Talk:Indigenous peoples/Archive 2

Archive 1

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Spaniards

In other words the Spaniards greatly outpowered the Indians.

You can't argue this for the conquest of Mexico and Peru. The conquistadors were a small troup facing whole empires. They had horses, iron, guns and dogs, but that can't unbalance an empire. The conquistadors' victory was also because of illnesses, internal trouble and their alliance with indigenous rebels.

Besides the rest of the paragraph seems a confusing discussion of counterviews.

Very true indeed, the 'overpowering' of aboriginal cultures is often overplayed in the eyes of western appologetica-revisionistic history. The main tool utilised by most settlers was more often than not shrewd (if not sly) political power-plays to manipulate the populace and people to their will.

This is still carried out with 'diplomacy' from larger empirical nations when dealing with smaller ones on a much more global scale, yet this same utilisation of power and influence is the method through which many small bands of adventurers managed to ursurp entire empires. One would hazard to guess it is not individualistic to the Spaniards and the southern America's campaign, but something which has been replayed throughout human history and will be forever reused as a primary method of operation for such outcomes.

Jachin 09:32, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

I've just added a cleanup tag to this page. The text as it stands is incoherent, frequently ungrammatical, and is too close to being a collection of POV statements rather than a real resource. --128.135.155.190 22:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup in progress

In response, I have taken a crack at (hopefully) improving the current status of the article - rewrote the Intro and explanation of the term, and inserted two new sections + text:

• (1) a Characteristics overview, intended to outline the major aspects the article should likely be interested in, &
• (2) Definitions, detailing some of the accepted formulations of the term.

Still to add some references & cross-checks. For now have left the rest of the article unmolested, however am in agreement that it needs a thorough rewrite. The "Viewpoints" section in particular needs to be broken down & reorganised, with some passages such as the discussion on "left- vs. right-wing" politics perhaps removed altogether, unless someone is able to offer an clarification of what it is trying to say. The POV needs toning down, and would be useful also to reduce or counter the apparent Euro-US centrism of some of the contribution (indigenous/non-indigenous experience also occurs outside of Euro-colonialism). Some other points:

• some terms are wikified for no reason related to the article context that I can see (viz., "elephant", "holiday")
• the bit about some "hippies" is abstruse- if there aren't any references to this, I propose its deletion
• the etymology of the word "aborigine" is all well and good, but it is about the english derivation of the word itself, and not about the topic to hand- possibly remove, or at best does not rank for its own section
• the reference to barbarians is unrelated, ie it was used to refer to non-Greek speakers/peoples, not necessarily indigenous ones
• article categorisation in "Ancient Peoples" is possibly not warranted- ancient peoples are those who existed a long time ago, which is not a cognate with the meaning of the term indigenous peoples- if there are no objections, I propose to remove from this category

Propose something like the following structure outline for the remainder of the article's sections:

• (3)Indigenous cultures in history (migration, colonialism, etc)
• (4)Distribution of Indigenous cultures (eg, by continent, or land/climate type)
• (5)Indigenous & non-indigenous viewpoints/relations/interactions
• (6)Issues and concerns of the Indigenous
• (7)Indigenous knowledge, culture, belief-systems
• (8)Indigenous organisations & representation; autonomy vs. dependency
• (9)List of indigenous peoples (perhaps order by region?)
• (10-12)See Also, References, & External links

that's about it for now...will work on updating further...--cjllw | TALK 10:00, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

Have further expanded the Definitions section to include a passage, intended to answer the question, "hey, I/my culture/my ancestors also originate from this place, so how come that group gets classified as an indigenous people, while others do not?", and to further distinguish between the senses in which the terms indigenous and non-indigenous are employed. The phrasing is perhaps not 100% there, any edits to clarify and get the same idea across are welcomed.

Meanwhile shall continue to reorg the latter part of the existing article under the schema proposed above.--cjllw | TALK 23:13, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

I have now made a start to implement the structure as proposed above, inserting the new sections and rearranging the pre-existing text according to that structure. For each added section I have put in some suggestive (!) sentences & sub-headings for future expansion.

For most the passages which were contained in the previous Viewpoints section, I have (as yet) not much altered these, only repositioned them. They certainly do require a comprehensive re-edit, perhaps pruning.

Other passages I have removed altogether, as they seem quite suspect as they stand, or alternatively I was not able to work out where they would fit in or be relevant to this article. For the record, the passages I removed (as well as the etymology of aborigine)are:

• The United Nations defines indigenous peoples as follows: "Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them."
• However, advocates of rights for indigenous peoples consider these arguments to be specious; if a tribe has lived self-sufficiently in an area for many centuries, why should "economic development" suddenly now be an issue when it never has been before?
• They argue that these arguments are usually put forward by industrialists (normally oil, mining or logging companies) who want to exploit the land for economic gain, or by governments who consider the indigenous population to be inferior and to be an obstruction to their plans for development.
• Indigenous behavior in history many times is the opposite of what many film writers and authors portray.
• Aborigines are associated or championed by left-wing politics, despite the fact that their proponents are typical opponents to right-wing politics in defence of other groups that consider themselves rightly native to their own region. In fact, the leftist determining factor of recognition about the "indigenous peoples", is that they may have longstanding claims to the region without adequate representation. In leftist point of view, those native to an area but holding state nationality do not qualify for distinction of "aborigine".
• This is even a common phenomenon, whereby indigenous people in the United Kingdom and United States for example, refer to foreign nationalities on their soil as "ethnics". This diminishes the sense of relationship between the native Briton or American with his or her home and family, emphasising a connection with their state, perhaps to indicate a lack of tribalism on their part. It is considered marxist "social justice", to deny credibility to the majority in support of a minority. Notice; "heritage holiday".
• In elaboration of this leftism, some Hawaiians and others which were present in or about the time of the existence from the foundations of the American nation, consider themselves even "more native" than those who were America's first citizens. This has resulted in politically correct terminology for Indian reservations which were never American or united in any true sense besides their lack of citizenship and racial designation of the Americans themselves. Other Indian tribes have stated as much, that they do not find it appropriate to be labelled "Native American", which somehow glosses over the history between Indian nations and the United States and that the title is ignorant of their sovereignty.
• Compounding and confusing the exact appropriateness per label, some activist groups interested in Afrocentrism desire retro-citizenship of recognition for their ancestors in slavery. This confounds the whole meaning of nativity, for the African-Americans were unfree labour and no more true citizens than Mexican migratory farm workers, regardless of extended residence in a land they had no governmental representation. They argue that the British lack of an acknowledgement for an American nation is a similar case, paralleled with the Emancipation Proclamation. Most non-partisan people consider it merely a change in labor practices and a rise in humanitarianism.
• An extremely small group of people influenced by the Hippies have advocated the interracial miscegenation between all groups in America, to avoid any oppositional politics. Ergo, all would be aboriginal per their connection to the first peoples on the land. This flies right in the face of the Bering Strait land-bridge emigration of Mongoloid Asians to North America on one hand and the emigration of Caucasoid Europeans by island hopping to North America. The proponents of right wing politics find that the supremacists of the Pacific prememinence, are hypocritically racist towards acceptance of the Atlantic community. See Orientalism, logical fallacy.

If anyone can see some way to salvage pertinent information from this, please do take a crack at it.

As the article is (and was originally) quite wordy, some of the sections could perhaps be broken off into separate articles, with some highlevel text remaining on this page.--cjllw | TALK 12:22, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

Removed sentence in regards to Native Hawaiians making up 1/4 of the Hawaiian population. The article on Native Hawaiians states there are only 140k Hawaiians in the entire world and the population of Hawaii is 1.283m total. FreddyPickle (talk) 17:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Offer of help

I'd like to help out - let me know when you are ready to have someone else look at it. Cbdorsett 05:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I have (rather) slowly been compiling some background research to add some more material, and mulling over how best to break up and edit the existing ungainly mass in the current Viewpoints section, as per the structure I have outlined above. In the next day or two I hope to implement at least the structural outline as proposed, but you would be very welcome to help the expansion, copyedit further the insertions thus far, and/or comment on the proposed structure and things which should/should not be covered.--cjllw | TALK 08:33, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

Removal of Cleanup tag

After some further much-delayed edits, I have now removed the clean-up tag. There is much more work to be done on the article's structure and content; it is over-long and perhaps a bit turgid and pedantic in places, and quite a few of the sections could usefully be broken off to start separate new articles (which they deserve), with some reduced summary paragraphs left here. It also needs more cited references and footnotes, and some appropriate images would help break up the unrelenting textual sea... However, most of the dubious, POV and confusing material is now excised (this article had suffered from some prior merges which mixed up some different themes, it would appear), and so I've removed the tag. --cjllw | TALK 09:13, 2005 September 7 (UTC)

Usage- People vs Peoples?

Not sure whether this irks anyone else, but people is the plural of people. Peoples is an 80's trendy wank-word that seemed to have caught on, a brief skim of any respected dictionary will show this. Fish, not fishes. It's just obnoxiously immature and detracts from the reality of the article macking with high-school student feel of editing.

If there's no objection, I'll correct this typographical error in 24 hours. And please, for the love of the English language as a medium of communication, don't add S on the end of words they don't belong to. :P Jachin sig added

Yeah, I do object. The normal plural of "person" is "people". However, when "people" is used with the meaning of "populace" or "ethnic group", it is a countable noun, and therefore takes an S in the plural. Considering how many dictionaries have been published, I would not be surprised if some of them do not realize this. Take a look at www.m-w.com.

I know it's confusing, but modern linguistic science surpassed traditional English-teachers' notions of "correct" grammar a long time ago, and teachers are still spewing a lot of outdated (and inaccurate) information. Cbdorsett 12:45, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

er...I for one would also rather that you did not do that. Whatever you may think of its relative merits and linguistic irksomeness, the usage of the compound term "indigenous peoples" is very well attested in the literature, policies and instruments which deal with this topic.stupied. A quick search on Google reveals over 2 million page hits on this form ("indigenous people" has 1.4 million tho', so agreed there is not much of a case in consistency); and one of the key references here is the "Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples". I suppose the reasoning behind using "peoples" rather than "people" is that the former kinda emphasises the plurality of different or distinct groups, whereas usage of the latter in the same context may lead to ambiguity. For example, one might usefully say, the indigenous peoples of Belize as a marker to indicate there are more than one distinct indigenous group, whereas the indigenous people of Belize may imply to the unversed that there is only a single designation. At least, that is the sense in which the literature I have read often uses it, in my interpretation.

You might or might not think that this is yet another intolerable abuse of english as she is meant to be spoke, but this would hardly be the first time where (at least in certain contexts) the "standard" grammatical form of a word is altered to suit a particular purpose, and adopted (albeit, inconsistently) by a wide section of the community - have you heard of the expression, "the loaves and the fishes"? This is, after all, a valid mechanism by which languages change...

In short then, I think that "indigenous peoples" should stand, as a (widely-)accepted compound term, and where ambiguity might otherwise be inferred.--cjllw | TALK 13:07, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

The numerics you provided would probably indicate a faux-tally considering the fact that Windows operating systems utilise American dictionary spell-checkers which do not follow the English Language patterns correctly. This -is- en.wiki, not us.wiki, so by default one should follow the Oxford Longer or another accepted tome of English for their interpretation of the language.

Furthermore even a quick squizz through urbandictionary.com or other urban dictionary projects will show 0 hits for 'peoples' but multiple for 'people'.

(As an aside, please try and keep replies to this structured, just cleaned it up a bit.)

Just a short addendum, there is currently 2,250,000+ utilisations of 'ppl' on the internet also, so I think the argument of "Everyone makes the typo therefore it has become correct." is mooted.

Jachin 09:28, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jachin's statement. This IS en-wiki and not us-wiki so appropriate utilisation of Oxford english would be much more professional and advantageous to the Wikipedia project.

