At the beginning of the year 1997, the Japanese government officially recognised the Ainu as an indigenous Japanese minority group. This was the first time in Japan that a minority ethnic group had gained specific treatment because of its ethnic differences, at least at the level of official categorisation. In the precedents of this political act, there belong very close contacts between the Ainu and the Japanese inhabitants (mainly in Hokkaido) of more than 100 years that resulted in the assimilation of the Ainu to the Japanese way of life, furthermore the Ainu's participation at international human and ethnic rights organisations and a legal case in Nibutani. The Ainu, in the 1980s, began to take part in the new ethnic movement because they recognised their own situation to be very similar to that of other ethnic groups, i.e. of the Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians or Arctic peoples. Parallel to this development, Ainu culture became, in the last decades, either a tourist attraction or museum artefacts.

This paper aims to show how this new situation influenced ethnic policy in Japan, how legal cases and human rights arguments entered the field, and what kind of role Ainu culture plays in this process. I wish to focus on the actual and changing social contexts of ethnic identity formation that have constrained the choices the Ainu could make and argue that all ethnic identity formation, claims and recognition are at any levels political. I also wish to emphasise that ethnic classification, in itself, seldom influences fundamentally people's way of life but it can be used in certain circumstances as an effective tool to draw attention to specific social situations, rights claims etc.

In order to address this complex process, I wish to concentrate on a single event: the Nibutani dam case between 1993 and 1997. In my view, this occasion can serve as an instance to show how concepts such 'culture', ethnic rights, identity and ethnic policy behave in very concrete contexts of social interactions from which they did not necessarily originate (Wilson 1997: 13). I do not wish to assume that social actions that constitute the case are in any respect representative either for the Ainu or even for Japanese institutions. I am not even sure that such actions exist. But in my opinion, these actions can be viewed as possible ones that can tell us something about the structure of ethnic interactions and the ideologies behind them.

In the following, I will sketch briefly the theoretical framework I wish to use for the analysis of the Ainu case. By this, I will emphasise the contextual and political nature of ethnic identity formation or ethnicity (Barth 1969). I also try to concentrate on the question of how different types of contexts of ethnic interaction can be identified, and how they powerfully influence the process of identity formation. I suppose that these types of contexts constrain the strategies the Ainu can and have used and also the way in which Japanese governments have handled this problem. This consideration means that by analysing ethnic identity we must exactly point to the context on which our interpretations focus. In order to narrow the field of my investigation, I will concentrate on the context of interaction between the Ainu and the Japanese, without dealing with contexts of ethnic identity formation among the Ainu. I shall examine several periods in this respect since, as I see it, to understand Ainu and Japanese ethnicity we need to go back a little time in history.

The analytical framework

Ethnic identification can take place under very different social, political and economic circumstances and it can also have different forms (Keefe 1992) but it also seems to be a direct consequence of interactions with and contact between different human groups. These groups can be of very different complexity and their position in a social hierarchy can also vary to a high degree. It is therefore no surprise to observe that these groups have not the same power to enforce their classifications, which themselves are of different nature and complexity according to their specific functions. It is important to emphasise that it is this power and not the actual content in itself that gives essence to classifications and produces effects during interactions.

The range of possible classification contexts varies from everyday interaction between roughly equal groups or individuals to those between state institutions. These latter types of social agents use the most rigid and most powerful classification systems, which are guided through disciplinary techniques for enforcing them. This kind of institutional differentiation of the social and the natural world is perhaps one of the simplest among all the possible types. It is because in the case of social institutions complexity must inevitably be reduced for political control. In this respect, it stands in sharp contrast to the much higher complexity of everyday classification systems with their easily and often shifting contents used for descriptions of socially close persons. It follows, from all these, that identity formation is continually constructed through (the different kinds of) interactions (Turney 1999: 424).

Attention should be paid to the fact that it is not always the type of the community itself that determines the kind of classification but rather the type of context in which the interaction takes place. And again, during interactions between different kind of social agents the differentiation system of the more powerful agent counts. This observation can give some hints for answering the question of why ethnic (as well as other) classifications seem so natural and essential for the agents involved. This is not too surprising for the complex institution practising political and social control because of their function as a necessary means of control, the rigidity of their structure and the sense of importance and emotions that surround them. On the other hand, the classification systems used in everyday contexts between non-dominant and close social actors were described as shifting and highly contextual in content and force. Nevertheless, minority groups often also tend to naturalise their ethnicity or cultural identity in almost the same fashion as dominant institutions do. The reason for that can be deducted from the 'enforced contextualisation' of identity formation. If a non dominant group or individual interact with a dominant one it is always the latter's frame of classification that can only be used because of the different context defining power of the two agents.

