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daebro t1_isfjf61 wrote

Posting this here since /r/history seems to remove any post I make.

If a people considered indigenous to an area are found to have been predated by another culture does that remove the indigenous status of that people?

Obviously this could be a bit philosophical but I've always thought the term indigenous was sort of broad considering how long humans have been spreading out. I'm curious, is there only one group that can be considered indigenous to an area? If one is found that predates that group is it now the indigenous people? are they both considered indigenous?

Oxford dictionary defines it as:

>Indigenous: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.

So by strict definition wouldn't Africa be the only real place we're indigenous to? Is it a slippery slope to assign indigenous people to an area knowing that likely other people existed there with no evidence found thus far?

I'd love to hear all opinions but I'm specifically interested in how that idea works with historians/anthropologists working in the field.

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Deuce232 t1_isfmxhm wrote

Generally it's dictated by whoever was there when a colonizer showed up.

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daebro t1_isgf6w2 wrote

While I don't like how the term is used vs it's actual definition I think you're probably spot on here.

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elmonoenano t1_ish3uot wrote

This is a tough question and I don't think I've ever come across a good definition or any criteria. Part of the problem is that the realization that people moved around a lot before Europeans showed up, is kind of a recent phenomenon. It's obvious if you think about it for a few minutes, and it's even evident in texts, but it wasn't really considered important until the late 60s when cultural studies got established and people started seriously researching the question.

It's interesting how unseriously your question was taken until the last few decades b/c we have stories and information like part of the "Aztec" origin myth is that they migrated to the Mexico City valley in waves between 600 and 1000 CE, so it was staring us in the face the whole time. Another interesting one is when the Spaniards first arrived in Texas they were approached by Jumano people who were looking for allies b/c they were being pushed out of the area by Comanche and Apache peoples.

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classix_aemilia t1_isgdmmb wrote

I was listening just this morning Dr Dominique Garcia discuss how the French identify their ancestors as "Gauls/Gaulois" because they are the first cited population associated to that given area. Of course there was some other populations occupying this territory before, but there's no written history about them so they would fall into the "prehistoric populations" category for most people.

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jezreelite t1_ish16gy wrote

Indigenous is used politically to describe people who have been subjected to colonialism and the nastiness that goes along with that, like forced assimilation campaigns and even genocide.

While technically yes all humans are native to Africa, no one's yet come up with a better term to describe groups such as Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Ainu, Chechens, Chukchi, Buryats, Cham, Sámi, Navajo, Cherokee, and Maya.

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