203.221.225.57 09:57, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the original statement, that 'peoples' is an incorrect use of the word 'people'. As previously stated 'people' is already a plural, adding an 's' does not take into account the fundamentals of the English language. This is an error at such an elementary level, and a more than obvious one at that. Although 'Peoples' is used widely, it does not make it correct. Here is a chance to have our part in upholding and protecting a common law of our language, that being the English language, not the American pseudo English adaptation that is seeping into common circulation at an alarming rate. 10:49, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC) User:203.173.184.6 sig added

Well put, IP addressed user. You should contemplate registering an account, it has many benefits, the likes of which aren't worth going into detail here. Considering support for the change is greater than people who have problems with correct English, I will make the changes to the article accordingly. Jachin 16:50, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Counting "hits" on some website somewhere is an invalid way to solve a grammar issue. Surely you don't think professional editors behave that way? If you claim that speakers of British English would universally have a problem with the usage of "peoples", surely there is a reference somewhere that will support that position. Oxford English Dictionary, maybe? I for one use American English, but I don't consider it my mission to scrounge through wiki pages changing "colour" to "color" - that would be silly, inane, insulting and probably would violate some wiki policy somewhere. It is one thing to "know" your version of grammar is "right" but quite another to be able to back it up. I put the page back the way it was. If you can support your position, I'll read it and reconsider my answer. Cbdorsett 21:42, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cbdorsett, thanks for the revert, there is (IMO) as yet insufficent consensus for a blanket change from peoples to people. Indeed, counting search term hits in isolation is not sufficient to resolve the matter one way or the other - my initial quoting of the hits for indigenous peoples intended to demonstrate only that the occurrence of this usage is not unknown; however, to support the usage of "peoples" in this context, I agree that more evidence is needed - and I believe that I can supply it.

(Incidentally, I do not think that this is a debate between US, British or other variants of english usage - I for one am a "native" user of British/Australian english, and (almost parochially!) favour the use of "-ise" over "-ize" and other such perceived "Americanisms"; but I have no problem with the use of the term "peoples" in this context.)

Any who wish to have "peoples" changed to "people" will need to provide valid argument against the following points:

1. "(indigenous)peoples" is the term used by the key references for this article. As mentioned earlier, the UN Draft declaration is formally entitled the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The usage of the term "peoples" appears throughout its contents, from the first paragraph "Affirming that indigenous peoples are equal in dignity and rights to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such", through to the last. Go and check the other external links referenced in this article - you will find that they too use "peoples".
2. "peoples" is widely used in the academic literature. Consider this sampling of book titles from Oxford University Press (OUP), from their (UK, i.e. non-American) publications: (1) The Rights of Peoples ed. James Crawford, Jesus College Cambridge Uni; (2)Chosen Peoples Anthony D. Smith, London School of Economics; (3)Treaties and Indigenous Peoples Ian Brownlie, Fellow All Souls College, Oxford Uni; (4)Resources, Nations and Indigenous Peoples ed. Richard Howlett et al, Macquarie & Sydney Uni's , Australia.... there are hundreds more. Can it really be maintained that a respected academic publishing house like OUP is repeatedly guilty of committing grammatical howlers in their standard reference texts? I think not....
3. the usage is not, in fact, gramatically incorrect. Cbdorsett put it most succinctly earlier: when "people" is used with the meaning of "populace" or "ethnic group", it is a countable noun, and therefore takes an S in the plural. The Longman English Language teaching site explains it thus:

"A people—meaning the unit of all the people in a tribe, nation, country or ethnic group—is a singular count noun. It has this form as a plural count noun: peoples. Thus, you can say: (h) The native peoples of Central and South America (Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, 1995, p.1223); (i) The English-speaking peoples (Quirk et al: A Comprehensive Grammar of The English Language. Longman, 1985, p. 303); (j) I have known it to happen among savage peoples. (Longman); (k) All the peoples of the world desire peace. (Azar Understanding and Using English Grammar, 3rd. ed. So, the word people, meaning the unit of people formed by a national group, has a meaning different from people, meaning different individuals. People—the unit—is a singular count noun, as you can see from “a great people,” and a plural count noun, as you can see in sentences (h), (i), (j) and (k) directly above. A footnote in Azar adds this clarification: “The word ‘people’ has a final –s only when it is used to refer to ethnic or national groups.”"

So, Jachin and others, whether or not the term "peoples" features as a correct pluralisation in your own idiolect, or in mine, is not really the point - the (independent) references in favour of peoples given above, demonstrate acceptable usage in the academic and other literature, and therefore I maintain that "peoples" should not be changed.--cjllw | TALK 02:25, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

I agree that we should use peoples as the plural of 'people'. — mark ✎ 12:24, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

---

Why would you want to use the plural at all, since the Wikipedia naming convention is singular? -- Kjkolb 12:38, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Plural is the preferred usage here, since the article concerns many different and distinct groups, not a single group.--cjllw | TALK 23:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but so do most articles. The computer article covers very different types of computers, like personal computers, super computers and notebook computers. -- Kjkolb 10:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

That (singular-naming) convention may be all well and good for inanimate objects, but when talking about human populations and societies, the plural/collective form would seem to be the more appropriate, and well, more natural title for an article of this type. For example, the article is not English person (singular constituent), but rather English people (plural/collective term). Similarly, for the present article peoples is the plural/collective form, people the singular constituent. See also Jutes, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, etc for other common pluralisations (ie, acceptable shorthand for Jute people, Norman people, etc). Consider also entries such as Celtic languages, ie an article which discusses related entities (languages in this case), but avoids using the singular in the title because to do so would wrongly imply that there was a single Celtic language, rather than distinct languages. Such is the case with the present article, where indigenous people would IMO imply there is only one such group, rather than many.--cjllw | TALK 00:24, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

But nation and tribe use the singular! "Celtic languages" makes sense because the article is not just about the languages but about the coherent group of languages. This article is not about some one coherent group of peoples. Michael Hardy 21:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That make more sense, though I still find "indigenous peoples" to be rather awkward. Thanks -- Kjkolb 00:39, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary on "peoples" (with an "s")

Here's what it says:

b. In pl. Nations, races.

This plural use was avoided in 16th cent. Bible versions, and by many 17th and 18th cent. writers (see sense 7a(c)). It was thought to require defence or explanation even in the 19th cent. (cf. quots. 1842 and 1845).

a1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.): 1 Paralip. (Bodl. 959) xvi. 24 Telle{th} in gentiles his glorie, in alle puplis his merueiles. ?c1425 (c1380) CHAUCER Former Age 2 A blisful lyf, a paisible and a swete Ledden the peples in the former age. c1475 (c1445) R. PECOCK Donet 138 Go {ygh}e and teche {ygh}e alle peplis, baptising hem. 1551 R. ROBINSON tr. T. More Utopia (1895) I. 26 So manye strange and vnknowne peoples and countreis. 1639 T. FULLER Hist. Holy Warre V. xiii. 252 Saladine answered him, That he also ruled over as many peoples. 1665 R. BOYLE Occas. Refl. V. i. sig. Ii7v, A Throne, to which above an hundred other Peoples paid homage. 1778 R. LOWTH Isaiah xxxiv. 1 Draw near, O ye nations, and hearken; And attend to me, O ye peoples! 1842 T. P. THOMPSON Exercises I. 261 To say ‘The Representative of the peoples’ [as trans. Le Représentant des Peuples] would not be understood at all. Such, however, is the idiom of the original. 1845 G. S. FABER Eight Diss. I. III. ii. 208 The singular form of the word people. In the original hebrew [sic], the word is plural. If, therefore, the delicacy of our ears be offended by the uncouth sound of peoples: let us at least..substitute the more euphonic word nations. 1877 J. MORLEY Crit. Misc. 2nd Ser. 345 All our English-speaking peoples. 1910 Encycl. Brit. I. 326/2 The desert regions yield support only to nomadic peoples, such as the Tuareg. 1999 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 22 Apr. 54/3 The Ruthenians are a part of the family of east Slavic peoples.

Michael Hardy 21:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Aborigine disambiguation

Excuse me if I break some conventions through ignorance but I did a search on Aborigine and got redirected to Indigenous Peoples. I was actually expecting to find an article on Australian Aborigines because I live in that general part of the world. Instead I got redirected to Indigenous Peoples. Nonsense, I say to myself; Aborigines deserve better than that, and so I started changing the redirection and creating an article on Aborigines (Australian that is). Surely there should be an Aborigine (diasmbiguation) that links to all of the articles that fall under that category . (Oh yes, please give a category for each of the different Aboriginal peoples around the world. They have been here much longer than any of us and deserve that at least). Anyway, cannot a straightforward disambiguation be setup that gives a list of all the aboriginal peoples in the world, as well as a link to indigenous peoples? Then, of course, if someone else like me goes aborigine they will immediately see a disambiguation and so select what they really want instead of getting redirected to a general article on indigenous peoples which has the aboriginal people they really want buried in the middle of the article! — User:Zanuga sig added for continuity

Some good ideas here. I should point out that use of the terms 'aborigine' and 'indigenous people' seems to be confined mainly to Northern America and Australia. — mark ✎ 13:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well Mark, you encouraged me to go and do it. I have now set up an Aborigine (disambiguation) that lists those races commonly referred to as Aborigines by English speakers. My common knowledge says that Taiwanese are included in this as well as North Americans and Australians. This was confirmed by the inclusion of the term Aborigine against their reference in the list of peoples in the Indigenous Peoples article. I have also included a link to Indigenous People so that everyone can get to where they want.

Go and search on Aborigine to see the result. BTW, I think the article on Indigenous Peoples is fine as it stands . I just think we also need the disambiguation for Aborigines. — User:Zanuga sig added for continuity

Thanks. Agree with your change of Aborigine page from redirect to disambig. I made some adjustments to the text on that page, and also changed redirect for the Aborigines page to point to Aborigine, not Indigenous peoples (the Aboriginal page already redirected there). --cjllw | TALK 05:16, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

Why do we have a aborigine page and a aborigine (disambiguation) page? the disambiguation page doesn't disambiguate anything that isn't already on the aborigine, it is merely less complete and informative. The aborigine page should say "disambiguation" and the current disambiguation page should be removed. If ther are no objections, ill do it soon. --Ballchef 00:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Ballchef, I've replied over there.--cjllw | TALK 01:56, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I've merged and expanded the Aborigine and disambig page, 'Aborigine' is the ambiguous term, per wikipedia policy disambiguation goes there, as there is not one group who are known universally as Aborigine. I came here fixing double redirects. Pedant 17:49, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

External Links

Would it be relevant to include an external link to Cultural Survival[www.cs.org], the website does have news on contemporary issues of native peoples. L Hamm 17:53, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't see why not, IMO it's a reasonably well-established group, which has a recognised advocacy role in a few regions. The site itself is non-advertorial, has a selection of freely-available material, and mostly seems to serve as a clearing-house for topical links to other sites/articles, and so would be a uesful/notable reference for any reader interested in following up indigenous issues.--cjllw | TALK 23:24, 2005 August 21 (UTC)

Manually moved here from talk:Indigenous people

The following discussions were on the obsolete talk page of Indigenous people. I guess that someone must have move the contents manually from IP to IPs and forgot to include the talk. Probably ready to be archived. --Johannes Rohr 12:28, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Johannes. I have now moved these into the /Archive I, excepting your more recent (and rather good) comment re 'people vs peoples', below. Cheers, --cjllw | TALK 03:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

indigenous people vs. indigenous peoples

Calling this article "indigenous people" instead of "indigenous peoples" means ignoring some 25 years of discussion on this issue. It's hard to believe that such things can still be found outside of governmental bureaucracies...--Johannes Rohr 10:18, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Care to explain what you mean by this? - Nat Krause`

In international debates on indigenous peoples' rights, one of the fundamental issues is whether or not they exist. I.e. are there indigenous peoples (pueblos indígenas) or just indigenous people (gente indígena). According to international law, peoples, by virtue of being what they are, are endowed with certain collective rights, most notably the Right to Self-Determination (art. 1 in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). By contrast, people (span. "gente", fr. "gens", germ. "Leute"/"Menschen", russ. "Люди") are not endowed with any specific rights in international law.