As long as the form (context) and thus the content of ethnic categorisation is influenced and controlled only by the dominant institutions, the conflicts concerning the status of the minority groups have little impact on the classification system and the political, moral position of these institutions. This is even so if the distinctions made by dominant social actors concern groups that develop their own distinctions. Controversies can affect the classification when formerly non-dominant agents begin to gain political influence. In this case, conflicts over classification closely reflect non-agreement over social order.

It would be perhaps unfair to say that dominant institutions are unable to deal with changing situations, but their interactions and conceptual tools seem to be much less flexible and situation-dependent than everyday ones. Part of the explanation for this observation can be found in the following argument. As previously mentioned, dominant institutions are too complex, removed and their social function too limited in range for handling effectively the everyday complexity of the changing world through control. In institutional settings, the importance for control increases and, at the same time, the ability to deal with complexity decreases. Institutions need, for controlling, easily identifiable social actors that are not changing in their structure and role from situation to situation, and that have at least sharp conceptual demarcations. If there are too many agents to be controlled or to be described, institutions must step back to be as abstract as possible in their categorisation and thus try to objectify the flux of social life. They need tools, therefore, to form stable categories that are able to cover the rich world of the actors' everyday behaviour. In order to identify these kinds of categories of social agents, they often refer to their power position in the social hierarchy. As we can observe throughout the world, ethnic minority groups are in most cases located at the non-dominant end of the actual social hierarchy, but already inside the territory controlled by the dominant actors, and in this respect they are unwilling to be identified and recognised as separate actors, heterogeneous groups by those dominant institutions. From this point of view, they represent at least 'local variations' for the state. In order to oppose all these considerations, to have a more fine-graded categorisation, a new conceptual tool is needed for both parts of the ethnic interaction. And this means is called 'culture'.

If we examine the contexts of ethnicity or of ethnic interactions, we may find that their content is in most cases about rights, control, maintenance of social roles, and not about ethnic symbols like costumes, songs or rites. These visible ethnic markers may, of course, play an important role in decisions as to whether some interactions should be initiated with certain groups or individuals, that is whether these individuals or groups belong to the same ethnic community or not, a feature that can be of importance in some cases. On the other hand, in most instances the interactions are about control over the use of such symbols; and also, ethnic symbols are often used in post hoc interpretations and for manipulations of a great number of social interactions. These ethnic markers, however, seldom build the central themes of ethnic ideologies as part of lived (that means cultural) experiences since they are too complex to be conceptualised by institutions with regard to their interest in control and abstract categorisation.

The question of what kind of function ethnic symbols have in ethnic ideologies of the dominant institutions is highly dependent on the specific interests and aims of these groups. Looking at the present discourses on ethnic affairs, ethnic symbols seemingly tend to dominate both minorities' and dominant groups' arguments (having close ties to 'culturalism'). This has been a comfortable position for the dominant institutions since after giving up in defining ethnic (that is other and exotic) groups in terms of status, social hierarchy, and territorial location, for instance, not too many tools remained that were consistent with the classification type they used for reducing complexity. Some of the difficulties in dealing with ethnicity, however, may stem from this stance because ethnic groups are all but material entities like hats, skirts or ritual artefacts (Corlin 1993: 51). They are instead located in people's minds as categories, arising from constantly altering social interactions and events. On the other hand, to try to transform these ever-changing events into stable cultural categories do both the dominant and the peripheral groups practise a frequent strategy in order to be able to define, to interpret or to manipulate them. During this process, both parts tend to turn to cultural elements that look firstly as historic and serve as reference points for differentiation but that at closer examination reveal their historical, constructed, and often fictitious character.

It would be very unfair, however, to narrow the use of cultural definitions only to contexts of interaction between dominant and non-dominant social actors. The strategy of reducing complexity builds a necessary condition of classification at a comparative level that is also practised in international ethnic discourses. During these, 'indigenous' people are demarcated by cultural terms pointing to their – at least former – 'traditional' and 'authentic' way of life, to their specific relationship with their environment. Yet with closer examination, this kind of classification seems to be applied to just contexts of and roles in interaction between dominant and non-dominant groups, and thus shows strong resemblance to 'peasant' status as defined by Wolf in the 1950s, as Wilson (1997: 10) remarks.

