"Exactly who counts as Indigenous, however, is far from clear. A video for the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues begins, 'They were always here—the original inhabitants.' Yet many peoples who are now considered Indigenous don’t claim to be aboriginal.... Conversely, being first doesn’t seem to make you Indigenous. A handful of Gaelic monks and then the Vikings were the first people to arrive in Iceland (they settled there earlier than the Maori arrived in New Zealand), yet their descendants, the Icelanders, are rarely touted as Indigenous. Farther east, modern-day Scandinavians can trace most of their ancestry to migrations occurring in 4000 and in 2500 B.C., but it’s the Sami reindeer herders, whose Siberian ancestors arrived in Scandinavia closer to 1500 B.C., who get an annual entry in the 'Indigenous World' yearbook...."
If it is neither necessary nor sufficient for the Indigenous to be indigenous, what fills the conceptual space?.... [A]nthropologists and social theorists like Adam Kuper and André Béteille argue that our concept of indigeneity is bound up with outdated ideas about so-called primitive peoples.... [Y]ou can count as Indigenous if you come across as simple, egalitarian, culturally encapsulated, spiritually attuned to nature, and somehow isolated from history and civilization....
A politics built around indigeneity, many organizers fear, can reify ethnic boundaries. It encourages people to justify why their ethnic group, and not another, deserves particular resources and accommodations. It weakens domestic ties, which are otherwise critical for oppressed minorities. But it also contributes to one of the stranger consequences arising from a rhetoric of indigeneity: its co-option by far-right nationalists....
Indigeneity... was crafted by enterprising activists over years of strategizing, absorbing ideas from Red Power, Third Worldism, African and Asian anti-colonialism, and the environmental movement.... When indigeneity promised to deliver on these goals... the natural temptation was to stretch the concept until it covered as many disempowered peoples as possible, even at the cost of coherence. And incoherence, of course, was an invitation to all those discredited stereotypes....
The idea of the primordial savage is appealing....
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"Can the concept escape its colonial past?"
Well, yes, by being declared irrelevant BS by right-thinking people.
But actually, no, since it is too useful in prog politics.
The people in the world are the descendants of those who killed off the weaker tribes.
None of us are victims.
The Native American tribes here when the English showed up were the ones who conquered other tribes.
Cortez teamed up with tribes to kill the Aztecs.
The blacks in the US descended from slaves who themselves were conquered by other tribes in Africa.
The English conquered the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish.
I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument why Native Americans descended from conquering tribes who were later conquered by the US have any claim to anything on moral grounds. Their descendants had land because they conquered others. So quit whining that someone else then conquered your ancestors.
Indigenous...What fills the conceptual space?
It's a serious mistake to think that, just because there's a word for a concept, that there must be a corresponding thing in the real world. #AcademicBullshit
One can make a reasonable argument for some that are truly indigenous, at least continent-wide: the Americas and Australia, though even those groups moved around and got replaced over time. This is one of the main problems with so-called 'repatriation' schemes: they give things to the local 'tribe' (itself a modern construction) who may not even have been there when whatever object was created (migration, replacement, etc.). But it makes academics feel good; see Elizabeth Weiss for a lot on this.
Here's definitely an indigenous man from Somerset, England, whose 10,000 year old ancestor was discovered in a nearby cave in Somerset.
Identity politics is poisonous in all of its many forms.
Let's take people for what they make out of themselves, what they do with the opportunities they find and the capacities they bring to bear, not for who their ancestors were, or what happened to those ancestors. Whether they are the Daughters of the American Revolution, or the descendants of American slaves, let's judge people on the content of their character, not on their genealogy or the color of their skin.
With the 'reparations' wave threatening to crest and break, it may be too late to stop all this nonsense, and if so, it's going to get very ugly. Very!
The only place that man is indigenous appears to be the East Africa. All other human populations in other areas are the result of human migration and conquest.
The answer depends on the scope under consideration. Humans migrated from Africa and then shifted about on the Eurasian landmass for many thousands of years. They displaced, replaced, and transformed local cultures time and time again. Some died out, some relocated from droughts, etc. Many of us seem to be stuck on dated Victorian science and assumptions.
