It's striking how the concept of indigenous maps almost perfectly onto the categories that would previously have been referred to as savage or primitive. It isn't quite perfect, because while the specific ethne falling under those categories are essentially the same, the implicit characterization could not be more different. 'Indigenous' denotes a powerless supplicant group who are to be treated as mascots and clients of the liberal state; 'savage' implies an untamed and untameable wildness fully outside of the influence of the state. It is the difference between the unconquered and the subjugated.
I don't see why anybody in Britain (as well as anywhere else in Europe) should tolerate this discussion for longer than a split second. The aim is as obvious as the premise is absurd when the Estonians, who have lived on their current land for over 5000 years, are not considered indigenous. It's obviously an anti-European peoples move meant to sow doubt into people's remaining connection to the land and to realize the complete deconstruction of the West. (Were it easier to trace the Greeks and Italians back to Ancient Greece and Rome, they too would not be indigenous: that's a pretty huge omission, and it's intentional)
There doesn't need to be a breakthrough: the Anglo-Saxons and Celts are indigenous to their respective regions, everybody else is not. Period. End of story.
"Indigenous" is a further blurring of the lines. Ive noticed several blacks on twitter calling themselves this without explaining exactly what it even meant (whether Native American or African).
Older Native Americans still used "Native" or "American Indian" while the younger leftists seem to prefer "Indigenous". Bizarre but expected as it signals political affiliation.
I have gone around and around on this term too. It comes down to politics, not history. To be "indigenous" as the term is used, your ancestry and habittion do not mstter. What matters is oprression -- recent oprression. So, for example, the Sami (Laplander) people were culturally suppresed by Norwegians and Swedes (govt., the Lutheran church etc) in recent centuries. So they are "indigenous." Those same Swedes, some of whose ancestors have been there since the ice melted, are not "indigenous."
Another example: If you are Engish or Welsh, don't talk about the Roman Empire. It was too long ago, and you get no victim points for Roman oprression.
Since peoples like the Incas, Aztecs, Comanches and Lakotas also subjugated other ethnic groups, it might be better to just accept that this is a universal human phenomenon. Indeed, whereas 20 years ago only 4% of wars around the globe had seen outside interventions from other nations, now the figure is at 50%. Better to call it out whenever it happens, and by whatever group, than to narrow it down to modern Europeans. That absolves numerous other groups of a good part of the world's past evil.
The indigenous are metaphorically to secularist fundamentalist what unborn children are to many religious......repositories of uncompromising innocence and goodness, no evil. As such, they are the expiatory paragons for white guilt.
Yet, I do know people huge contributors to politcal parties (left) who actually believe that, as example, native Americans' indigineity means that they are from "here"....never migrated here, simply always from here. Evolution be damned.
Indigenous is used to remove and add attributes people might have recourse to otherwise if they were powerful peeps, the framework used in recent post-WW2 decades gives that power and agency to "teh west." In the Amazon example one can intimate a socialist argument that this is problematic and then intimate nothing about the nobility in England who also make up 1% of the population and own most of the landscape, often acquired in weird medieval fashions. Here where I live in Tasmania and Australia generally the Aboriginal people were not recognized at any level which meant their right to own real property was not recognized (like Catholics in Ireland), their sovereignty was not-even stolen just ignored, their humanity and thus citizenship not recognised until ____1967____ and theft of that land and murder by people other than the crown were frowned upon but usually they were only ever slapped on the wrist. [As an aside currently there is a move in AUS to have a referendum to recognize that prior ownership/sovereignty/history-into-deep-time and the naysayers are focussing on race (a thing which doesn't exist but is mentioned in the Australian constitution) to deny the possibility of reform on this matter. When I mention to libertarian conservatives who think that property is sacrosant, that this reform addresses the theft of property by the crown/state/ and it's allies, they do not want to know, and jump up and down about race and it being racist that such a small percentage of the generation should have so much control, forgetting that is exactly what rich people are, and what rich people have (see above). They ignore the concept of ownership in favour of classing the action as part of some "indigenous race", rather than simply realising they are the original owners, regardless of race. Indeed "indigenous" social systems here do not recognise race (a concept as used in the USA to divide the population, and exported elsewhere, was developed by Atlantic slave traders) and membership to Aboriginal social systems, while in its mechanics is based on descent, can "adopt" anyone from anywhere. Apparently libertarian conservatives don't want the opportunity to "marry-up" into property because of "race".
So there is a massive diversionary 'debate' in Australia at the moment to give the ' Traditional Owners' a permanent unelected seat in parliament, just to separate them and stigmatism them with a bit more salt on the wound.
I new it was a ruse from the start but you helped clarify the story with " a lack of political power at a state level"
This to me means that if the freemasons' plan works and ' The Voice ' rule is made legal, then the Aboriginal peoples will be no longer be technically indigenous and will lose their land rites?
Interestingly enough traditional Aboriginal Australians don't believe in land ownership and will be real happy once we all kill ourselves
My mtDNA consists of a single character prominent among the Saami, the Basques, and, even better, the Tuareg. Yet, bragging rights with our current cultural masters seem to evade me since I present, as I believe the fashionable term goes, as distinctly unexotic gammon.
Still, I am occasionally able to disdain those who parade their Celtic-ness by pointing out (or at least, claiming) that my ancestors built Stonehenge. and they are the colonial oppressors of my people, the true indigenous inhabitants of these islands. They rarely take up my demand that they should go back to their German urnfields.
PS: an article on the wonders of indegeneity, and the general silliness of the claims surrounding it, would most welcome.