On the other hand, through analysing the negotiation processes concerning ethnic markers and ethnic classification, both the peripheral and the dominant groups' social and political position can be highlighted. This means, that during these interactions, certain claims, aims or ideologies will be articulated, the boundaries of the groups may be redrawn, individuals might be mobilised for specific goals and so on, although the contexts with their close cut constraints for the possible changes have been already set by political or economic processes.

The Nibutani dam case

On the 28^th of March 1997, a local court in Sapporo recognised the Ainu as an indigenous minority of Japan. This was the first acknowledgement of this type in Japan's history. The court's recognition was shortly followed "on the 8^th May 1997" by the Congress' 'Act on the Promotion of Ainu Culture and the Dissemination and Education of Knowledge on Ainu Tradition', which promotes research on Ainu culture and language, and preservation of Ainu tradition and customs. This replaced the Hokkaido's Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899. On the other hand, special human rights are not mentioned in the law, in contrast to the court's decision.

The Ainu Law of 1997 can be interpreted as the direct consequence of the court's decision. Nevertheless, it had also some other precedents.

• In 1984, the Hokkaido Ainu Association – the biggest Ainu organisation – presented a bill to the government for the recognition of the Ainu as an ethnic group with a right for self-determination and demanded the replacing of the Hokkaido's Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899.
• An Ainu activist (Chikap Mieko) brought a lawsuit in 1985 at the Tokyo District Court against a photographer and a publishing company claiming that her photos were published without her permission and that the Ainu in the book were depicted in derogatory terms.
• Ainu delegates worked on the 1989 ILO Convention on Indigenous Peoples (No. 169).
• The government in a report to the United Nations publicly recognised the Ainu as an ethnic minority in 1991.
• In 1992, the United Nations recognised the Ainu as Japan's aboriginal nation as a response to the Ainu's appeal.
• In 1993, the Ainu participated in the United Nations Year of Indigenous People.
• Japan ratified, in 1995, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (although with some reservations).

Sonohara (1997) gives a detailed chronicle and a legal analysis of the Nibutani dam case. I wish here to summarise some of the basic events of the Nibutani dam case and, after that, an anthropological interpretation of how ethnic and legal concepts are used in actual social and historic contexts.

In the 1960s, Hokkaido Development Bureau planned a dam construction on the Saru River, in Nibutani village to ensure the water supply of an industrial area. To this end, in the early 1990s, the Hokkaido Land Expropriation Commission expropriated local Ainu farmers' land with compensation. But two of the owners filed a lawsuit in the Sapporo District Court against this decision.

The court's final decision, in 1997, declared the expropriation illegal. On the other hand, since the dam construction has already been completed, it only compelled the government for substitution.

According to the Ainu plaintiff, Article 13 of Japan's Constitution guarantees the Ainu protection of their ethnic dignity. The two Ainu pointed to the importance of their rituals, which again are tied closely to their land. I shall show, on the other hand, that they seemed to argue that their right to the land originates from their status as being members of a group (the Ainu), which was the first owner of this land. The court accepted the Ainu's claim to be an indigenous group and it based the definition of indigenous groups on international legal texts. The court described the Ainu in similar fashion as these texts do, that is, as a group with a distinct identity and culture that has important values. Its members have the rights to protect, enjoy and hand down their own culture because this ensures the preservation of their ethnic identity. Annual ceremonies, sacred sites, and a close relationship to nature build more specifically indispensable elements of cultural values.

Several important points are to be mentioned with regard to the legal arguments of both the Ainu and the court. These can shed light on some of the characteristics of a substantial type of ethnic context, on that between dominant and non-dominant social actors.

