Translating global indigeneity into the Bedouin vernacular

This article explores how global indigeneity emerged among the Bedouin in the Israeli Negev Desert. This population - part of the Palestinian Arab minority and holders of Israeli citizenship - has been subjected to various attempts at settlement and, since the establishment of Israel, has experienced dispossession through denial of recognition of land title. Yet the appropriation of indigeneity remains quite recent, and has brought with it new complications and frictions as an identity consecrated in international law. This transnational socio-legal study traces how global indigeneity has been remade in the Bedouin vernacular. Working with Sally Merry's heuristic framework concerning how rights-based identities travel and translate, this study demonstrates how identities do not simply fit a preexisting reality but must be ‘translated' and ‘tried on’ in ways that demand new kinds of knowledge production and performances.