Stonehenge was not built by the current or recent British folks, as they have a large Anglo-Saxon / Viking / Danish component. Stonehenge wasn't even built by the prior generation.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stonehenge
Very coarse overview of human migration (see links below):
* Neanderthals leave Africa and populate Eurasia. They are NOT modern humans. ->
* Modern African humans who became the ancestors of current Euro-Asian humans mated with Neanderthals in Israel; Neanderthal DNA is not present in modern sub-Saharan humans ->
* Neanderthals go extinct, possibly due to competition from modern humans ->
* Human Stone age all around the world with Denisovans and northern populations that merged with modern Asians and Scandinavians ->
* [Parallel] Australian Aboriginals / Melanesians hug the Indian Ocean and reach S. Asia, Borneo, Indonesia, and Australia during the low seas of the most recent Ice Age ->
* African populations expand from central East African (e.g., Ethiopia) to the west and south, ultimately creating massive building such as Great Zimbabwe around 1,000 years ago ->
* Bronze age (China, Egypt, and European contemporaries from about ~7,000 years ago) ->
European collapse (e.g., bad weather; "Sea People" invaders) and fuzzy details due to limited writing ->
* Iron age with writing and recorded history ~~~~> Greece, Rome...to present
Layers upon layers of related or unrelated tribes inhabited the same areas over time, and moved as weather and hunting and food sources required.
There's a lot more to it:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-human-migration-13561/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations
https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Zimbabwe
Native = naturally subservient people, to an empire-builder
"A man is native where he walks," to a patriot
“ indigeneity”
Is this a new word?
Can’t recall reading this word before but maybe I’m just not well read enough.
Does Althouse have the origins of this word?
Indigenous in a limited frame of reference. Native to a legal jurisdiction. Alien in origin and membership. The former refers to evolutionary populations (i.e. "our Posterity"), while the second refers to civil life, and the last refers to immigration reform, often catastrophic anthropogenic.
that man is indigenous appears to be the East Africa.
Before or after the division of Pangaea?
"Can the concept escape its colonial past?"
The concept predates colonialism by native, indigenous, and alien tribes. The modern model is corrupted by the twilight faith, ethical religion, DIEversity, transhumanism, and class-disordered ideologies inculcated by mortal gods and goddesses, and experts, in nominally secular societies.
No one cares about being labeled 'indigenous' except the progressives who make up the forms with the boxes to check. No one else cares. We just go about our lives knowing the flow of humanity has been moving from day 1 and will continue to flow about the globe as long as humans can move. No one is indigenous to a specific land.
And while some people can trace their lineage to a land stretching back thousands of years, they may not be the indigenous people of that land.
Let's just say we're all indigenous to the Earth. Beyond that, we got nuthin'.
Of the 8 billion people on the earth, no one has been anywhere for more than about 100 years. For people today to have some kind of 4000 year old claim on something is silly.
They were always here
Nonsense on stilts. Everyone traces their ancestry to somewhere else. Everyone. No exceptions.
I was born in New Jersey. That makes me indigenous to North America. Any system that says otherwise is a lie. Not only is there no justification for naming one group indigenous and not another, there is equally no justification for setting up any rules differently for one group over another.
It's all power politics, all a fraud.
Native = naturally subservient people, to an empire-builder
A democratic/dictatorial model. Ideally, a legal jurisdiction is governed under a social compact ("constitution") where authoritarian progress is mitigated by consensus of diversity, and arms where self-moderation is wont to run amuck.
There's no rigor. It merely exists so Group A can extract whatever from Group B. If Group A has a valid claim but no one likes them, then screw 'em. Do not ask me to consider logically something that was intentionally implemented subjectively for the purposes of whomever benefited.
With a few exceptions, almost everywhere on Earth was conquered or otherwise taken from the prior inhabitants multiple times. Even if we were serious about this, in many, perhaps most, cases the original inhabitants were annihilated, migrated to a different area (probably pushing out the natives in the process), or were assimilated by the conquerors or vice-versa. It is relatively uncommon for the conquered to remain in the area and retain their unique culture, separate from their overlords.