There is no doubt that the two Ainu articulated their position not as single individuals but as representatives of a group. Anyone can have close – even spiritual – ties to their land and these ties may go back, in certain cases, several generations. Because of the universality of this feature, this can not be taken as a powerful argument against expropriation. However, this is also true if we, for instance, define the group as the village. Many, if not most villages, have their cemeteries within their territories. Nevertheless, this seldom prevented them from expropriation. The argument's core may thus lie elsewhere. It has something to do with the claim that the present owners are in a sense the original owners of the land, that is the recent generation of a long chain of ancestors who always owned the land and who were thus the first owners. It is impossible to follow this argument without constructing an abstract, so to speak, timeless group that must be defined nevertheless by concrete features. One of the easiest ways to do that is to define it as a cultural entity, as a hunting society, connected through this economically and spiritually, to the land. The identification of this Ainu group can happen with the help of rituals and the membership in that group but these are markers and not the basis for the primordial land right.

The court, however, stopped halfway in the acceptance of this line of argument. It recognised the Ainu as a group with their own culture; however, it narrowed the scope of dispute on this feature. According to its view, the Ainu live in certain – culturally defined – respects differently from other groups and they need to live so, since otherwise they would lose their distinct identity. Therefore, they have the right to hold ceremonies, but the emphasis is clearly on the behavioural aspect of the rituals and not on the control and ownership of land. That is why the court declared that the maintaining of the Ainu culture could also be guaranteed with substitutes (of land). What seems very important is that in this conceptualisation of a culture, the indigenous rights system does not build a part of this same culture.

It must be noted that neither Ainu plaintiff explicitly included this aspect of ethnic rights system in their argument. One may speculate that to describe and to translate this rights system into the modern one would have been completely too difficult and it is until now not very well known (Macdonald 1993: 411–412). It was an internal classification system for everyday use (Tabata 1993: 37), too flexible to build a basis for demarcation of the Ainu as a group compared to the Japanese and not easily recognisable as a cultural marker. And it is also true that this rights system ceased to exist a long time ago. It is thus very difficult to fit it into the culturalised and historical picture of culture maintained by the social institutions.

In the Nibutani Dam case, two Ainu leaders tried to get recognition from a Japanese national institution (a local court) for the Ainu as a distinct indigenous people and for their land rights. As we have seen with mixed results. The Ainu based their concept of the Ainu people on cultural terms, and thereby they adapted to the Western (international and Japanese) legislative system that could serve as a conceptual framework for both parts. The court accepted some of the consequences that followed from this definition while others, which were related to autonomy and land rights, were rejected. The Ainu seemed to use ethnic symbols as cultural resources that could be mobilised to underline arguments for claims regarding other resources. They used a classification system that seemed to help in bridging the present and the past. The Japanese court, on the other hand, took this stance of cultural definition at face value and urged the Japanese government to support the Ainu's maintenance of their traditions. In other words, the dam case is, in my view, about land right and not 'culture' as such but, in the end, the court accepted only this latter view and interpreted it as a case for cultural rights in the very traditional sense of 'culture'.

Ainu ethnic identity

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the Japanese government followed a massive assimilation policy with respect to the state's minorities, including the Ainu. It seemingly has had real difficulties handling different ways of life especially if these were connected to the use or control of territory. This position had clear historic roots and as such, it is clearly a political construct. It went smoothly hand in hand with the ideology of Japan as a mono-ethnic state, and with the claim of ethnic and cultural homogeneity (Howell 1994: 69). Thus, in modern Japan, all kinds of cultural (including linguistic, social) differences were treated as at least local variations of the same Japanese culture. Even the Ainu language was classified as a dialect of Japanese and as such, it could not be used in the education of Ainu children. For official politics, the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899 is often viewed to be a cornerstone. First, it prohibited all 'traditional' activities, that is fishing and hunting for the Ainu and secondly, it increased the speed of language assimilation with the setting up of Ainu schools (Ogawa 1993: 237). Additionally, in everyday situations, the Ainu had to react to the massive discrimination and the negative stereotypes against them, and even to legal prohibitions concerning their physical appearance and customs. This attitude of the Japanese, together with the assimilation policy, created a very strict frame of context within which the Ainu, as a minority, had to respond to the assimilation which was, at that time, almost complete in many domains of Ainu daily life. There remained little room for them to emphasise their decreasing 'otherness' because none of their legal efforts to do so could have changed the majority's negative evaluation. There were too few Ainu existing to form a group that seemed important enough for this aim and they were in many (and mainly economic) respects on the periphery of Japanese society. Therefore, one of the main escapes from this situation was to complete the assimilation with the majority.

