There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples,[a][1][2][3] although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural model.[4]
Estimates of the population of Indigenous peoples range from 250 million to 600 million.[5] There are some 5,000 distinct Indigenous peoples spread across every inhabited climate zone and inhabited continent of the world.[6][7] Most Indigenous peoples are in a minority in the state or traditional territory they inhabit and have experienced domination by other groups, especially non-Indigenous peoples.[8][9] Although many Indigenous peoples have experienced colonization by settlers from European nations,[10] Indigenous identity is not determined by Western colonization.[4]
The rights of Indigenous peoples are outlined in national legislation, treaties and international law. The 1989 International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples protects Indigenous peoples from discrimination and specifies their rights to development, customary laws, lands, territories and resources, employment, education and health.[11] In 2007, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples including their rights to self-determination and to protect their cultures, identities, languages, ceremonies, and access to employment, health, education and natural resources.[12]
Indigenous peoples continue to face threats to their sovereignty, economic well-being, languages, cultural heritage, and access to the resources on which their cultures depend.[13] In the 21st century, Indigenous groups and advocates for Indigenous peoples have highlighted numerous apparent violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Painting of Bimbache of El Hierro by Leonardo Torriani, 1592The San are the oldest inhabitants of Southern Africa
Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those which have a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, and may consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.[14]
This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:
Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them
Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands
Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership in an Indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.)
Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language)
Residence in certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world
Other relevant factors.
On an individual basis, an Indigenous person is one who belongs to these Indigenous populations through self-identification as Indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group). This preserves for these communities the sovereign right and power to decide who belongs to them, without external interference.[15]
Hadza people, who are indigenous to the African Great LakesA Maasai traditional danceBaka pygmy dancers in the East Province of CameroonBatwaPygmy with traditional bow and arrowSomali women in traditional headressesTigrayan women in traditional attireWolayta chiefBerta people playing trumpets during a wedding ceremonyNilotic men in Kapoeta, South Sudan19th century Zulu man wearing a warrior's garbSotho women wearing the traditional Seana Marena blanketMakua mother and childDamara man wearing the ǃgūb, a traditional attire
Jews:[78] along with Samaritans, descend from the Israelite nation of the southern Levant, who are believed by archaeologists and historians to have branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centered on El/Yahweh,[79][80][81] one of the Ancient Canaanite deities. A Jewish diaspora existed for several centuries before the fall of the Second Temple, and their dwelling in other countries for the most part was not a result of compulsory dislocation.[82] Following the RomanSiege of Jerusalem, destruction of Herod's Temple, and failed Jewish revolts, some Jews were either expelled, taken as slaves to Rome, or massacred,[83] while other Jews continued to live in the region over the centuries, despite the conversion of many Jews to Christianity and Islam as well as persecution by the various conquerors of the region, including the Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, and the British. Additionally, a substantial number of diaspora Jews immigrated to Palestine during the 19th and 20th centuries (mainly under the Zionist movement), as well as after the modern State of Israel was established in 1948. This was coupled with the revival of Hebrew, the only Canaanite language still spoken today. DNA studies show that many major diaspora Jewish communities derive a substantial portion of their ancestry from ancient Israelites.[84][85][86][87]
There are competing claims that Palestinian Arabs and Jews are indigenous to historic Palestine/the Land of Israel.[88][89][90] The argument entered the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the 1990s, with Palestinians claiming Indigenous status as a pre-existing population displaced by Jewish settlement, and currently constituting a minority in the State of Israel.[91] Israeli Jews have in turn claimed indigeneity based on historic ties to the region and disputed the authenticity of Palestinian claims.[92][93] In 2007, the Negev Bedouin were officially "recognized as an indigenous people of Israel" by the United Nations.[94] This has been criticized both by scholars associated with the Israeli state, who dispute the Bedouin's claim to indigeneity,[95] and those who argue that recognising just one group of Palestinians as Indigenous risks undermining others' claims and "fetishising" nomadic cultures.[96]
Ossetians (Iræттæ): Ossetia (Iryston), North Ossetia (Cægat Iryston), a Republic of Russia, and South Ossetia (Khussar Iryston), a De Jure autonomous region of Georgia (Sakartvelo), self-proclaimed sovereign country, North and South slopes of Central Caucasus Mountains.