In order to circumvent recognition of these inherent rights, some governments continue to avoid by all means the term "peoples" using odd constructions instead, like (Working group on) "indigenous populations", (UN Permanent Forum on) "indigenous issues", (International decade of the world's) "indigenous people" (without "s"). However, any recent UN study on these issues, undertaken either by the Special rapporteur, by the Working Group or the Permanent Forum will consistently use the term "indigenous peoples" as it has always been the case in the world of non-governmental organisations. Many governments have also accepted it meanwhile, while some continue with their hard line of denial. Overall, I would say, that "indigenous peoples" is nowadays the more neutral and more frequently used variant while "indigenous people" is functional, politicized language, aimed at the denial of collective rights. --Johannes Rohr 20:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization

As an ethnic group, shouldn't the "indigenous" part of "indigenous peoples" be capitalized in this article and those that stem from it? For example, the policy of the Government of Canada is that "Indigenous means 'native to the area.' In this sense, Aboriginal people are indeed indigenous to North America. As a proper name for a people, the term is capitalized to form 'Indigenous peoples.'" ^[1]. Like other terms for ethnic groups such as Arab, Asian, or German, I think "indigenous peoples" should be capitalized as "Indigenous peoples". I'd also add that in most of the external links provided on this article "indigenous" has been capitalized, such as "UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UN PFII)" or "Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS)". Kurieeto 13:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

A quick look at the UN PFII and CWIS website shows that indigenous is lower case unless used as part of a proper noun (like the "UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UN PFII)"). Indigenous peoples per se is not an ethnic group but a description of ethnic groups in place and form of life (just as are, say, settler colonialist and refugee group). No caps unless there's some strong precedent I don't know about. Can you revert or call for further discussion? --Carwil 01:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation Carwil, it clears things up. And my apologies for not checking the external links more throughly, I should have. I've reverted my edit. Kurieeto 20:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Palestinians

Latest addition to the list of Indigenous peoples.

Palestinians —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.78.109 (talk) 7 Mar 2006

Palestinian claims to collective rights most usually are termed in ways, and pursued through forums, not generally associated with 'indigenous peoples' per se, and so such an inclusion would have its problems.--cjllw | TALK 08:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

Read ethnologic report that indigenous cultures in tropical America change over decades and centuries, so there is no "cultural continuity" in artifacts, housing style etc.

Some "indigenous" cultures engage in trade and cultural contact with "modern" neighbors and may be dependent on this. Eg. Pygmies obtain significant portion of their food from Bantu farmers. It is suggersted that Pygmies could colonise intact rainforest only after developed trade-like relations with Bantu.

Several anthropologists were criticised for isolating indigenous people in well-meaned reserve-like state, contrary to right of education and self-development. I see fundamental contradiction in modern approach to indigenous people. They are supposed to have equal status, self-definition and governship of their land. But this is impossible without knowledge of surrounding modern society - and getting this, indigenous culture is subject to pressure. —This unsigned comment was added by 141.14.19.45 (talk • contribs) 17 March 2006.

The above all well and good; however, indigenous peoples do not have to be isolated, or "primitive", "tribal", or completely bemused when it comes to interactions with surrounding "modern" cultures and technologies. They also are not required to have 'stood still' culturally or technologically, and be relicts from a passed-by era, a la the "noble savage" image. Hopefully the article makes this clear.--cjllw | TALK 02:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Maori

Are Maori truely indigenous people of New Zealand? There's no doubt they were the first peoples there, but they have been in New Zealand for <10,000 years. I'm thinking if New Zealand Maori are considered indigenous of their nation, wouldn't people in the UK with direct Heritage to the old Briton population that existed before the Roman Invasion be considered Indigenous peoples as well? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.181.8.3 (talk • contribs) 28 July 2006.

Hi. If you have another read through the article, you will see that the length of time a particular group is able to trace back its association with a region is not a determining factor in having (or claiming) an identity as an indigenous people. Nor, for that matter, is whether or not that particular group was the very first to inhabit a region. This article discusses the contemporary political and social concept/identity of indigenous peoples, such as appears in the discourse of treaties, legislation, rights-based policy, and national and international fora. See category talk:Indigenous peoples for an attempt at some more explicit definition. By the criteria set out there and in this article, Maori do indeed have claims to be recognised as an indigenous people, while descendants of Ancient Britons do not.

This article does not concern itself with the 'common language' use of the word indigenous, such as in the sense any individual or group of individuals may be called "indigenous" or "native-born" or whatever, by virtue of having themselves been born (or having ancestral ties to) some particular region.

One further distinction, indigenous peoples as used here embraces or involves the concept of collective rights, and so does not per se relate to the identity of individuals, but rather cultural/ethnic groups themselves.--cjllw | TALK 01:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Imho, this issue should be more plainly spelled out in the article itself. This type of redefining of common language to exploit the assumed meanings, oh so common in politics and social sciences, is well deserving of considerable criticism.

From the article, Re: Definitions

...As a contemporary cultural description, however, the term indigenous peoples has a much narrower common meaning. The more restrictive criteria as outlined need to be satisfied in order to identify an indigenous group as such in the sense interpreted here...

And what follows is filled with weasel words and inconsistency, carefully framing things just so. I'm tired of this nonsense in the mass media, can we not do better on wikipedia? Yes, this has become a common usage in some circles for this term, but outside of those circles it's used more frequently with a conventional definition. A little intellectual honesty would be a refreshing respite.

I came into this article looking for information about who the original inhabitants of europe were (via the indigenous peoples of europe sub), and according to this, only the Basque and Sami qualify, much to my confusion and surprise. After having to go to the parent article for clarification, I'm made to stomach a redefinition that is so agenda driven that it's barely recognizeable from the true meaning.

I propose that the conventional definition be given primacy in this article, and in it's subs, and their contents, with this spun up sociology definition taking the backseat. This proposal is upon the grounds of frequency of usage and common understanding of the term. A seperate article can be made for this specialized, or industry, term, clearly delineated as such. I will wait for comment before acting.

209.105.204.143 19:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Some (belated, have only just now seen them) responses to the above comments. Your forebearance in waiting for comment before unilateral action is appreciated; however, I (for one) do not think your proposal should be acted upon, for the following reasons:

• It is not wikipedia's fault that the term indigenous peoples (and similar) has acquired the particular meaning as used in this article. Nor is that meaning an invention of wikipedia or its editors. Neither is that usage here "agenda driven" or employed to push some particular POV you might presume is held by editors here.
• On the contrary, as an encyclopaedia wikipedia ought to document what it can about a significant topic which is very widely recognised by all manner of sources, is written about extensively, and has a reality in formal national and international law, policy, organisations and general public discourse. If for example it is good enough for Encyclopaedia Britannica (hardly some radicalised publication) to use the term in this way, why should it be wrong for wikipedia to do likewise?
• Far from being some "spun up sociology definition" of relevance only to political anthropologists, the validity of this concept is recognised and demonstrated by its appearance in the publications and policies of an extremely wide range of institutions, governments, NGOs, et cetera, from every continent. If institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF recognise and use the concept, and the Constitutions and laws of governments from the US to Russia to India to Brazil to PNG to Kenya to Burkino Faso all make mention and provision for it, then surely its recognition goes beyond "in some circles". Hopefully the content and references of the article itself are enough to satisfy on this point; if not, the most cursory of searches on "indigenous peoples" should amply demonstrate that the term has a much wider currency than you seem to allow. The "intellectually honest" approach would be to not downplay its currency, and not characterise it as merely some trendy PC redefinition of its 'proper' meaning.
• The fact that adjectives such as indigenous, native, aboriginal etc also have an everyday, common use does not invalidate this other particular meaning, and vice versa. The two senses in which words like indigenous are used can co-exist quite readily, and it's a rather common feature of language for words to have multiple meanings and levels of specificity. Sure enough, sometimes confusion may arise, but the context should make things clearer (although no doubt the current definitions in the article could be improved upon).
• Re the proposal "that the conventional [ie, common-dictionary] 'definition be given primacy in this article", I do not think that would be appropriate. Firstly, wikipedia is not a dictionary (see WP:NOT), and its job is not to write about the meanings of common, everyday adjectives. Secondly, even if you were to write about indigenous or native in the broad sense of "born in, originating from", what is there really to usefully say? By these 'conventional' definitions, anyone born in a place would be indigenous to it, and any culture they may belong to would be indigenous also ("indigenous" would be anything which is not 'foreign'). But this is a distinction between immigrants and non-immigrants, or "local" vs. "foreign", which is quite another matter, and is better described in other articles.

All of the above is not to say that there are no criticisms and disputes about indigenous identity and the expression of indigenous and collective rights, or that in a lot of cases recognition of indigenous identity may in practice only be lip-service, or actively denied, by various governments, groups and public commentators. However, such criticisms and views need to be documented from notable, reliable sources, and not come from contributors' own opinions on the matter, which are immaterial.--cjllw | TALK 04:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Maori are commonly defined as the indigenous people of New Zealand both within New Zealand and elsewhere; they are defined as such juridically, anthropologically, and in common everyday speech. The above question seems spurious. Bonfire elefantti (talk) 01:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Jews in Asia?

I'm not sure by what measure Jews would be considered Indigenous. Before the escape from Egypt, the "Land of Israel" was originally (Exodus 13:5, 33:2) that of the Caananites (and possibly the Philistines). Then, it sounds unlikely that modern jews are descended from the Ancient Israelites (Tribes_of_Israel#Jews_as_Israelites). Then, they were forced out a number of times, including the Jewish diaspora, after which only a few remained in the region (History of Palestine). Only in the 19th century did jews begin to return to Israel en masse. I'm not willing to say they *aren't* indigenous, but I think it's a problematic claim. -- TheMightyQuill 17:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggest an extremely carefully chosen, non-POV hedge phrase (or even a single hedge word) added to text, along with any relevant wikilinks you know of. Removing the sentence entirely would require a stonger position than you are willing to take, plus lots of evidence, plus discussion here --Ling.Nut 17:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• The Jewish People's origins to the ancient Israelites is well established and pre-dates the Exodus. The user, TheMightyQuill, who removed the text in question from the article, did so without any, or any reasonable, justification. The failure of this user to capitalize "Jews," I aver, may demonstrate a biased motivation for the removal. That the Jews are an aboriginal People, indigenous to the Land of Israel has many references both within Wikipedia and elsewhere. --Lance ^talk 01:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Lance, this article discusses the term indigenous peoples in a specific and widely-recognised sense, a sense which is more restrictive than the common adjectival usage of indigenous meaning simply "born in, native to, or originating from" a given place. Please read the details in the article itself, and article's external links, as well as the preceding discussion on this talk page.

By these terms, I would maintain that the inclusion or identification of Jewish people(s) under the specific sense used here is problematic. Which is not at all to deny or venture an opinion on "the Jews [being] indigenous to the Land of Israel", in the everyday sense of words like indigenous, native, etc., but instead meant to preserve the integrity and consistency of the article's specific coverage.

If, after re-reviewing the texts and information on indigenous peoples you still maintain otherwise, then you will need to supply a number of references/sources in which Jewish people(s) are identified as an indigenous people in the specific (not the general) sense. The website in the link you provided above does not do this, nor for that matter do the wikipedia articles on Jews and related topics. See the explanation at category:Indigenous peoples for a detailing of some criteria to determine whether any particular group has identified as an indigenous people (eg, are Jewish groups represented or identified as such by organisations concerned with indigenous peoples' affairs, such as the UN's Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues? I've not seen any such mention.

