[GnarlyWhale]

What a needlessly divisive, inaccurate, and frankly disgusting characterization.

The literally definition reads: "Indigenous or less commonly indigenous : of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group"

In most modern contexts it's used to refer to the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to European colonization.

In extension, here in Canada the Métis People (explicitly descendants of MIXED European and Indigenous ancestry) are recognized as an Indigenous group with unique language and cultural practices. They are by no means thought of as "pure bred" as you reductively tried to frame it.

The University of Alberta has an excellent, widely accoladed, and free MOOC on Indigenous Canada that I highly recommend you, and anyone else interested in learning more, consider taking: https://www.coursera.org/learn/indigenous-canada

[throwaway894345]

Why do we give special status to “the earliest known people to inhabit a land”? I’m not trying to challenge any particular privilege afforded to any particular group, but I do want to reconcile the entire conception of categorizing people in this way with our modern, western moral framework.

In particular, doesn’t the idea of legally recognizing “a people” seem pretty close to 20th century racial ideologies (per the parent’s point)? How do we test an individual for membership in “a people”? Is there a one drop rule? Do you have to pass a cultural competency test? Speak a language?

What does it mean when we say “such and such land rightly belongs to such and such people”? Even if that people group was the earliest known, that doesn’t mean they didn’t likely take it from an earlier group.

It seems to me that the entire concept is fraught with the same problems that beset 20th century racialism. And please note the distinction between “indigenous people are bad” and “categorizing people into ‘indigenous’ and ‘other’ seems like a bad idea”.

[_moof]

> Why do we give special status to “the earliest known people to inhabit a land”?

Because generally speaking the later arrivals view the earlier people as subhuman and engage in horrific acts of violence against them. So it's not really that "earliest known people = special." It's more that displacing, dominating, or eradicating a people ought generally be frowned upon, and that's what has happened to many (most? all?) indigenous peoples in places like the Americas, Australia, etc.

I don't have any answers for you about how to test for membership, and you're absolutely right that this particular aspect of the issue is fraught. I'm not an expert but I believe that in the United States at least this question is left to the tribes themselves. ("The courts have consistently recognized that in the absence of express legislation by Congress to the contrary, an Indian tribe has complete authority to determine all questions of its own membership."[0]) That seems reasonable on its face at least, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of recreating the issue one level up: the United States government decides who is and isn't a tribe, and that's just as fraught.

These aren't straightforward issues, you're right, and they deserve a candid and in-depth treatment. But let's not get too far from the fundamental point, which is that it's pretty awful to show up on the shores of a continent where a bunch of people live and then destroy them and/or their way of life.

0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233104/

[throwaway894345]

> Because generally speaking the later arrivals view the earlier people as subhuman and engage in horrific acts of violence against them. So it's not really that "earliest known people = special." It's more that displacing, dominating, or eradicating a people ought generally be frowned upon, and that's what has happened to many (most? all?) indigenous peoples in places like the Americas, Australia, etc.

Many changes in people groups with respect to territory are simply migrations. Is there any evidence that violent conquest is the norm and migrations are the exceptions? My amateur understanding of history and archeology is that migrations are the norm and conquest is the exception (although posing this as a binary is itself misleading because violence is a matter of degrees). Moreover, lots of people who aren't considered indigenous have been brutally conquered, but we don't afford them special status (e.g., virtually any people which has been conquered by virtually any empire).

I certainly agree that many indigenous peoples in history have been brutally conquered, but considering they aren't the only ones and many of them haven't been brutally conquered, it seems like a crumby proxy.

> These aren't straightforward issues, you're right, and they deserve a candid and in-depth treatment. But let's not get too far from the fundamental point, which is that it's pretty awful to show up on the shores of a continent where a bunch of people live and then destroy them and/or their way of life.

Fully agree (who wouldn't? is this even controversial?), but I don't understand the "indigenous is a useful proxy for peoples who have suffered" argument.

[_moof]

All good points. The site is run predominantly by folks from North America, and I live in the United States, so there's a particularly North American flavor to this discussion. That's naturally going to focus on the specific experiences of North American indigenous peoples, which, at least in my reading, are unquestionably experiences of conquest. So in that context, I'm not even sure it's a proxy; it seems like it's actually at the heart of the matter. Whether it's a reasonable proxy at a global scale across all of time, or even an intelligible concept when removed from an American context, I don't know.