Kalash in traditional dressKodava men in traditional attire, IndiaAn Indigenous Assamese woman of AssamVeddha Chief Uruwarige Wannila Aththo, leader of the Indigenous people of Sri Lanka
Zomi (Zo Pau): One of the Indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia. The word Zomi is the collective name given to many tribes who traced their descent from a common ancestor. Through history they have been known under various appellation, such as Chin, Kuki and Mizo, but the expression was disliked by them, and they insist that the term was a misnomer given by others and by which they have been recorded in certain documents designate their ancient origins as a separate ethnicity.
Garífuna: A mixed West African (from several peoples) and Amerindian people (mainly from the Island Caribs - Kalhíphona) that traditionally speaks an Arawakan language in Belize and Honduras.
Neo-Taíno nations Some scholars distinguish between the Taíno and Neo-Taíno groups. Neo-Taíno groups were also native to the Antilles islands, but had distinctive languages and cultural practices that differed from the High Taíno.[156] These groups include:
Ciboney: a term preferred in Cuban historical texts for the neo-Taino-Siboney nations of the island of Cuba.
Papuans: more than 250 distinct tribes or clans, each with their own language and culture. The main island of New Guinea and surrounding islands (territory forming independent state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Indonesian provinces of West Papua and Papua). Considered "Indigenous" these people are a subject to many debates.
Micronesia generally includes the various small island chains of the western and central Pacific. The region is mostly inhabited by the Micronesian peoples.
^Also known as First peoples, First nations, Aboriginal peoples, Native peoples, Indigenous Natives, or Autochthonous peoples. Since 2020, most style guides have recommend capitalization of "Indigenous" when referring to specific Indigenous peoples as ethnic groups, nations, and the citizens or members of these groups.[161][162][163][164][165]
^The Indigenous people of Vanuatu make up more than 95 percent of a country of just under a quarter of a million people (who speak more than 111 different languages), recognized by the United Nations as simultaneously having Least Developed status and having the world’s greatest cultural and linguistic diversity.[159]
^Muckle, Robert J. (2012). Indigenous Peoples of North America: A Concise Anthropological Overview. University of Toronto Press. p. 18. ISBN978-1-4426-0416-2.
^Acharya, Deepak and Shrivastava Anshu (2008): Indigenous Herbal Medicines: Tribal Formulations and Traditional Herbal Practices, Aavishkar Publishers Distributor, Jaipur, India. ISBN978-81-7910-252-7. p. 440
^Taylor Saito, Natsu (2020). "Unsettling Narratives". Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persist(eBook). NYU Press. ISBN978-0-8147-0802-6. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2020. ...several thousand nations have been arbitrarly (and generally involuntarily) incorporated into approximately two hundred political constructs we call independent states...
^Miller, Robert J.; Ruru, Jacinta; Behrendt, Larissa; Lindberg, Tracey (2010). Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies. OUP Oxford. pp. 9–13. ISBN978-0-19-957981-5.
^ abPierret, Paul, "Dictionnaire d'archéologie égyptienne", Imprimerie nationale 1875, p. 198-199 [in] Diop, Cheikh Anta, "Precolonial Black Africa", (trans: Harold Salemson), Chicago Review Press (1988), p. 65
^Muraina, Luqman Ọpẹ́yẹmí; Ajímátanraẹjẹ, Abdulkareem J. (2023-06-05). "Gender relations in Indigenous Yorùbá culture: questioning current feminist actions and advocacies". Third World Quarterly. 44 (9).