I will revert that addition, pending consensus and provision of references to the contrary.--cjllw | TALK 04:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

How can you say I withdrew it without any reasonable justification when I posted my concerns right here on the talk page, and stated that I wasn't necessarily opposed, but that it is a problematic assertion? Furthermore, I aver the fact that I correctly capitalised "Jews" twice, but accidentally forgot twice, reveals that I must be only 1/2 antisemetic. (Next time, please assume good faith). Thank you cjllw for rephrasing my concerns, perhaps more clearly that I did originally. -- TheMightyQuill 05:15, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I support CJLLW on this. Jews are not an indigenous people under the definition of this term by the UN. Changing the definition to include Jews would make every people on earth that live in the ancestral lands "indigenous" (most of the worlds population) and completely nullify the relevance of the term. Maunus 07:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no horse in this race. I was saying to TheMightyQuill that it might have a more careful procedure to take things to talk before removing them, and that hedging and showing reasons for the hedge may have been a safer strategy.... but that is a far far far cry from alleging racism, Bad faith, etc etc etc. I allege or suggest no such thing. Instead I see a careful editor raising a reasonable (though obviously controversial) concern. I do wanna say that spelling "Jew" as "jew" is also quite reasonably interpreted as a typo. My typing su**s, and so I can see this as a reasonable description.Cheers--Ling.Nut 13:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

New Assessment Criteria for Ethnic Groups articles

Hello,

WikiProject Ethnic groups has added new assessment criteria for Ethnic Groups articles.

Your article has automatically been given class=stub and reassess=yes ratings. Don't feel slighted if the article is actually far more than a stub -- at least in the beginning, all unassessed articles are being automatically assigned to these values.

-->How to assess articles

Revisions of assessment ratings can be made by assigning an appropriate value via the class parameter in the WikiProject Ethnic groups project banner {{Ethnic groups}} that is currently placed at the top of Ethnic groups articles' talk pages. Quality assessment guidelines are at the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's assessment system page.

Please see the Project's article rating and assessment scheme for more information and the details and criteria for each rating value. A brief version can be found at Template talk:Ethnic groups. You can also enquire at the Ethnic groups Project's main discussion board for assistance.

Another way to help out that could be an enjoyable pastime is to visit Category:WikiProject Ethnic groups, find an interesting-looking article to read, and carefully assess it following those guidelines.

Thanks!
--Ling.Nut 20:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Ratings summary page

Please see the link to the ratings summary page in the Ethnic groups banner atop this page for comments on the rating of class=B Thanks--Ling.Nut 16:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Does UN have any authority on English Words?

The definition of Indigenous People in this article seems to be made for only human rights organisations or development organisations. These organisations seem to have developed this word for the purposes of their studies. Like improving the conditions of Native Americans in USA. This is similar to some EU studies which define European as EU citizens for the purposes of those studies. Obviously, Indigenous People are people who are indigenous. That means most Europeans, Asians and Africans today are indigenous. So maybe we should make this page a disambiguation page, one linking to indigenous people (literally) and the other links to this human rights aspect of the term...Thulean 18:14, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking about the best way to organize this material. However, I'm not sure I understand what exactly you are suggesting. Could you please provide wikilinks to the exact articles you think should be on the disambig page (I assume that Indigenous peoples is one of them...). --Ling.Nut 18:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Indigenous peoples is one of them, re-named to something like Indigenous People(International Organisations), the other would be a new one. The new Indigenous People article may give dictionary definition of indigenous, offer examples of how some indigenous people were overrun by colonizers or immigrants while how some still inhabit their lands. It may give links to Indigenous tribes around the world, like Germanic people or Zulu or Japaneese, etc...

Your definition of indigenous people would be... ? Anyone who is living in the place where they were born? - TheMightyQuill 20:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

No, the dictionary definition:

"indigenous: adjective originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native. " [2]

For ex:

• Jutes-->Germanic People-->Indigenous People of Europe-->Indigenous People
  
• Kikuyu-->Tribes of Kenya-->Indigenous People of Africa-->Indigenous People
  
• Cherokee-->Indigenous People of North America-->Indigenous People
  
• Korean-->Indigenous People of Asia-->Indigenous People
  

Thulean 22:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I occurred naturally in my home town, and I could be considered a "native" here, so I should be included? On the contrary, no one really originated from Europe, Asia or the Americas; everyone migrated out of Africa. So, either we list everyone, or almost no one, or we just provide a dictionary definition (WP:WINAD) which already exists at Indigenous. -- TheMightyQuill 22:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

No, you have to originate there...Thulean 01:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh and we are talking about origins of populations, not origins of species. Species is a higher grouping. If you want to take it higher, you can say we originated at oceans because that was where single cell organisms evolved...Thulean 01:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Thulean. I really do appreciate your good-faith effort to draw these distinctions. It shows that you have thought about these issues. I think I see the logic of your remarks, and am certain that a reasonable case could be made for these changes.

However, I see more compelling logic in the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The system as it stands seems to have been working a while, and it seems to fulfill a valid function in explaining the information. There isn't any clamor to change it. My point is that while your viewpoint is certainly a valid one, I am seeing more than a little evidence that the current system reflects consensus.--Ling.Nut 22:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

A quick look at Talk:White people suggests his efforts might not be entirely in good faith. -- TheMightyQuill 22:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Neither your comment "might not be entirely in good faith".Thulean 01:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Good faith or not, "indigenous peoples" per the meaning in this article is not 'only' used (and certainly not created or mandated by) the UN or other international organisations. Instead the concept (whether by 'indigenous peoples' or some other name) has wide and well-established currency beyond such institutions, as even a cursory search of the references should show.

"Indigenous" is an adjective, while "indigenous peoples" is a nominal phrase- these are two different parts of speech and there should really be no basis for confusing the two. As pointed out above, an article whose scope was "people(s) who come from or are native to some particular place" would be pretty meaningless; if used purely adjectivally and "literally" the only non-indigenous people would be 1st-generation immigrants to somewhere, which is quite a different thing altogether.--cjllw | TALK 00:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

As I said, the usage is either for human rights organisations or development organisations (World Bank). And no, it's not just 1st generation immigrants. White Americans are not indigenous to North America, for ex. So the indigenous people in Americas would be Amerindans....Thulean 01:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It's used in the current sense by NGOs, Governments, academics, media, and indigenous people themselves. Can you provide some examples of the Germans being referred to as indigenous? -- TheMightyQuill 01:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I dont see much links to acedemia and media. The majority of links are of NGO's or intergovermental organisations. And, as I said, the definition is for mostly human rights purposes.

As for your request, here, about Frisians: [3]

"A comparison is proper with the situation of, say, Frisians in the North of Germany (Kreis Nordfriesland, Land Schleswig-Holstein). Frisians are an indigenous population of the region who speak nine, to a certain extent standardised and normalised, dialects which can be considered genetically related languages of the Germanic group."

German is an ethincity. It should be listed under "demographics of europe". However, Frisians, despite being not isolated, is an idigenous group among them. Thulean 01:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know much about Frisians, but from what I read they do meet the definition given currently in the article, that is, as long as they consider themselves indigenous. So... what's the problem? Add the category if you feel like it. =) - TheMightyQuill 03:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I would have to disagree re Frisians being identified as a specific indigenous people per the sense and intention of this article (see also prior discussion at talk:List of indigenous peoples). The link and quote are using the term adjectivally, and Frisians do not represent themselves as an indigenous people in the specific sense- eg no representations or accommodations as such to the national govt or its legal framework, no delegations to indigenous bodies such as UNPFII, etc etc (contrast for eg the situation with the Sami people). Ethnic/linguistic minorities are not the same as indigenous peoples. --cjllw | TALK 04:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ling.Nut, yes, it isnt broke. But there is no central page where you can access different indigenous groups. You have to look for exactly what you are looking for. For ex, I can find Kikuyu if I write it but it'd take me ages if I want to find it from "Indigenous People of Africa". Besides, you have monopolized the word "Indigenous People" to a degree that relevant articles dont make sense...For ex, Indigenous_peoples_of_Europe. Are Frisians not indigenous to Europe?? That's absurd...

Another example would be: Assume a teenager magazine helps about shaving by saying, "foam your upper lip and shave". This makes sense for the purposes of that article but you cant say:

Contemporary "Shaving People" is defined by XYZ magazine as those who shave their upper lips. Of course a magazine doesnt equal UN, but just trying to give you an example how "working" definitions might differ from overall definitions. Thulean 01:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

There are two meaningful ways to define a word one is the actual usage in common language and tee other one is establishing a defnton that allows us to tal about a particular phenomenon in a meaningful way. Defining "indigenous people" as "any people who live in their original homeland" is neither. Nobody uses this definition in everyday speech in fact it would likely be interpreted as a joke if I as a Dane called myself "indigenous" even though there are no other ethnic groups known with certainty to have inhabited the geographical area of Denmark in earlier times. Seecondly the definition is un-meaningful because it doesn't allow us to talk about any limited phenomenon - according to such a definition either noone falls under the definition (because all population on eart have arrived at their present locations via migrations) or everyone falls undeer the definition (by being indigenous to the place where they are born). Thee UN deefinition is meaningful because it allows us to single out a group of peoples who stand in similar social situations and havee similar needs of attention AND who correspond roughly to the common language definition of "Indigenous peoples". There is no need to change this in the article. Maunus 10:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

You are answering to points which were already answered before (population migrations). Read above. Anyway, here is another example. This is a scientific article, published by acedemia: [4] It's clear that the authors regard Celtic people as indigenous inhabitants of British Isles. Most ethnic Irish, Scottish and Welsh are indigenous people of British Isles and hence of Europe then. But again they dont meet the criteria defined here, like Frisians. Therefore this is the second example how indigenous people is used in other meanings besides the one defined here. I'm sure I can come up with dozens other examples, in a half hour google search. Oh and about indigenous Danes, I know how that sounds. But when we say Germanic People are indigenous to Northern Europe, it fits everyday language, no? Thulean 13:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I was not answering questions, but I was stating that in my opinion on the matter, which is the way we build consensus here. I don't agree that calling Celtic or Germanic people indigenous to the areas they inhabit is meaningful. The only way we can talk about celts or germans in the first place is by assuming that they belong to common migrational waves. The two peoples in europe that we do not know to have come originally from somewhere else is the basque and the sámi. Maunus 16:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Sami probably migrated from Siberia. I dont know about Basques. On the other hand, for ex:

"The Germanic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, originating from Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic languages that are descended from Proto-Germanic." Germanic_people

So the people who wrote this article disagrees with you and agrees with this academic source which says:

"The Romanisation continued systematically, but the Romans never managed to impose their culture completely on the indigenous Germanic tribes". [5]

So basically this article in its current form does not meet to standarts of WP:NPOV. Thulean 16:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Your examples don't convince me, to me they only suggest that the persons who wrote those articles are not applying a functional definition of the word and that they don't understand the theory of indo-european migrations. Wikipedia is not a reliable source so you cannot use the wording of the germainc people article as an argument. Also the Sámi probably spoke another non Uralic language before the Finns moved into the area - this would mean that they have at least migrated from somewhere earlier than the Uralic speaking finns.Maunus 17:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

You do not need to be convinced for wikipedia articles to contain information which was published by academic sources. And you were saying " The two peoples in europe that we do not know to have come originally from somewhere else is the basque and the sámi." In this case we know Sami came from somewhere else...Thulean 18:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

We know all peoples come from somewhere else. And you are right as long as a claim is well sourced I don't need to be convinced. If consensus is against me consensus decides - my only objective with my posts above is to show that I agree with the ones with whom you disagree - up to this point the majority side. Maunus 18:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

However, WP:NPOV cannot be superseded by editors' consensus. I've provided 3 examples now and I believe I can provide more if necessary. However I also believe that I've proven that "Indigenous People" are not limited to the definition used here. Thulean 18:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes it can, unless you can convince the consensus of editors that there is an NPOV conflict there is no NPOV conflict.Maunus 19:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll wait for more comments and then take it to RfC...Thulean 21:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh and it cant. Read WP:NPOV Thulean 21:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thulean, once again you seem to be confusing instances when the word indigenous is used as a simple adjective and where the term indigenous peoples has its particular and well-established meaning which this article attempts to describe.