In this context, the very burden for the Ainu, for emphasising their separate identity and for receiving recognition for their ethnic status, lay in the very unbalanced power relationship between them and the Japanese and the absolute inflexible way in which the Japanese handle minorities. Because of this fact, the Ainu had no means of creating an identity for themselves that could fit into the given framework classification and social interaction. At the same time, the rigid and discriminative position of the Japanese inevitably caused the break up of the everyday schema of ethnic interaction, with its more flexible way of managing relationships.

The power, of the dominant framework over the Ainu's strategies influencing choices, can already be seen in their reaction to the establishment of Ainu Schools in the late 1890s and in the first quarter of the 20^th century (Ogawa 1993: 237). Through wide-ranging schooling, generations of Ainu children grew up without the ability to speak Ainu anymore. Their parents' generation was the last that never attended school. Nevertheless, Ainu criticism, which began to increase against such practice, did not oppose education in general, in order to save language, and at the same time, against cultural assimilation. It protested instead against discriminatory education (Ogawa 1993: 244), and wanted the same kind and level of education as the Japanese had.

The growing nationalism in Japan in the first half of the 20^th century further increased the assimilation policy of the Japanese government and the rigidity of the classification system used by them in cases of minorities.

In order to understand more precisely the Japanese stance with regard to the position of the Ainu (and more precisely of all minorities in Japan) and the Ainu's reactions against this, we must follow back its roots well into the Tokugawa period. Contrary to the 'culturalist' view that has been used in institutional ethnic discourses that regards cultures as bounded, discrete, homogenous and only slowly changing entities, recent anthropological and historic analyses emphasises the process-like, changing and contextual character of a people's way of life. As Howell (1994) points out, describing different groups' way of life ('culture') is a very complex inquiry since it shows regional, situational and periodical variations and is always cross-cut by social differences. This again must be differentiated from ethnic contexts in which groups draw back or refer to such cultural features in their argument with regard to ethnic rights or ethnic recognition. In this latter case, Ainu culture is defined either as an 'authentic' or 'traditional' one, originating from its former isolated position, and is characterised by hunting, fishing, small economic units and animism, or a more or less assimilated one merging into standard Japanese culture.

With regard to 'traditional' Ainu culture, Howell (1994: 79) remarks that 'Ainu' or 'Japanese' labels could not be applied to groups before the mid-15^th century in Hokkaido. Conflicts between specific groups or settlements were of economic interest, that is, of control over trade and commodities. It is only after the end of the so-called Ainu-Japanese wars in 1672 (the Shakushain's War), which settled the question of dominance over economic issues, once and for all, that the picture of distinct ethnic – Ainu and Japanese – groups living in demarcated territories emerged. One of the reasons for this can be found in the absence of dominant institutions not only in Hokkaido, but also in Japan. Until the 17^th century, the central authority was rather weak in Japan and so ethnicity was not clearly defined (Howell 1994: 72).

After the 15^th century, the economic way of life of some groups in Hokkaido changed radically. They gave up agriculture and focused entirely on hunting and fishing. Many factors may have contributed to this change. Among them, the most important ones seem to be their middleman position in trade, through this their increasing dependence on commodities, and the fish demand of groups that controlled trade (Howell 1994: 77). The hunting groups, after the 15^th century, are often labelled as Ainu in literature. From the 17^th century, the effects of the transformation in different Ainu groups' way of life, which was caused by their specific and dependent role in the relationship and economic conflicts with the Japanese traders, became increasingly visible. As an answer to the Japanese control, formerly small and independent settlements allied under powerful leaders. It was a further consequence of the expansion of the fishing companies that Ainu settlements were relocated to coastal areas (Tabata 1993: 35).

