What does ‘Indigenous’ actually mean?
Thoughts on terminology
An online course that I’m currently taking on Indigenous religions and ecology defined ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Indigeneity’ as ‘people who belong to or are native to a particular place, often represented by a geographical or biological area, that share social structures and a culture embedded in that geography’. It’s a lengthy definition, plausible, nevertheless. However, the more I think about this term and about those who claim it, it seems to me that rather than a set of peoples, the term represents a set of worldviews. After all, we are all indigenous to somewhere.
Let me explain, with examples from two geographies that experienced two different types of historical migration and settlement.
Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Australians have lived on the Australian continent for more than 70,000 years, developing their own set of place-based belief systems. Invasion in 1788 and colonisation by European settlers is a recent (ongoing) experience, which brought alien values and practices to the land. In this sense, the above definition of Indigeneity, as it is conventionally used, makes complete sense. However, the Indian subcontinent experienced three waves of historical migrations- from Africa 65,000 years ago, then pastoralists from what is present-day Iran, followed by the most recent migration from Central Asia around 1500 BCE (Islamic invasion and assimilation, and European colonisation are relatively recent phenomena). Every Indian then shares a mix of the DNA of these three migration waves, who over time assimilated and developed cultures specific to the local environments. In this case, does this definition of Indigeneity hold?
Adivasis in India are the descendants of the first historic migration to India and have historically lived subsistence lives in the forests of the central forest belt and south of India. They have claimed the term ‘Indigenous’ as an act of resistance against an oppressive Indian state, in solidarity with Indigenous resistance against colonial institutions around the world. However, given the history of people in India, their claim of Indigeneity is seen as different from more mainstream representations in settler-colonial societies such as Australia and the Americas (which the standard definition and most mainstream depictions are biased towards), because it is not as clear cut.
However, what Adivasis have in common with Indigenous peoples in Australia and the Americas (North and South) is a distinct set of worldviews.
Connection to Country, reciprocal, kinship-based relationships with the natural world, and responsibility-driven Lifeways- these are the common belief systems that underpin more local, place-based knowledge and behaviours driven by geography. These are the antithesis of what writer Amitav Ghosh in his book ‘The Nutmeg’s curse’ calls the ‘world as resources’ worldview of Empire, colonisation, and the mainstream development paradigm. And it is this holistic, kin-centric, Indigenous worldview that we need to get out of our current ecological predicament.
The term Indigenous then might not merely refer to natives of place-based culture, inhabiting a land from the earliest time. Instead, it could be seen as a set of worldviews, a particular mind space. Perhaps for the people who claim the term, it is an explanation of who they are, who they want to be recognised as, and the lifeways that they are fighting for. And for those who don’t claim it, perhaps it speaks of a way of thinking that we must, individually and collectively, learn.
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