I know that exactly. That's why I want to make this page to define its scope exactly by making this a disambiguation page. Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

In those academic articles you cite it is clear from the context that they are using the word indigenous purely as an adjectival description, and not formally, in much the same way as one could write "Eucalyptus trees are indigenous to Australia". This statement does not assert that Eucalyptus trees have some specific property indigenous which only some small subset of trees share, and similarly those sources you cite are not saying that Celtic or Germanic peoples have a specific indigenous property which distinguishes them from other peoples in Europe.

[6]

"Frisians are an indigenous population of the region "

Of course indigenous is an adjective here, just like it's an adjective when used in "Indigenous People". However Frisians wouldnt fit all the definitions listed in this article. And yes they do have a distinction as they have their own dialect. Similarly Germanic people have distinctions, ranging from culture to language which distinguishes them from other peoples of Europe.Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

However, this indigenous peoples article does assert that in the context of the modern and specific usage of the term there is a particular and limited subset of the world's peoples who are identified as indigenous peoples by virtue of their situation (generally relative to other, "dominant" cultures), claims, land association and modes of subsistence. The validity of this assertion of specific identity is backed up by the references on the page (many more can be found elsewhere), and by any survey of particular provisions made for indigenous peoples in the laws and regulations of many countries (Norway, US, India, Russia, Burkino Faso, Australia, Brazil, PNG, etc etc). In fact from your previous posts it does not seem to me that you are disputing that this is a proper and recognised widespread use of the term, but only that there is some "other" sense of "indigenous (peoples)" which you feel should be catered for.

I'm saying it's widespread only on while discussing certain topics. Can you give an example where this "Indigenous People" term is used outside of human rights and/or development issues, like to give more rights to a certain minority or make their living conditions better? Can you also a give an example where an adjective looses most of its meaning when used before a noun to define a term?Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

If so, I think you need to think that through a little more. Evidently, every ethnic group in the world has some place or other from which they may be considered as having "originated from" or are "indigenous to", whether they currently inhabit that region or not. So it would be plainly non-sensical to make this (global in scope) indigenous peoples article conform to the purely adjectival sense, as it would need to include just about every people under the sun. It would be like having an indigenous trees article- how could such a non-locally specific article be of any benefit or use?

I'm not suggesting indigenous peoples to list "every people under the sun". I'm suggesting it to give links to regions and those regions listing every indigenous group in the region. Therefore we can access "every people under the sun" from locally specific articles. I seem to be repeating my positions, didnt you read what's written before or didnt you understand? I'm repeating the example:

• Jutes-->Germanic People-->Indigenous People of Europe-->Indigenous People
  
• Kikuyu-->Tribes of Kenya-->Indigenous People of Africa-->Indigenous People
  
• Cherokee-->Indigenous People of North America-->Indigenous People
  
• Korean-->Indigenous People of Asia-->Indigenous People
  Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Turning now to the subarticles which are locally specific - eg Indigenous peoples of Europe, Indigenous peoples of Africa, etc - I and most likely other participants in the discussion here would maintain that these should be kept with their current title, focus and scope. Taking indigenous peoples of Europe as an example, it seems to me based on the above and your own comments at that article's talk page that you are seeking some article or listing for all peoples who "originate from or in" Europe (I'm not sure how you'd go about defining that). If so, then per my suggestion there I think you'd be better off to set up an article like Ethnic groups of Europe or List of ethnic groups in Europe, if these do not indeed already exist in some form (possibly they do). Prepending these with the word "indigenous" would be redundant, and per Maunus's far more eloquent reasoning above by no means the most natural and recognised usage of the term. If we have to, we could put a Hatnote at the top of articles like Indigenous peoples of Europe, saying something like "For a list of European peoples generally, see X article".

"List of ethnic groups in Europe" does not equal "List of Indigenous peoples of Europe". An ethnic list can only list modern ethnicities, like French or German. And Indigenous peoples list can list everyone ranging from Celts to Franks to Romans to Vandals, etc...And I'm also proposing to make "Indigenous People of Europe" to make a disambiguation page. One would save its current content and re-named to "Indigenous People of Europe (Human Rights/Development)" and the other new one would include literal meaning and list all Indigenous People of Europe after applying dictionary definition.Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The Indigenous peoples of Europe should remain as-is, since the only objectively and formally defined indigenous peoples remaining in Europe are the Sami and a number of indigenous peoples of northern Russia, plus perhaps a couple of other more borderline and indefinite claims such as the Basque whose claims for indigenous recognition in certain circles are not without contention. Groups such as Frisians, Swabians, Ingrians, Roma, may be ethnic minorities but are not and do not claim recognition as indigenous peoples, to the best of my knowledge.

Frisians do. Roma are not indigenous and originate from India. And the official definition is again, for the purposes of human rights.Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

If instead of the term indigenous peoples it was replaced with tribal peoples (as they are referred to in some parts of the world), would that help to make the distinction clearer? (not that I am suggesting an actual substitution, since this latter term is not appropriate in the general circumstance).

As I said, I just want indigenous peoples to define its scope. It's not a "contemporary cultural term", it's just used in certain topics.Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and raise an RfC if you feel you really must; but given that yours is the sole dissenting voice here I would wonder really whether it would be all that constructive.--cjllw | TALK 02:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually one person in Indigenous People of Europe agreed with me while the other said its scope definition must be clearer out of 3 comments. The reaction seems to be negative here but I'll go to RfC or meditation to make these pages disambiguation pages. However, I'll also start editing after more discussion in talk pages. Thulean 14:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Your further examples of Frisians being described as indigenous are unconvincing. Do a quick google search for "indigenous New Yorkers" or "indigenous Londoners" and you will find quite a few results too. This is why some people capitalize the term "Indigenous People." Please note that wikipedia has no article Indigenous plants. With plants, it is used as an adjective, not combined as a term.

As for "indigenous", it doesn't lose most of its original meaning when attached to "indigenous people." Indigenous people by this article's definition are indigenous by your definition. But the world is full of terms that are more complex than their individual words. For instance, you mentioned international development which doesn't refer to all development everywhere.

Your examples of other indigenous people are not a definition. How do we decide if Japanese people are indigenous, or if the Ainu are, who were there first?

Furthermore, the term is used far beyond human rights and development. Do a search for Indigenous Art or Indigenous Games. -TheMightyQuill 17:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting that you mention Ainu:

"indigenous:

autochthonal: originating where it is found; "the autochthonal fauna of Australia includes the kangaroo"; "autochthonous rocks and people and folktales"; "endemic folkways"; "the Ainu are indigenous to the northernmost islands of Japan" [7]

About Frisians:

"THE STATUS OF INDIGENOUS AND MINORITY PEOPLE IN THE NETHERLANDS"

"There are no indigenous peoples - in the sense of “first nations” which have been overrun in a colonialist context - on the territory of the Netherlands. The information given below regards the linguistic and cultural minority of the Frisians, who inhabit the province of Friesland, situated in the North of the Netherlands. The majority of the inhabitants of this province are speakers of the Frisian language, which is considered to be a separate language. Frisian is closely related to Dutch, but shows a certain number of remarkable likings to English."

"Between 700 and 600 B.C. Frisian tribes - related to other Germanic peoples such as the Saxons - settled on the coastal clay regions of what today is called the Netherlands. " [8]

As you can see this article refers to Frisians as "indigenous peoples" (as understood from title, minority refers to immigrants) but not "in the sense of “first nations” which have been overrun in a colonialist context" That's the context you've been talking about in this article and you have to clarify that and seperate from overall meaning...Thulean 18:39, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

But that is clearly stated in the first line of the first paragraph...Maunus 18:46, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

But unlike you, the article clearly did specify its context.

About "Indigenous Londoners and New Yorkers", I've said it repeatedly that Amerindans are indigenous to Americas. So "Indigenous New Yorkers" is an oxymoron as that city was founded by settlers. Similarly London was founded by Romans, not Celts...Thulean 18:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Unlike me? Why would i specify my context, wee are discussing the article here.

But others lived on the british isles before the celts as well (Picts for example) so indigenous in that sense of the word can only be a relative term. The Picts were more indigenous than the Celts who were more indigenous than the Anglosaxons who were more indigenous than the Norse who were more indigenous than the Normans who were emore indigenous than the Pakistani .... As for the amerindians they also didn't originate on the american continent but arrived there through migrations (and some people argue that they also did away with an already existing population of humans related to the Kennewick man). So the only meaningful way first nations are indigenous to the americas is by the deefinitions of the UN. Maunus 21:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

This is Thulean...I meant, unlike you, as in plural as in people who wrote this article. It'd have been clearer if I had written "unlike you did", but anyways... In your edit, you seem to understand the concept of "earliest historical connection". About Picts, they seem to have only lived in central and northern Scotland. So maybe you can say they are indigenous to Scotland however they seem to have not settled all of British Isles. But yes, the adjective indigenous is not perfect. However neither the narrower definition here. The definition of World Bank and UN isnt a perfect fit (substance-based economy requirement isnt in UN's definition for example...)Lukas19 21:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, we really don't seem to be making any headway in either direction here. Thulean, if a title like Ethnic groups in Europe for the sense you seem to be intending is not to your liking, then why not call your proposed article simply European peoples or Peoples of Europe? Prepending the adjective indigenous to either of those would be entirely redundant (whereas its appearance is not redundant in the current Indigenous peoples of Europe article). If you think there's any danger of readers confusing them, then we need only have a hatnote at the top, directing the reader to "for all peoples of Europe, see European peoples", or something like that. Setting up a system of dab pages is entirely unnecessary. (Again, you should probably do a check to see if there's not already an article around under some other title which covers this ground). The same would apply to the other "Indigenous peoples of X" articles.

Roma may be called as one of the "Peoples of Europe" by some but they are not indigenous. Peoples of Europe and Indigenous People of Europe are not same. You keep giving me unequal substitudes. Why? I've given several examples when "indigenous people" is used in the context UNLIKE the context here. Why do you still want to monoplolize this for your article?Lukas19 21:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

For the main indigenous peoples article, that too (by the several arguments above, no need to repeat them) should be retained with its current title and focus. I remain unconvinced that there's anything at this generic, global level which requires disambiguation, and maintain that it ought not be changed.

So specific definitions supersede generic definitions? Why doesnt military jets supersede planes? Lukas19 21:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Your generic definition has no need of the qualifying adjective indigenous, see below. Your analogy is not applicable.--cjllw | TALK 12:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

By your scheme outlined above (eg Korean-->Indigenous People of Asia-->Indigenous Peoples, etc) it really seems that this would place all the world's peoples under that top-most designation— can you give some examples of peoples who you think (by your scheme) would not be included by that chain of reasoning?--cjllw | TALK 03:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course it would include all people as all people are indigenous to this planet. The functionality would be to group people according to continents and then according to regions/countries so navigating between all people of the world would be easier and more "surfable". Lukas19 21:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, Lukas/Thulean, since you agree with me that by the intended meaning you wish to apply here all peoples of the world may be regarded as indigenous (as having originated from somewhere on the planet), then you must surely also agree that using the adjective indigenous in the title of such an article/series of articles would be utterly redundant. It is equivalent to saying "peoples originating from Earth", since the only contrasting group excluded would presumably be extra-terrestrials.--cjllw | TALK 12:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

But as I said, "The functionality would be to group people according to continents and then according to regions/countries so navigating between all people of the world would be easier and more "surfable"."Lukas19 18:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Lukas, I know what you said. Repeating it does not however make it any more sensible. This talk page is intended for discussion on how to improve an article entitled "indigenous peoples". You are failing to describe or address at all how your 'functionality' (which really sounds more like a categorisation scheme than something one could build on for an article on a specific topic) is relevant to this article. Again, you do not need the description indigenous for the general programme you are outlining.