^Unrepresented Nations and People Organization | UNPO, Assyrians the Indigenous People of Iraq[1]
^Mark Smith, in The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel, states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Palestinians and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BC). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture. ... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Palestinians for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002) The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel (Eerdman's)
^Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5
^Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and RomansHarvard University Press, 2009 pp. 3–4, 233–34: 'Compulsory dislocation, .…cannot have accounted for more than a fraction of the diaspora. … The vast bulk of Jews who dwelled abroad in the Second Temple Period did so voluntarily.' (2)' .Diaspora did not await the fall of Jerusalem to Roman power and destructiveness. The scattering of Jews had begun long before-occasionally through forced expulsion, much more frequently through voluntary migration.'
^The UN Refugee Agency | UNHCR, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples[2]
^
Department of Evolutionary Biology at University of Tartu Estonian Biocentre | Reconstruction of Patrilineages and Matrilineages of Samaritans and Other Israeli Populations From Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation, Molecular Anthropology Group[3]
^Udayon, Misra (1987). "Immigration and Identity Transformation in Assam". Economic and Political Weekly. 34 (21): 1266. JSTOR4407987. Retrieved 2024-06-07. Census official C S Mullan's observations in the 1931 Census Report where he predicted that if the immigrations went on unchecked, the indigenous Assamese would be outnumbered in all but one or two Upper Assam districts, brought to the fore the threat to the Assamese identity.
^Hanihara, T (1992). "Negritos, Australian Aborigines, and the proto-sundadont dental pattern: The basic populations in East Asia". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 88 (2): 183–96. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330880206. PMID1605316.
^Agpaoa, Joshua C. (2013). Design Motifs of the Northern Philippine Textiles.
^Baer, Lars-Anders (2005). "The Rights of Indigenous Peoples – A Brief Introduction in the Context of the Sámi". International Journal on Minority and Group Rights. 12 (2/3): 245–267. doi:10.1163/157181105774740589. JSTOR24675300.
^Valkonen, Sanna; Valkonen, Jarno (2017). "The Non-State Sámi". In Wiesner, Claudia; Björk, Anna; Kivistö, Hanna-Mari; Mäkinen, Katja (eds.). Shaping Citizenship: A Political Concept in Theory, Debate and Practice. Routledge. pp. 138–152. doi:10.4324/9781315186214-11. ISBN9781315186214.
^Grote, Rainer (2006). "On the Fringes of Europe: Europe's Largely Forgotten Indigenous Peoples". American Indian Law Review. 31 (2): 425–443. doi:10.2307/20070794. JSTOR20070794.
^"APA Style - Racial and Ethnic Identity". Section 5.7 of the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition. Associated Press. 2019-11-01. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 2022-02-03. Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. ... capitalize terms such as "Native American," "Hispanic," and so on. Capitalize "Indigenous" and "Aboriginal" whenever they are used. Capitalize "Indigenous People" or "Aboriginal People" when referring to a specific group (e.g., the Indigenous Peoples of Canada), but use lowercase for "people" when describing persons who are Indigenous or Aboriginal (e.g., "the authors were all Indigenous people but belonged to different nations")
^"NAJA AP Style Guide". The Native American Journalists Association. Archived from the original on 18 December 2018. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
^"Editorial Guide". Indian Affairs. US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Archived from the original on 18 January 2023. Retrieved 2023-02-14. The term "indigenous" is a common synonym for the term "American Indian and Alaska Native" and "Native American." But "indigenous" doesn't need to be capitalized unless it's used in context as a proper noun.
^"FAQ Item: Capitalization". The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Archived from the original on 26 November 2022. Retrieved 2023-02-14. We would capitalize "Indigenous" in both contexts: that of Indigenous people and groups, on the one hand, and Indigenous culture and society, on the other.
Bodley, John H. (2008). Victims of Progress (5th ed.). Plymouth, England: AltaMira Press. ISBN978-0-7591-1148-6.
Kipuri, Naomi (2007). "Kenya". In Sille Stidsen (compilation and ed.) (ed.). The Indigenous World 2007. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs yearbooks. Marianne Wiben Jensen (Horn of Africa and East Africa regional ed.). Copenhagen: IWGIA, distributed by Transaction Publishers. pp. 468–476. ISBN978-87-91563-23-2. ISSN1024-0217. OCLC30981676. Archived from the original(PDF online edition) on 2008-10-22. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
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