[runarberg]

It is a complicated term and it usually only refers to people groups that:

a) Have a long historic and cultural tie to the region they currently occupy,

b) are no longer the dominant culture in that region, and most importantly,

c) consider them self indigenous,

In practice an indigenous people group really only has to fulfill the last criteria. Note also that they don’t have to be the first people group to occupy a region. They don’t even have to have been there before the dominant culture arrived. For example, the Inuit people are believed to have arrived in Greenland after the Norseman in the early 11th century, and they didn’t occupy parts of east Greenland until th 20th century. Today they are arguably the dominant culture in Greenland. However nobody can dispute the fact that they are indigenous people in their land.