It really seems that you are more intent on arguing for the sake of it, and it's becoming quite apparent that any further dialogue without you actually detailing a specific proposal would be a wasted effort; I see no reason to continue in this vein.--cjllw | TALK 22:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Double standards of "indigenous" and the noble savage stereotype disgust me. Greeks are not native Europeans? Nice politicization of it all!

For instance, the New World residents before the Icelanders and rediscovered by Europeans, were fully formed (e.g. evolved, for those of you who follow that debate) humans who crossed the Pacific to the New World, as Old World as Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus. They knew fire, domestication of plants and animals, burial rites and other things. Those are what they brought with them, just as was later brought across the Atlantic. They are no more or less indigenous to the Americas than George Washington or Michael Jackson. The only difference is, the way in which they traveled here. They had no sophisticated concepts such as "continent" (neither did the vikings), because they did not know geography in the way civilized Europeans knew it as learned from the Greeks. Frankly, I'm rather annoyed and disturbed that they and their yuppie worshippers get away with this type of revanchist POV. It's not even politically correct, in the correct sense. It's an Orientalist fantasy or doctrine of infallibility and inviolability, that unrealistically believes is exempt from criticism. What happens when they move out of their own region? Are they still "indigenous"? Why should they be afforded extra rights than those populations which have moved around a bit more? Human rights and equality are supposed to mean that nobody gets a leg up for their personal background, which means that equality and respect are the fertile wellspring of a meritocracy. I don't hold them on any pedestal, but internationalists and globalists somehow think these peoples are demigods. Maybe I should go live like a noble savage; it's so "cool". No, I should get off my condescending, cosmopolitan cloud and get real instead. The only thing that makes sense, is "first come, first served". If some community was in one place first, then so be it that they should be afforded that mere measure of respect (which goes both ways; don't be selfish either), rather than this mysticism that led the Nazis to their policies. So Mexicans, come at me with your "bronze race" nonsense and let's go head to head. I don't give a crap for this nativism. If it wasn't right for the WASP population of the USA in the 19th Century, it is definitely a sin for anybody else in the 21st Century. Or, are we not to learn from history? Ha, yeah right! Rhode Islander 05:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The above rant is so crazy I can't even tell what his or her position is. Bonfire elefantti (talk) 04:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Two new additions

I have added Palestinians based on this UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples document that lists Palestine as a participant. [9]. (There are many others if anyone is doubtful. Please see Talk:Lists of indigenous peoples if you need more evidence. I also added the Druze based on this scholarly reference and have other sources should anyone be in doubt.[10] Cheers. Tiamut 01:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The first source mentions the currently non-existent "Palestine", not Palestinians, and the second talks about a village, not a people. Also, please stop using dubious sources from Google caches. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This article begins with: "The term indigenous peoples has no universal, standard or fixed definition, but can be used about any ethnic group who inhabit the geographic region with which they have the earliest historical connection. However several widely-accepted formulations, which define the term "Indigenous peoples" in stricter terms, have been put forward by important internationally-recognised organizations, such as the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. Indigenous peoples in this article is used in such a narrower sense." The source I provided for Palestinians was a "Report on a Capacity Building Workshop for Mobile Indigenous Peoples at the Fifth United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues" The report was prepared by the British-based NGO Intrac for the Refugee Studies Department at Oxford University (Are you purposefully mischaracterizing this as dubious? simply not reading very carefully, or what?) It's not dubious to provide an http version of the document for fasting loading, and the PDF address is there if you want to check the original. Here it is now, if that's the issue: [11]. Please self-revert. Thanks. Tiamut 02:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Jayjg. I reverted your edits. The material cited meets WP:ATT and the definitions used throughout this aticle. Please see the RfC discussion at List of Indigenous Peoples (the direct link is here: [12]). Tiamut 19:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Stop this edit war please

Jayjg and Tiamut. Please quit reverting each other's work. You've been at it for the last few days. It sounds like a reasonable dispute to me, not that either one of you is a hothead. Try to work it out here, on the talk page. Others will chip in their two cents' worth. If that doesn't work, I suggest mediation before somebody loses their cool or somebody else gets disgusted with Wikipedia. There is no urgency to resolving the dispute in the next few minutes, so write what you need to here. Jayjg, I think the ball is in your court. What about the documents Tiamut cited? Hmmmm? Cbdorsett 15:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Indigenous viewpoints

• "Often times, the indigenous people will view the new-comers as gods, invaders, or with confusion."
• I think this is probably a good faith edit. If you look at the range of responses between "invaders" and "gods" (see cargo cult, the statement actually has more than a little truth to it. Its crime is merely being an excessively simplistic, one-sentence summary of a topic whose complexity in all likelihood warrants its own separate article.--Ling.Nut 11:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The "narrow" definition of indigenous does not make sense

"As a contemporary cultural description used by some" -- it seems to me that in "some" is a weasel word in this context. I'd like to see a more concrete attribution. Under the supposed "narrow" definition of "indigenous"--"effectively marginalised, isolated and/or as forming a minority, when compared to other groups from whom they are distinct, or the nation-state as a whole"--Muslims in the United Kingdom could be considered indigenous, for instance.--Sylvain1972 19:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

You should, probably, read the whole paragraph. The fact of marginalisation is not the sole criterion. Instead, it is one of usually four criteria, which form the working definition as first laid out by José Martínez Cobo. The other three are: Inhabitance of a certain territory before conquest, colonisation, subjugation etc, cultural voluntary perpetuation of distinctiveness and self-identification as a distinct group/people. The reason, why marginalisation is important is, because else, just about every nation on earth, which has inhabited a particular territory for a longer period of time could count as "indigenous people", which would make the term meaningless. --Johannes Rohr 19:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I did read the whole paragraph, which only has one other sentence. I will presume that you are referring to the "whole section," which I did also read. It is poorly written and organized and hard to understand. It makes no reference to four criteria in particular, as you outline here. If Cobo is the main source of the definition put forth, this should be made clear much earlier in the section. The other three criteria that you provide are not entirely clear either. It is not clear how "cultural voluntary perpetuation of distinctiveness" is different from "self-identification as a distinct group/people." And regarding "Inhabitance of a certain territory before conquest, colonisation, subjugation etc," -- it seems to imply that the "indigenous" people were the very first documented inhabitants of that certain territory, but if that is what you mean, then it should be stated clearly.--Sylvain1972 20:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I have made some changes to this section which hopefully address at least some of those concerns and clarify the distinctions. No doubt the wording can be further improved. And no, there is or should be no implication that indigenous peoples necessarily are the "very first documented" inhabitants of some region. This does not appear under Martinez-Cobo or any of the others given, and is also the case when observed in practice.--cjllw | TALK 08:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It is much better now, I agree.Sylvain1972 13:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Fourth World" is not synonomous with "Indigenous"

In the last of the lead paragraphs, it says "Other related terms for indigenous peoples include aborigines, native peoples, first peoples, Fourth World..." Fourth World is not synonomous with "Indigenous". It is meant to represent a fourth category in terms of First world, Second world and third world countries. It is therefore a category related to underdevelopment and exclusion of nations or nation-states. Where it refers to peoples, these are peoples that constitute nations without states. The term does not it anyway describe a people who have an original connection to a land. Some Indigenous peoples will occupy areas (geographic or otherwise) considered Fourth World, but it is not a related term in the sense that the other examples are. I strongly feel that it should be removed from this list. JenLouise 02:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

No, it refers to nation groups without nation-states who are in this position. Most of these groups are indigenous.

Nevertheless I take your point that it isn't a synonym. Bonfire elefantti (talk) 01:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikify and copy-edit tags

Two sections of the article need help being wikified and copy-edited. These have been tagged. If possible we need sub-headings introduced to some of these very large blocks of text, and each of the section needs a thorough reading and copy-edit because they don't actually make sense. JenLouise 05:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Europe

I think there should be a Europe section. I would be very interested to learn more about the indigenous peoples of Europe, particularly the tribal movements prior to and after the Roman Empire. I could have a stab at describing this from a Western Europe viewpoint (Celts/Picts, Vikings, Francs, Lombards, Saxons, Goths etc) but unfortunately have little knowledge about Eastern Europe. Furthermore I have no formal instruction in History beyond the age of 16. Would someone more knowledgable volunteer perhaps?

In particular I would be interested to read about correlations between physical characteristcs of modern-day native Europeans, notably hair colour, and their tribal origins, as there is a commonly-held but scarcely formalised belief amongst Europeans that certain characteristics reveal particular tribal ancestry (eg. blonde Danes, dark-haired Normans, red-haired Celts).

Andrew Oakley 12:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a section on Europe; or at least there was, but it seems the section heading got deleted somewhere along the way. It's now reinstated, along with the {main} link to the separate Indigenous peoples of Europe article.

Just to note, however, "indigenous peoples of Europe", where indigenous peoples has the meaning as explained in this article, is not the same thing as "historical peoples of Europe". --cjllw ʘ TALK 12:22, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Additional criteria

I have problems with the following:

"To the above, a criterion is usually added to also include:

• peoples who are self-identified as indigenous, and/or those recognised as such by other groups."

The problem is that the above is too unclear to be in the introduction of the article. In Talk:List of indigenous peoples, this has been extended to:

• an indigenous people may be identified as such, where notable independent reference(s) can be found that the group's indigenous identity is either asserted or recognised as being indigenous, or some other cognate term, by either:
  1. some government, regulatory body, law or protocol, which may be either sub-national, national or trans-national; and/or
  2. some recognised body, NGO or other organisation, involved with indigenous affairs and recognised as an accredited participant, intermediary or representative in some legal, negotiative, national or international regulatory or rights-based process; and/or
  3. some academic and peer-reviewed literature or publication; and/or
  4. some representative body of the indigenous society itself, where that representation is made in respect of a claim or issue to a government or governmentally-supported organisation (eg the UN, African Union).

The problem with the above is that this is the requirement to be added to the Wikipedia list and not a "real world" definition.

I think we can avoid all problems by stating something like: "Note that even if all the criteria some people may either not consider themselves as indigenous or may not be considered as indigenous by governments, organizations or scholars.". Labongo 14:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Labongo. Just to clarify a little, the criterion about self-identification as an indigenous people is actually one that is frequently and explicitly used by the major sources and bodies concerned with indigenous peoples' affairs and status. It was paraphrased a little for the article, but if you examine a few of the most-consulted definitions (such as UN, World Bank, ILO, etc) you will see that it's embedded in many of these formulations, with a deliberate intent. See for example the definitional quotes from these organisations, that used to be in the 'definitions' section of this article but now seems to have been split off into Definitions of the term Indigenous. As such, I think the criterion needs to remain mentioned along with the others that appear in the opening paras.

The statement "Note that even if all the above criteria are fulfilled, some people may either not consider themselves as indigenous or may not be considered as indigenous by governments, organizations or scholars" does not quite mean the same thing. While that statement itself is fine as far as it goes, IMO it's not an adequate replacement. Self-identification and recognition is part of the "set" of criteria that are often referred to in indigenous rights contexts.

I can see some rationale in the recent splitting out of the former content of the 'definitions' section into that separate article, however at the same time I think that this present indigenous peoples article does need to devote perhaps more space than we usually do to covering definitions and usage of terms/terminology. It's an area where there's a lot of general misconception and confusion between the common, adjectival and the formal, specific usage of words like indigenous, and even of the concept of indigenous peoples' rights and concerns (a lot of the discourse on this talkpg and others related are along these lines, for eg.) I think we could probably spare a few more paras to cover the most salient points and prominent definitions, so the detail's not all spliced away into a different article. Thoughts? --cjllw ʘ TALK 13:49, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi cjllw, The problem I had with: "peoples who are self-identified as indigenous, and/or those recognised as such by other groups", was the "other groups" in the second part. Are we talking about other people, organizations or states?