In the Japanese policy with regard to the Ainu, much accentuated changes can be detected in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, which may also be seen as clear consequences of Japan's position in a changing international political and economic context. The changes of its structural position forced Japan to redefine its relation to the groups living on its periphery (in both territorial and social terms). In the new international environment, the Matsumae group in Hokkaido gained an important role in demarcating the ethnic and – parallel to this – the political boundaries of Japan. The Ainu served in this policy as a 'buffer-ethnic' and area, both practically and ideologically, in this latter view helping in the self-definition of Japan as a homogenous state. This process was directed to the forming of Japan as a national state in the Meiji period. Until this, however, the Ainu politically and ethnically remained on the border of Japan under indirect rule of the government. Howell (1994: 87–88) gives a very clear and detailed description of how, in this period, the Ainu were incorporated into the Japanese status hierarchy that served as the frame of ethnicity. Although the Ainu had increasingly become assimilated culturally to their Japanese environment in the Tokugawa period, it was mainly the political differentiation between the Ainu and the Japanese that was important for the authorities. Therefore, they regulated the Ainu's visible ethnic markers, prohibiting them from imitating certain Japanese cultural traits in order to maintain this basic distinction. This became increasingly ideological in its nature since this distinction ceased to be clearly recognisable in any other domain. We should not be too surprised, therefore, if we find that Japanese collections of Ainu artefacts, which are generally younger and less documented than Western ones, contain in most cases items that emphasise visual characteristics of Ainu culture (motifs, designs). It must also be remarked that this was the very time when the Ainu were 'discovered' and popularised by Western travellers, missionaries and scholars. In their descriptions, the Ainu's physical type was emphasised, and parallel to this, much was speculated about their origin. We must keep in mind that it was these descriptions and the collections of artefacts that served as the basis of more recent cultural definition of the Ainu's 'traditional' way of life.

The force of institutional categorisation becomes visible if we look at – seemingly cultural – representations of the Ainu, for example in museum exhibitions. The Ainu gallery in the permanent exhibition of the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka) was one of the focal points of discussion between Japanese and American ethnologists on the pages of Museum Anthropology in the 1990s (Niessen 1994; 1997; Ohtsuka 1997; Shimizu 1997). While, for the Japanese curators, it was a political act to display the Ainu as a separate ethnic group with distinct culture, and they did this in co-operation with an Ainu cultural leader, Shigeru Kayano. Niessen's critic (1994; 1997) centred on the politics of exhibitions, on the creation of a fictitious image of the past with the help of 'traditional' ethnographic objects and settings. What made mutual understanding impossible during the discussion was the non-recognition of the context within which the ethnologists offered their arguments and the distance these contexts created with regard to the everyday life of the Ainu whether living a hundred years ago or at present.

To sum up the historical changes, it can be said that during the early stages of the forming of Japan as a modern state, neither the Ainu nor the Japanese used cultural terms for articulating ethnic identity. Cultural categories for ethnic differentiation thus originated rather in Japanese political demarcation, in scholarly descriptions, and later in international human rights discourses.

Japan's successful forming of a national state ended with the ideological incorporation of the Ainu (and of all other peripheral groups). In 1870, the Ainu were thus formally identified as Japanese. In 1997, with the new law, Japan recognised the Ainu as a separate ethnic group with distinct culture but again, "did not mention recognition and protection of indigenous rights", "… nor does it provide for cultural rights" (Sonohara 1997: 42).

Conclusion

In the 1970s, a world-wide wave of ethnic identity movement arose among so-called fourth world communities and intellectuals and parallel to this a new interest in ethnicity questions emerged among social scientists. This ethnic process was highly connected with the fight for cultural rights, and in parallel with this, the respect for ethnic minorities increased (Corlin 1993: 51). The deeper reason behind this seems to lie in the changes in the general context of identification. Because of the emergence of modern and global information techniques and with the help of them, interactions, minority communities became immediately parts of a global network. This modified fundamentally their political positions and their references of identification at the same time. Being defined as indigenous peoples they have now international forums at which they could apply for rights and recognition as a special kind of cultures, connected closely to their native lands. In the new framework, their only choice has not been to adapt to the dominant culture's rules and ideology but they have become an active and potent part of forming these rules and ideologies through pointing out their already changed political position. These changes can be realised only as far as trans-national institutions – such as the United Nations – are able (or not able) to influence individual governments and thus national policies through their political position and power. Indigenous groups have now the choice and chance to define their own position in the international and – with the help of this – in the national framework too. They are able now to define which contexts – the national or the international – they would like to participate in under the new circumstances. They are no longer seen as representatives of a backward stage of social development, but as people with close and long contact with their environment in the new context. To my view, these structural features of the international ethnic contributed to the fact that `indigenous people' found it easier to participate in international organisations than in national institutions (Wilson 1997: 13), they narrowed, however, the room and the language for expressing identity.

The good news is thus, that through the international ethnic rights movement, a shared language has evolved that can be and is used by both state institutions and ethnic groups. The bad news is, however, that terms like 'Ainu' lose their former meanings, as they become part of a new categorical system.

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