[throwaway894345]

Fair enough, but there are also global organizations that deal in the indigenous/other dichotomy, including the UN (which has a special department or council concerning indigenous peoples). So there’s clearly a more universal notion that does my make sense to me.

[zokier]

Its more useful to see the movement to support indigenous people as a counterforce to attempt balance out the power dynamic between the colonizers and colonized. Without recognizing indigenous people as a group, they can not be provided the support that they need and they would get stamped out by the colonizers. In many cases its matter of trying to figure out how we can get the indigenous culture to survive at all.

Of course it is another discussion completely if every culture is something we want to try to rescue. Right now the general atmosphere is that yes, we do want to try to have as many cultures survive as possible instead of the great assimilation thinking of previous centuries.

[throwaway894345]

> Its more useful to see the movement to support indigenous people as a counterforce to attempt balance out the power dynamic between the colonizers and colonized. Without recognizing indigenous people as a group, they can not be provided the support that they need and they would get stamped out by the colonizers.

Wouldn’t it be all the more effective and righteous to categorize between “colonized peoples” (rather than simply indigenous) and “other”? Or even “cultures at risk” versus “other”? Or do the Inuit have some stronger claim than the Irish or the Armenians?

[aaron-santos]

I guess I'm ok with nuance and gray areas and anti-colonialism in a way that doesn't feel like a contradiction. Sorry that's hard for you.

[throwaway894345]

Hey Aaron, I think you're taking undue offense. There's nothing particularly "colonialist" about anything I've posted, and indeed "colonialism" isn't limited to indigenous peoples, which is kind of my point. I'm wondering what utility, if any, can there be in dividing the world into "indigenous" and "other". If anti-colonialism is the ax you'd like to grind, then why not divide the world into "colonized" and "other"? Why use "indigenous" as a proxy?

[aaron-santos]

Why use utility an a measure to begin with? I think we're going to have to agree to disagree simply because of the number of assumptions being brought into this discussion.

[throwaway894345]

Well, I’m not sure why we use “utility”—that seems like a profound question. But that’s the criterion we’ve used to choose our concepts practically forever, so why make the exception for this one concept?

[aaron-santos]

I have to hand it to you. It's clear that you're adept at creating confusion around ideas by "just asking questions", and creating cohesion around fuzzy concepts by stating opinions as facts. I've participated in too many of these "debates" to know where this is headed. If you genuinely want educate yourself on these topics, there are resources to do so. I encourage you to seek these out.

[zokier]

indigenous and colonized are more or less synonyms, its not really a proxy of anything. Why specific word is used instead of another to refer to something is a question more suited for linguists. But if I had to make a guess, I'd venture to say that people prefer to use a term to describe themselves that doesn't center around the negatives.

[throwaway894345]

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think the Welsh or Irish are on anyone’s list of indigenous peoples, for example. Maybe “colonized” has some specific academic meaning that I’m misapplying to the Welsh, Irish, etc.

[ghostpepper]

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Métis not entitled to the same tax benefits as other indigenous groups?

[Y_Y]

> 2) Can an MNO citizenship card be used for a tax exemption?

> No. Métis are not presently exempt from paying provincial or federal taxes. You should not attempt to use an MNO citizenship card for this purpose. If you do, you will be personally liable for any legal consequences.

(from https://www.metisnation.org/registry/citizenship/frequently-... )

The same page almost comes close to answering the question I had, which is, "what make a person Métis"? It seems to be someone who is not otherwise "aboriginal" but also not entirely not so either.

[iammisc]

> "Indigenous or less commonly indigenous : of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group"

And exactly, what am I supposed to learn from this? What happens if you descend from the earliest known inhabitant of a place? Don't we all? Exactly what are you supposed to gain from being a descendant of such a person as opposed to those who are not? Do I get brownie points for having a nose?

> In extension, here in Canada the Métis People (explicitly descendants of MIXED European and Indigenous ancestry) are recognized as an Indigenous group with unique language and cultural practices.

Exactly my point. The word is either meaningless (anyone who's different is indigenous) or it refers directly to a notion of racial purity. You can't have it both ways. Either its meaningless and useless or its meaningful and dangerous.