I agree with you that it is very important for this article to have a clear definition of the indigenous since, as you say, there are a lot of misconceptions. I did not notice that the now moved content was about three different usages of the term, so these should probably be added back to the article. However, I still think most of the details should be in the separate article, since I believe the section was too long for most readers.

I have also reorganized this article, such that the first subsection is Definition (seems reasonable to first define something before describing it). Perhaps most of the definitions in the into could be moved to this section?Labongo 16:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Labongo, I think the reordering of sections works fine.

Re the 'other groups' clause in that criterion, now that you put it that way I can see that it is a little indistinct. That whole sentence is really meant to encapsulate that self-identification, both by a group as an indigenous people and by an individual as an accepted member of an indigenous group, is commonly and explicitly maintained to be an important principle or right. The point is expressed (for example) by Article 8 of the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples— "Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right to maintain and develop their distinct identities and characteristics, including the right to identify themselves as indigenous and to be recognized as such." Will look to rewrite it along those lines, to stress the principle of self-identification.

I agree with the approach to have the 'Definitions' section here summarise the key points, issues and variations on the aspects of indigenous peoples' identity and definitions, while the split-off article can devote more space going into the details. Probably as the definitions sub-article is gradually rounded out or even expanded to address related issues (eg the implications of the "peoples" vs. "populations" distinction), the 'executive summary' of the Definitions section in the main article can be progressively updated.

I think it would be better to change the title of the Definitions of the term Indigenous sub-article, since it's not really the everyday word indigenous intended but rather the whole concept expressed by the collectivism, indigenous peoples. I would suggest something like, Definitions and identity of indigenous peoples. Can anyone think of more alternatives?--cjllw ʘ TALK 14:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

About the additional 'other groups' criteria. Note that I read the set of criteria as: I = A and B and C (indigenous if first set of criteria is true, and if second set is true, and if the additional criteria is true). Should it be read as : I = (A and B) or C?

Please rename the Definitions of the term Indigenous to your much better title or to an even better title.Labongo 15:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

If C = the self-identification as an indigenous people criterion, then I believe that the sets of criteria in the opening para of this article are usually interpreted I = A + B + C. That is, even if some group might otherwise 'satisfy the conditions', they may not think of themselves in terms of an indigenous people (or even a "people"), or make claims to be represented as such. In other words, whether or not there's an expressed will to be regarded as indigenous can be a determining factor. Take for example Frisians, where it could be argued that they do fulfil the other criteria, but they themselves are not in the business of making indigenous claims (there are other reasons, including the distinction that may be drawn between indigenous peoples and minorities).

However it's generally not as clear-cut as adding up criterion points. In some cases C may be a stronger determining factor than A or B. Nomadic peoples may not have strong or long-established ties with the lands they now live in, and in some ex-colonial states (eg PNG or some island nations in the Pacific) the indigenous peoples may participate as the governing/dominant culture. There are a number of borderline cases where a consensus identification is hard to gauge— Basques, Palestinians, etc.

I recall now why the "and/or recognised as such by other groups" was added. To cover a couple of scenarios- firstly, there are indigenous peoples whose interaction/relationship with the surrounding state is so distant that they have not themselves participated in any negotiation process towards indigenous recognition, ie have not explicitly 'self-identified'. The Sentinelese would be an extreme example; their interaction with the Indian govt (or anyone else) has been so limited (by their own choice) that no-one has managed to even speak with them, let alone be involved with any advocacy position. There would be other less extreme examples. Secondly, there have been one or two cases where groups have agitated for indigenous recognition, but the claim has not been accepted even by indigenous advocacy groups. A fellow editor here (JRohr) with experience working at indigenous fora mentioned a while ago somewhere that an Afrikaaner group in the 1990s tried going through the UNPFII (or some other forum) with a claim to indigenous recognition.

I have renamed the 'Definitions' subarticle to my earlier suggestion, with your concurrence. Over time I'll try to chip away and improve it (and this one), but it's gonna take a while. Anyone who's inclined to flesh these out more would be most welcome to do so. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 01:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Content removed from Common characteristics

I have removed the content included below for the following reasons. First, it seems to be based on the point of view of a single person (this George Tinker?), but it does not provide a reference to the source. Second, it seems to present original research. Third, many of the statements can conclusions drawn in the section are disputable. Fourth, it seems to be mostly about the [indigenous peoples of the Americas. Fifth, the text is too complex. In conclusion, the text is probably not a good starting point for improving this section.Labongo 14:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with your removal of these two sections, for much the same reasons you list. While there may well be a couple of concepts within them that could be applied usefully in the article, it's essentially an (unattributable) essay and not particularly suited to the encyclopaedic purpose here. A number of claims and generalities are also debatable. Good call. --cjllw ʘ TALK 12:42, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Content removed from Common concerns

The text included below was removed from the Common concerns subsection. The text has the same problems as the the Common characteristics section had. But this section should perhaps be moved to an article about the problems and challenges of tribal identification among the Native Americans.Labongo 14:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Asia In Classical Antiquity

The Chinese Han people also considered their nomadic neighbors along the periphery of their domain as barbarians, particularly to the north. These nomadic people often conducted raids which resulted in the construction of the first Great Wall (10 000 Li Wall) by Qin Shi Hoang during 220 BCE to 200 BCE to keep them out. Does any one have more information about this as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Su huynh (talk • contribs) 06:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this an excellent direction for research. I have been strongly influenced in my life by Buddhists of Asian origin living in the US. I think many Americans have developed personal mythologies of what ancient Asian tribal culture may have been like; Asian martial arts movies have probably enhanced the mystery.

An incredibly significant event in human evolution is the development of the soy bean; understanding who developed it, and finding information about what may have influenced them to do it may help demonstrate the significance of indigenous culture. Knowing that the soy bean completely replaces meat, I have been hypothesizing that whoever developed it might have been inspired by a Buddhist type of spirituality tens of thousands of years before the Buddha was born.

John van v 02:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up Indigenous rights, issues and concerns

I cited all the statements that had been marked, except one: "These events passed almost without comment in the world's media." It is hard enough to cite something that did not happen, and here we need to cite that something was not reported. The eviction, or clearance perhaps, did get attention from a group called Survival International. De Beers was accused by Survival of being the cause of the San Bushmen eviction in the first place so that De Beers could get access to, what else, diamonds. Survival's publicity for the San Bushmen convinced the important super model, Iman, to leave the De Beers as the "face" of the diamond company. As a result of the pressure, De Beers prevailed on the Botswana government to allow the San Bushmen to return to their preserve because, as a Botswana representative said, the Survival campaign would hurt De Beers diamond sales. The Survival slogan for the campaign was "Bushmen aren't for ever." My thought is that the line saying that they event was largely ignored is significant but not hugely so, but seeing this page lose it's only blemish would be more huge, so the line should go.

What may want to be added is more information about the how the eviction happened, and events along the way, as after the fact, the situation got a lot of attention. The events were probably typical of experiences of indigenous peoples everywhere, as civilized society moves to annex indigenous land, or land that they use that is in the public domain. I had been personally unaware of this event, and I am glad I started editing it. John van v 00:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that the discussion of this topic and all its facets excellently describes problems Indigenous, or perhaps Native, cultures face today. Interesting too is the movie "The Gods Must be Crazy" because it is a humorous and fictional account of the San Bushmen situation. The cultural interactions and conflicts are not altered at all by the directors despite it being fictional. It is not as emotionally provoking as the movie "Walkabout" about the Australian aborigines is, and is therefore far easier to watch.

There is reuse in this writing about the eviction, if that is the proper word. Besides the Native discussion here, there is a Bushmen article that can benefit from this information, and also an article about Iman the super model who "went to bat" for the Bushmen. A discussion of her experience can futher extend to similar experiences of other "super stars," perhaps best know is Angelina Jolet.

Further beyond this there are benefits for humanity in general because the events described here can model future resolution of cultural conflict, that is if you can conceive of the corporate De Beers and the apparently corrupt national government of Botswana as cultures.

John van v 17:19, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I have looked through the logs hoping to find any contributors who may get upset by my editing. Having found none who have edited over the past few years, I am removing the above mentioned line -- and the clean-up sticker. Woo-hoo !! We are clean :) Also note my writing above; I want to insert into its place information about Survival International, their conflict with Botswana government and De Beers, and the Iman "statement." (Maybe I should mention partiality; I am a photographer making Iman especially hard for me to resist.)

John van v 17:26, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

add Pronunciation please

kindly add Pronunciation (as ogg file) of this word —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.121.131 (talk) 19:35, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

New page: Transformation of culture

I think some of the text that was deleted may be able to find a home on the page I created, Transformation of culture.

Please let me know. Also, the comments by Rhode Islander were blatantly racist and misses the mark entirely on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Nobody is asking for "special rights". Indigenous people the world over have not only had their lands and property stolen from them for the past several hundred years of colonization, but many of them have been victims of genocide, often state-sanctioned. Take, for instance, the smallpox blankets given to Native groups by the U.S. Army. This person needs to do some research and get educated on the issues before whining about "special rights" and such. There are some great places to start right on Wikipedia, starting with the Universal Declaration. Blueelectricstorm (talk) 02:23, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Cut and Pasted recent entry

Not only schedult tribes but other castes who are identified as I've cut and paste the following entry from the article as:

1. it does not seem to be written in an encyclopedic style
2. it appears biased towards, and may represent a particular point of view
3. it makes some strong, broad assertions/claims .. but is not verified with any references
4. it may not be in the appropriate article, and the most of it might be better included in Caste system in India

Yet .. aside from all the above .. there does seem to be some content of apparent/possible substance in this material that might be able to be werified and wikified .. if the original user or anyone else wants to have a go? Bruceanthro (talk) 13:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

"Shudras according to Varna-Vavastha i.e. caste system made by Brahmins who kept themselves on top possition as beneficiry class of this unequal system doing injustice with other classes. Shudras in the caste system is now identified as Other Backward Class(OBC), maratha, rajput, patels etc.there is one more class called as Ati-shudras or untouchables and even not included in the caste system these peoples not even had right to touch the peoples from other classes of the caste system these untouchables peoples now called as Schedult Caste(SC), and the peoples converted from these categories to other religions like muslim, sikh, christian, buddhist and jain are also indigenous which has been proved by recent DNA research. In nutshell OBC, SC, ST and Converted minorities ie. muslim, sikh, christian, buddhist, jain of india are indigenous peoples of india. But in india the brahmins who came to india before thousands of years ago kept these aboriginal peoples in dark by denying them to take education and every other rights of human development. 85% of indias population is indigenous except Brahmins who are foreign invanders for india. Brahmins are rulling india from thousands of year and still rulling india the indigenous peoples in india is nothing but the slave of Brahmins and Brahminism. "Rashtriya Mulnivasi Sangh" is the largest organisation of indiginous peoples of india is fightings for rights of indigenous peoples of india to establish Justice, Freedom, equality and fraternity in india.

Added term "autochthonous"

I added this term to the top of the article because I discovered that the Autochthonous disambiguation page links to this article by way of defining the term, but this article didn't mention the word. Since my purpose in looking up the word was to discover its meaning, it's possible that I have have acted in error, but further research seems to bear out my understanding. Please correct me (and the disambiguation page--and the Croatian language page, where I first encountered the word) if I am in error. —CKA3KA (Skazka) (talk) 17:14, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The term "autochthonous" is already mentioned in the lead, where it is bolded along with other alternatives. Since it's not a commonly used synonym for indigenous peoples (at least not in english discourse), not sure it needs to be mentioned in the first sentence. --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Scary

"Indigenous" is a concept dealt in several fields of investigation such as anthropology. Just because UN has a dominant worldview and you believe that progressist, liberal industrialization is the way for the future of all humanity, still does not justify the connection on a strictly NPOV, encyclopedic view. If you want, I can point out to several scholars, namely anthopologists, who do not share the views expressed in such UN documents (as those you wish to link at the top of the page), concerning indigenous peoples.

