Host: The Association of Japanese Geographers
Name : Annual Meeting of the Association of Japanese Geographers, Autumn 2021
Date : September 18, 2021 - September 20, 2021
This study examines the process and significance of the construction of a place of memory by indigenous people in the external area of their homeland, focusing on the relationship between indigeneity and space, with special reference to the commemorations by the Ainu people at the Namboku-no-to monument in Okinawa and at Shiba Park in Tokyo. On the one hand, these commemorations outside of Hokkaido Island have had several problems, some of which have been caused by the view linking their indigeneity to the island, which was historically one of their homelands. On the other hand, solidarity with non-Ainu people has been crucial in the construction of places of memory emphasising their indigeneity in the areas that are not their home. Ainu people’s places of memory located in the non-homelands for them have the potential to liberate their historically constructed indigeneity from the local space of Hokkaido and to reposition it as related to space on the national scale.