I do remember one video about a particular Native American tribe. The video bragged that the tribe had subjugated the area's prior inhabitants, forcing them to pay tribute, and then a minute later is complaining how badly they were treated by the American government. Amusing.
The con is collapsing under the weight of its inherent contradictions. These status markers have been issued with nothing to back them up: no coherent system, no clear definition. They’re IOUs in an endless and pointless civil war.
The solution is easy enough —strip them of anything but historical and anthropological interest; take the money and politics out of them— but is very unlikely to be adopted until everyone is utterly exhausted.
What gahrie said above. We’re all indigenous to the same place. Of course that isn’t helpful to the left’s love of identity politics and their ever expanding need to create new victims.
Courtesy of my four grandparents I claim indigenous status as a Swede living in the United States. Do I qualify for any freebies?
"But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy"
re Pete @ 2:18: “…Quinn the Eskimo…”. Instant nostalgia, I can hear Manfred Mann. Thanks!
But “Eskimo” is out. “Inuit” is in.
You don't honestly think the Inuit CHOSE to live in the high arctic, did you? That is where they were pushed by much stronger tribes vying for the same resources. The Anasazi were cliff dwellers by necessity not because they enjoyed it. Nothing in this world, if it involved people, was ever static.
"indigenous" means last to get indoor plumbing.
I propose a series of voluntary funds. If you think yourself a member of a privileged group, contribute to the fund for those who were handicapped by your privilege. If you think you were handicapped by another's privilege, apply for payment from the appropriate fund. Each year, all the money contributed to a fund is paid out to qualified claimants.
My own definition of indigenous is a group of people who have genetically adapted to the particular climate and overall context of a specific region.
That's why even though both sides of my family have been here since at least the 1600s I wouldn't consider myself indigenous to North America. Even as I'd also say there's definitely battles and warfare and competing claims of land among the indigenous that's a lot messier than suggested.
I have been indigent during some seasons of my life and I'm often still indignant.
they were pushed by much stronger tribes vying for the same resources. The Anasazi were cliff dwellers by necessity
Ironically, they were divided into left and right partitions, and while their geographical location isolated them from alien antagonists, it contributed to their social progress, and, ultimately, viability.
Whether they got 'here' first or not, the point I would make is that they were 'here' the longest, by most accounts.
So they've had a head start of tens of thousands of years.
Why aren't they doing better?
No excuses really...
I want monetary reparations from Africa, on account of Africans driving my remote ancestors off the Mother Continent, and making them wander in cold and remote regions.
On second thought, the sacrifices of my exiled ancestors appear to have been well worthwhile,
and Africa can keep what it owes me.
Winner winner chicken dinner. The fierce and tactically cruel murderers that were finally defeated by the long suffering the civilized Northern Europeans who had guns are owed Nothing, but instead owe their victims reparations for their barbaric slaughters.
Not a penny to the remnants of the savages. For example, the Comanches will never be able to pay their debt to Texans. If some are still alive, they should just say thank you.
At their landfall, the Pilgrim founders of the Plymouth Colony were greeted with suspicion by the Wampanoag people, nevertheless the two parties eventually forged a treaty that was to prove instrumental in the colony's survival. Squanto, the Pilgrims'interpreter, negotiated the drafting of that treaty, but what did he say to induce Massasoit'scooperation with the English? He told them that the English had guns and that if well-treated by Massasoit's people they could become the decisive factor in the ongoing struggle with the Wampanoag's enemies.
The Wampanoags were themselves new arrivals on the banks of Cape Cod. Their previous home had been the Connecticut River valley, but they were driven out of that rich and productive land to the sandy wastes of Cape Cod by the powerful Mohawk nation. When the English manifested little interest in joining the Wampanoag in a crusade against the Mohicans, the English-Wanpanoag friendship began to sour, leading to quarrels, killings, kidnappings, and finally war, all of it the consequence of Mohawk colonialism.