It's really scary. I honestly believed that this is a no-brainer. Do I really have to come here and say that organizations such as UN do not hold the concept of what is "indigenous"? It's a fact that UN has documents related to this subject, but thats it. To present it in a pro-centralization perspective is always POV, no matter how big is the source.

PS: If this article is widely based on UN documents, than the article is biased as it is, and we need to bring other sources for a more balanced view. This is a scientific concept in anthropology and geography, and we should not hold politicial views of any organization or social movement as representatives. Maziotis (talk) 21:26, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

You're more than free to add opposing view points, and to add a POV tag, but removing well referenced information is totally ridiculous. The UN doesn't hold THE concept of what is indigenous, but they hold a definition, and a definition which is most widely accepted around the world. These are links to SOURCES, not statements of fact. You've suggested moving them down, which is fine by me. I'll do so now.- TheMightyQuill (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I am glad we could work this out. Removing any links to UN never crossed my mind, and I don't understand where would you get such idea. Maziotis (talk) 21:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know... Why didn't you just move them down in the first place instead of removing them? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 22:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

My issue was with the links at the top of the page. I guess I could have been a better wikipedian by "doing the right thing".Maziotis (talk) 02:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

No worries, it happens to the best of us.- TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't even know what it means when a proclaimed anarchist accuses someone of being "liberal".·Maunus· ·ƛ· 14:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Then you're not very familiar with anarchism. =) Both normal anarchists and post-left anarchists like Maziotis are usually very critical of liberalism. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Given that europeans and americans can't even agree on what "liberal" it doesn't make the word any easier to understand when used by someone outside of the traditional left-right system.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Article's subject matter unclear

Hello, I came here trying to figure out what exactly the term "indigenous" means, or is taken to mean by various groups. I am still confused.

Are Welshmen indigenous to Wales? They seem to lack a certain je-ne-sais-quois (bones through the noses, perhaps), if this is not pure prejudice on my part. Or is there some sort of requirement that "indigenous" peoples be disadvantaged--presumably in comparison with a non-indigenous population?

I think we can all agree that a Mexican Indian would be considered indigenous to Mexico, or some part of Mexico. Does it matter if they are of mixed race (as is the vast majority of the Mexican population)? Does it matter if they practice a "modern" lifestyle, or have lost their traditional language? Probably different authorities propose different answers to such questions, so I would like to see these listed in the article.

What are we to make of people who are (or once were) nomadic, or whose ancestors migrated to the spot they claim to be indigenes of? (Are Altaians "indigenous" to the Altai, and the Zulus to KwaZulu-Natal? Does it matter that some Altaian subgroups arrived before others?) Of course, that would ultimately include everybody who doesn't live in East Africa...

It seems to me that the concept presupposes some degree of oppression or domination by non-indigenes. Is it then possible (or even true) that "indigenous" people, somewhere in the world, may control their own affairs, or even rule a modern state? (Bhutan, perhaps, or Canada's Nunavut.)

I look forward to your future clarifications, if any. --Dawud

As the intro explains, there is no one definition of 'indigenous'. Perhaps this should be rewritten a bit, since obviously this wasn't clear to you. According to pretty much every definition of indigenous, Welsh people (the women as well as the men) probably are indigenous to Wales. Wearing bones through their noses is not a requirement, nor are any of the other stereotypes some western people have about non-white groups. --Helenalex (talk) 00:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Does the linked main article - Definitions_and_identity_of_indigenous_peoples not answer sufficiently? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 02:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to know what the word "indigenous" means, then any good dictionary will tell you. This article however is not about the word, not even when the adjective is used in the phrase "indigenous peoples". It is instead about a particular concept used in modern national and international political & academic discourse, which this article and the 'definitions & identity' one mentioned above go into in some detail. As such, this concept does not ordinarily get applied to Welsh people, and in a practical sense I don't think that any Welsh group has represented itself as such to some international forum. Indigenous to Wales, well, why not. But not, an indigenous people, under the terms as for eg expressed in the UN Declaration. Maybe taking a look at some of the relevant NGOs mentioned, like IWGIA, will help make the distinction clearer. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:34, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I mean the concept(s), not the word. In fact the article introduces half a dozen terms which may or may not be synonyms. I would like to see the history of this terminology set forth, along with a description of whatever regional variations there may be. (An analogous case would be the various terms for American blacks.) Yes, the "definitions" article is a great improvement in approach, though I suspect selective in its content. Besides international organizations, various governments have their own localized policies towards putative indigenes, which are far more significant in effect that these global statements. Oh yes, and didn't the UNPO used to be called the IPO? I wonder how they determine eligibility...

It seems that according to the consensus of these politicized definitions, the Mormons may be described as indigenous to Utah. --Dawud —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.167.170.107 (talk) 02:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure you understand the nature of Wikipedia. If you'd like to see something included, I'd suggest you research it and write it yourself. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 12:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Question about Australian aborigenes

The Russian-language version of Wikipedia states that Australian aborigenes were granted civil rights only in 1967. Is that true? 66.65.129.159 (talk) 18:26, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

See History of Indigenous Australians. --Helenalex (talk) 22:34, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Image deletion

Please provide your reason for deleting the image of Chukchi. Biophys (talk) 23:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC) Chukchi are indigenous peole as described in this article.Biophys (talk) 04:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Explained in edit summary: The image in question does not illustrate the section " Indigenous rights, issues and concerns" in which it is placed. What is more, it creates a false impression that chukchi were somehow specifically repressed in gulag. It is a general article about chukchi and ithe image assigns an undue weight to the fact that some chukchi were in soviet labor camps. How will you like if I put a portrait of Joseph Stalin in the article Georgians with the signature "the most famous Georgian"? Dzied Bulbash (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

In fact the Chukchee and other siberian indigenous peoples were the target of specific oppression from the soviet government. Many of the indigenous communities resisted forced collectivization and were therefore emprisoned in the Gulags. The image in my opinion does not give undue weight to chukchi in labor camps - instead it shows that also the indigenous peoples of the USSR were subject to the same oppression as indigenous peoples elsewhere. I fail completely to see the point with the Stalin as a famous Georgian example - and if you take a look you will see that there IS a picture of him on the Georgians page.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Dzed Bulbash, I removed the mention about Gulag in my previous edit [13]. Please see changes made in the article before making blind reverts. This does not serve to illustrate oppression, but only to illustrate Chukchi. An article Oppression of indigenous people in Russia would be appropriate, but that would be a different article.Biophys (talk) 17:50, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

But this IS about indigenous peoples rights and abot rights violations - An illustration of the forced collectivization of the chukchee IS a good example for this section. The painting in fact is ONLY appropriate of Gulag is mentyioned because other wise it is just a picture of two indigenous persons and has nothing to do with the theme of that particular section which is about oppression and human rights violations of indigenous peoples. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

How gulag is related to forced collectivization and how forced collectivization is related to the image in question, is no explained. Dzied Bulbash (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Then why did you delete the painting then does not mention Gulag? Note that already two users (Maunus and me) believe that "Gulag" should be included (see my note below).Biophys (talk) 16:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not pay attention it was in human rights section. Then please restore "Gulag", as this picture indeed shows Chuckhi in Gulag. I simply did not want edit war with Bulbash.Biophys (talk) 18:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Move

I propose moving this page to "indiginous ethnic group to mark that it is a ethnic group, yet different from tribal ethnic groups (See Tribe-article)

Oppose. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 04:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Please can we have more balance

As it stands the section on indigenous viewpoints is tiny and insufficiently sourced; the section on non-indigenous viewpoints is about three times the size. Given the range of indigenous activism since the 1960s surely someone can come up with more data. Bonfire elefantti (talk) 01:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)and we hate you

Go right ahead, I support your suggestion 100%. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 04:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

{{sofixit}} Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:11, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, will get back to you on this. I don't yet know how to cite sources that are books but if I try in good faith perhaps people will not be too offended if I do not get the formatting right. Bonfire elefantti (talk) 04:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

-indigenous in mexico can be like the 30% of the population,not just less than the 10% —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.235.63.196 (talk) 22:18, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The Colonisation of Europe

The following statement is debatable: "Since most of Europe in historical times was never colonized by non-European powers with lasting effect..." I would like to draw your attention to the Roman Empire, which conquered and colonised at least a third of Europe in historical times (Italy, Gaul, Iberia, Britain, the Alpine regions...), and to the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually completed the Roman Colonisation of most of Europe in historical times through missionary work as well as military conquests (Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltic peoples, the western Slavs...). Pictonon (talk) 10:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

And I would like to draw your attention to the location of Rome. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Pictonon's point, and it is a valid point, is that the process of acculturation by external imperial cultures occurred within Europe, and in the same pattern as by Europe into other cultures at later dates. The acculturation of local, indigenous tribes within Europe happened several times in the historical record. Indo-eropean culture invaded pre-Celtic British Isles, for one notible, historical example (see Julius Caesar's reports from northwestern europe.)

Themightyquill's point seems to be that since Rome is in Europe ... um ... I'm not sure what the point is really. But it seems to ignore the vast diversity of the ethnic groups in Europe. - Michael J Swassing (talk) 23:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The point, to me, is that it begs for a precising definition of just what constitutes "indigenous" peoples. What does, exactly? Which of those European ethnic groups are "indigenous" and which aren't, and why? mike4ty4 (talk) 19:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the above, constituting an "indigenous" person is difficult. For example I think Indigenous Australians should be anyone born here after 1850 when they stopped importing convicts. The Australian Government however blatantly ignores the ideology against racism by discriminating against me because I am not "dark skinned" as they put it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.144.70 (talk) 04:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Thought this phrase seems a bit contentious "Greco-Roman society flourished between 250 BC and 480 AD and commanded successive waves of conquests that gripped more than half of the globe." Was it really across such area (i.e. most of Africa, Asia, part of Europe and all of the Americas were never part of the Roman Empire)? There's no citation either. Admittedly, I'm no expert, just thought I ought to point it out. 137.44.169.174 (talk) 09:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

French interwiki

The correct French interwiki is fr:Peuple autochtone and not fr:Indigène. The latter article discusses the word, not the peoples. Note that despite being related, English indigenous and French indigène have different connotations : in French indigène is potentially offensive because it was the term used by colonial administrations; it is therefore often avoided in French today (in PC speech, that is), though it can still be encountered - partly by intereference with English use in international settings. Aucassin (talk) 08:40, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Definition

It appears as if there is considerable difficulty defining this term. There is even a separate article just to define it. I thought that indigenous people were the first human settlers in a region and their descendants. It shouldn't depend on being subsequently colonized or religious beliefs that God planted you there. If this is a controversial topic, shouldn't it be discussed here? –Shoaler (talk) 17:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I would like to replace the first paragraph with:

"The term indigenous peoples is used to refer to the first human settlers in a region. It is also used for the descendants of these people who have lived more or less continuously in the same region."

Comments?–Shoaler (talk) 13:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fine the way it is. This is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. Moreover, Indigenous does not necessarily denote first. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 22:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I concur with Shoaler, the definition used here is very nebulous. Defining indigenous as the first human settlers in a region is clearer and more subject to proof. But the fact is that many people who claim to be indigenous were not actually the first human settlers - in fact they displaced (or at least culturally supplanted) other human populations whose existence is only known through archeological research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.43.216.103 (talk) 18:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I came here looking for a definition of "indigenous people" but the existing section is very difficult to follow. 64.91.111.8 (talk) 15:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)