I belong to such a creole group, and I don't understand why it ought to make me so special. Guess what... it doesn't. Governments can classify us as whatever they want. I'm indigenous, like all other humans, in that I descend from the earliest known inhabitants of many places, presumably. And I'm also a mix of many cultures, like EVERY other human being on the planet. Oh also, I'm the child of conquerors, because literally everyone is. No one is special. People who think their ancestors make them special deserve the highest forms of criticism.

EDIT: one more thing:

> In most modern contexts it's used to refer to the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to European colonization.

How needlessly eurocentric

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to European colonization

maybe we can just rewrite that subtly, to get

"the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to one of the most cataclysmic mass death events in the history of humankind, in which roughly 10% of the total human population of the planet died"

any better?

[throwaway894345]

What’s the point? That Europeans are uniquely, intrinsically evil and Native Americans are noble savages? Or is it more likely that Europeans and Native Americans are both human groups (with all of the entailed capacity for creativity and destruction) who occupied different positions on a power spectrum (including asymmetrical immunity) when they came into contact?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The point, despite your defensive posturing about Europeans, is that the largely unintentional introduction of disease by Spanish explorers and missionaries was a cataclysm for the Americas unlike anything seen on any other continent.

Sure, not long after, they sent armies to conquer the land, but that's not part of the die off that took place before most of those armies got off the boats.

I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

[throwaway894345]

> The point, despite your defensive posturing about Europeans

I’m not defensively posturing? I’m not even European. Sometimes people are just interested in the truth—no need to suppose some nefarious motive.

> I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

Terrific, I’m glad we agree here (although again Europeans have a bad record because they kept a written record, not because they were uniquely barbarous).

[iammisc]

> I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

The amount of brainwashing in this sentence is absolutely insane. You state a thing about no group being more or less noble and then immediately contradict it with European exceptionalism. When will the gaslighting end?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

While conquest and control have been the hallmark of powerful human civilizations everywhere on the planet, it seems that the European versions post (roughly) 1600 have taken a different approach than their American, African and Indo-Asian equivalents. While the latter have all engaged in something roughly approximating colonialism, it seems the it is mostly the European powers that have repeatedly engaged in attempts at complete extermination of those they manage to subjugate.

I don't see this as a European trait so much as an extension of the religious and political doctrine of the period. The combination of Abrahamic ("personal relationship with god") religion powering a divine right of kings and technological war superiority seems to be a particularly vicious combination. Other cultures and civilizations have engaged in some brutal oppression too, but for the most part they seem to have understood that other humans were (1) humans (2) potential assets and subsequently engaged in a more complex aspirational relationship with the conquered than most European cultures have tended to do.

[iammisc]

> "the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to one of the most cataclysmic mass death events in the history of humankind, in which roughly 10% of the total human population of the planet died"

That one's ancestors suffered in some way does not give you any more authority or importance today.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

"in some way" makes it all sound a bit abstract.

The impact of disease on the Americas was arguably numerically larger than actual colonization, and the initial wave (say, 1492-1520) probably wasn't very intentional. So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

But colonization, first by the Spanish and later by northern Europeans, was literally a war whose goal was frequently the complete annihilation of the population already in the Americas. It was a brutal, vicious war (that in a number of senses continues to the present day), and suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

[throwaway894345]

Welcome to history and prehistory. Brutality was common and limited only by power imbalances between the conqueror and the conquered. The remarkable thing about the European conquests was that the power difference had become tremendous after tens of millennia of isolation, which allowed the Europeans to visit unprecedented brutality on the native peoples. It wasn’t that the Europeans were uniquely evil, but uniquely powerful relative to those they conquered.

> suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

This is an interesting point, but I don’t think the common belief is “indigenous have moral title to the land due to great suffering”, but rather due to “they were the first people in the land at recorded history” so in our collective psyche we errantly assume they must’ve been the first there ever. I deed, if it were merely “suffering” then surely their disease experience alone would suffice? These are at least the reasons I’ve commonly heard, including from people in this thread.

[iammisc]

And so what? Disease kills people. What exactly are we to do about it. Your ancestors being more susceptible to some disease doesn't make you special.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What I wrote:

> The impact of disease [ ... ] So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

What we could do is read a little more carefully, just for starters.