We are all Homo sapiens, members of the single surviving species of humanity. When we began our first great colonizing effort, the invasion of Eurasia some 80,000 years ago, mankind comprised at least four, perhaps five distinct species occupying a range spanning the Easter Hemisphere from Portugal to the isles of the Flores Sea. But for us they are all gone -- a small truckload of fossil bones, some chipped flints, and a bit of DNA is all that's left of them. We're all Africans executing our genetic program -- colonize, subjugate, exterminate. The mad Davros of Skaro thought he was onto something when he invented the Dalek. How pathetic.
"So they've had a head start of tens of thousands of years.
Why aren't they doing better?"
It's like giving out awards to the losers of the world.
indigenous (adj.)
Origin and meaning of indigenous
"born or originating in a particular place," 1640s, from Late Latin indigenus "born in a country, native," from Latin indigena "sprung from the land, native," as a noun, "a native," literally "in-born," or "born in (a place)," from Old Latin indu (prep.) "in, within" + gignere (perfective genui) "to beget, produce," from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.
The fruit of dad's loom and mom's womb.
Quanah Parker, last chief of the Comanches, is pretty much today considered a Texas hero. Never mind the rapes, murders, kidnappings, slave raids, torturings, and general destruction and plundering, committed by the Comanches. All is forgiven. There are towns and schools in Texas named after him.
I ask, with all seriousness: where are all those smallpox-infected blankets when WE need them?
On Air Canada yesterday they showed me a video about the various indigenous people of Canada. It was just so _stupid_, pointless. Kept talking about their "unceded" lands; I think that means they own your house...
They also organized the very first flight where the whole crew were indigenous people!!
Are they aware how stupid they sound? How is it possible that they are not? It seems like an Emperor's New Clothes thing.
No white people can be indigenous.
I hate even having that thought, but they made me this way, starting with Obama, elected by white people twice, who divided the country for political purposes.
We are all nomads and indigenous. We are all victims and conquerors. Embrace the ambiguity.
rwnutjob @ 7:28: “… I hate even having that thought, but they made me this way, starting with Obama, elected by white people twice, who divided the country for political purposes.”
“Fundamentally transformed.” There’s no going back.
I've often advocated for declaring war on the Indian tribes and ending once and for all the special status and dual citizenship they have.
I love Indians so much I want them to have exactly the same rights as an American citizen as I do.
n.n said...
"they were pushed by much stronger tribes vying for the same resources. The Anasazi were cliff dwellers by necessity
Ironically, they were divided into left and right partitions, and while their geographical location isolated them from alien antagonists, it contributed to their social progress, and, ultimately, viability."
And by the time the Europeans got there the Anasazi culture was no more.
When everyone is indigenous, nobody is indigenous. Same-same with regards to race; when we're all minorities, then nobody is special.
This is a piece of the magical thinking that all the various activists have failed to properly work out; they have this self-projected concept of "white", but the problem with that is that there really aren't any such things on the face of the planet. I can point to all sorts of interesting forebears that would, by the "one drop" theories also popular with these types, qualify me as a minority several times over. And, I pretty much present as "white".
In the end, I think what we have to acknowledge is that all these assholes are doing is divisive, and they just need to be stopped. God knows that they never will, of their own accord.
What's been most recently hilarious is watching Angela Davis find out she's got a few whiteys in her personal woodpile. Sad news for American blacks, but what with the rate of miscegenation that was prevalent even during slave times, most American blacks are at least part-European white. Or, Native American... If you're going to go after people for what their ancestors did, someone is going to have to square the circle for how to account for all of that. I mean, OK... We go back to 1860. Two slave parents. OK, that's fair; those people are actually victims. Go another generation back to the 1840s, and lookee-lookee here: Daddy was also the overseer or the owner's son. So... Who pays his bill for reparations? Then, go back a little further, and there's still more "evil whitey" inside the house.
Given the actual demographic truth, there's more than a little insanity to the entire proposition. I'm fine with saying that anyone who owned slaves should pay a price, but when, exactly, did we start billing kids for what their parents do? If we go down that path, then the majority of American blacks are going to be getting billed to pay for reparations, because once you establish the policy that you pay for that which your parents and ancestors did, then that has to apply to everyone. And, that's gonna be just about everyone whose ancestors were on this continent during the days when slavery was still a thing. You simply cannot square that circle.
The white man wasn't as good as genocide as beloved.
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