive and as a contested field.
Three different scenes, a single anthropological question. Who has the authority to name, belong to and care for a territory.
References
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FILAC. Regional IIALI Report 2024-2026, 19 May 2026.
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Gómez Rodríguez, María Concepción. “Breve aproximación a la antropología lingüística”, Interlingüística, 14, 2003, pp. 467-472.
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Polity.org.za, Reuters wire. “African migrants with deep roots in South Africa flee xenophobic attacks”, 15 June 2026.
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Human Rights Watch. “South Africa. New Waves of Xenophobic Attacks”, 20 May 2026.
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Polity.org.za, Reuters wire. “Xenophobic attacks are hurting South Africa’s image abroad, says minister”, 15 June 2026.
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CNBC Africa, Reuters wire. “South Africa’s Ramaphosa vows crackdown on groups behind xenophobic attacks”, 7 June 2026.
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Planas Gifra, Laura. “Securitizing Migration in South Africa. From Welcoming Refugees to Dealing with Security Threats”, New Political Science, 47(2), 2025, pp. 205-225.
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UNESCO Bangkok. “Lessons from the field. Safeguarding biocultural diversity in Thailand”, 1 October 2024, updated 28 May 2025.
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Haenssgen, Marco J. et al. “Psychological and Social Impacts of Top-down Conservation Initiatives on Indigenous Communities. Lessons from the Announcement of two Royal Decrees in Thailand”, Human Ecology, 2026.
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UNESCO Bangkok. “Call for Proposals. Enhancing Community Forest and Territory Management to Promote the Conservation of the Thungyai-Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuaries, a UNESCO World Heritage Site”, 5 February 2026, updated 5 March 2026.
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AP. “Senior Thai national park official, 3 others, acquitted in 9-year-old case of missing activist”, 28 September 2023.