It's striking how the concept of indigenous maps almost perfectly onto the categories that would previously have been referred to as savage or primitive. It isn't quite perfect, because while the specific ethne falling under those categories are essentially the same, the implicit characterization could not be more different. 'Indigenous' denotes a powerless supplicant group who are to be treated as mascots and clients of the liberal state; 'savage' implies an untamed and untameable wildness fully outside of the influence of the state. It is the difference between the unconquered and the subjugated.
I don't see why anybody in Britain (as well as anywhere else in Europe) should tolerate this discussion for longer than a split second. The aim is as obvious as the premise is absurd when the Estonians, who have lived on their current land for over 5000 years, are not considered indigenous. It's obviously an anti-European peoples move meant to sow doubt into people's remaining connection to the land and to realize the complete deconstruction of the West. (Were it easier to trace the Greeks and Italians back to Ancient Greece and Rome, they too would not be indigenous: that's a pretty huge omission, and it's intentional)
There doesn't need to be a breakthrough: the Anglo-Saxons and Celts are indigenous to their respective regions, everybody else is not. Period. End of story.
"Indigenous" is a further blurring of the lines. Ive noticed several blacks on twitter calling themselves this without explaining exactly what it even meant (whether Native American or African).
Older Native Americans still used "Native" or "American Indian" while the younger leftists seem to prefer "Indigenous". Bizarre but expected as it signals political affiliation.
I have gone around and around on this term too. It comes down to politics, not history. To be "indigenous" as the term is used, your ancestry and habittion do not mstter. What matters is oprression -- recent oprression. So, for example, the Sami (Laplander) people were culturally suppresed by Norwegians and Swedes (govt., the Lutheran church etc) in recent centuries. So they are "indigenous." Those same Swedes, some of whose ancestors have been there since the ice melted, are not "indigenous."
Another example: If you are Engish or Welsh, don't talk about the Roman Empire. It was too long ago, and you get no victim points for Roman oprression.
Since peoples like the Incas, Aztecs, Comanches and Lakotas also subjugated other ethnic groups, it might be better to just accept that this is a universal human phenomenon. Indeed, whereas 20 years ago only 4% of wars around the globe had seen outside interventions from other nations, now the figure is at 50%. Better to call it out whenever it happens, and by whatever group, than to narrow it down to modern Europeans. That absolves numerous other groups of a good part of the world's past evil.
But if it gets somebody tenure, well...
The indigenous are metaphorically to secularist fundamentalist what unborn children are to many religious......repositories of uncompromising innocence and goodness, no evil. As such, they are the expiatory paragons for white guilt.
Yet, I do know people huge contributors to politcal parties (left) who actually believe that, as example, native Americans' indigineity means that they are from "here"....never migrated here, simply always from here. Evolution be damned.
Indigenous should be people adapted to the climate and geography of the area.
Indigenous is used to remove and add attributes people might have recourse to otherwise if they were powerful peeps, the framework used in recent post-WW2 decades gives that power and agency to "teh west." In the Amazon example one can intimate a socialist argument that this is problematic and then intimate nothing about the nobility in England who also make up 1% of the population and own most of the landscape, often acquired in weird medieval fashions. Here where I live in Tasmania and Australia generally the Aboriginal people were not recognized at any level which meant their right to own real property was not recognized (like Catholics in Ireland), their sovereignty was not-even stolen just ignored, their humanity and thus citizenship not recognised until ____1967____ and theft of that land and murder by people other than the crown were frowned upon but usually they were only ever slapped on the wrist. [As an aside currently there is a move in AUS to have a referendum to recognize that prior ownership/sovereignty/history-into-deep-time and the naysayers are focussing on race (a thing which doesn't exist but is mentioned in the Australian constitution) to deny the possibility of reform on this matter. When I mention to libertarian conservatives who think that property is sacrosant, that this reform addresses the theft of property by the crown/state/ and it's allies, they do not want to know, and jump up and down about race and it being racist that such a small percentage of the generation should have so much control, forgetting that is exactly what rich people are, and what rich people have (see above). They ignore the concept of ownership in favour of classing the action as part of some "indigenous race", rather than simply realising they are the original owners, regardless of race. Indeed "indigenous" social systems here do not recognise race (a concept as used in the USA to divide the population, and exported elsewhere, was developed by Atlantic slave traders) and membership to Aboriginal social systems, while in its mechanics is based on descent, can "adopt" anyone from anywhere. Apparently libertarian conservatives don't want the opportunity to "marry-up" into property because of "race".
So there is a massive diversionary 'debate' in Australia at the moment to give the ' Traditional Owners' a permanent unelected seat in parliament, just to separate them and stigmatism them with a bit more salt on the wound.
I new it was a ruse from the start but you helped clarify the story with " a lack of political power at a state level"
This to me means that if the freemasons' plan works and ' The Voice ' rule is made legal, then the Aboriginal peoples will be no longer be technically indigenous and will lose their land rites?
Interestingly enough traditional Aboriginal Australians don't believe in land ownership and will be real happy once we all kill ourselves
Perhaps it's time to promote the term "penultimate peoples."
My mtDNA consists of a single character prominent among the Saami, the Basques, and, even better, the Tuareg. Yet, bragging rights with our current cultural masters seem to evade me since I present, as I believe the fashionable term goes, as distinctly unexotic gammon.
Still, I am occasionally able to disdain those who parade their Celtic-ness by pointing out (or at least, claiming) that my ancestors built Stonehenge. and they are the colonial oppressors of my people, the true indigenous inhabitants of these islands. They rarely take up my demand that they should go back to their German urnfields.
PS: an article on the wonders of indegeneity, and the general silliness of the claims surrounding it, would most welcome.
Have been following your Haiti thread on Twitter (which I am not on) and have Thoughts. Will you be doing a substack post on Haiti?
Adam Kuper