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ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004 In the July 2003 issue of Current Anthropology, Adam Kuper vehemently attacked the indigenous peoples’ movement, claiming it to be retrograde, anti-progressive and right wing. He has given these views extensive publicity by speaking on BBC radio and having his article reprinted in the New Humanist, illustrated by a cartoon that forcefully equates indigenous peoples’ struggles with European fascism (Kuper 2003b, BBC 2003). As an analysis of the international indigenous peoples’ movement and of the particular situations of certain indigenous peoples, Kuper’s polemic is misleading in a number of ways, and would perhaps be better ignored. However, as an example of the potential academic arguments can have to reinforce discourse that serves to conceal discrimination against such peoples, the article must be taken seriously. Its potential for ‘spin’ is confirmed by the recent explicit and implicit promotion of Kuper’s conclusions by organizations wishing to justify actions that may be in conflict with the rights of indigenous people. Kuper’s position has dismayed many professional anthropologists working with indigenous peoples and prompted some of them, ourselves included, to write to Current Anthropology to correct inaccuracies and refute certain key claims (Asch & Sampson, Kenrick & Lewis, Saugestad, and Turner, all forthcoming in Current Anthropology 45[2]). In the present article we draw on these letters and offer what we believe to be better ways of understanding the indigenous peoples’ movement, through an approach that is not essentialist and that does not deny the acute problems those peoples labelling themselves as ‘indigenous’ are concerned to address.