Talk:Indigenous peoples

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Short description[edit]

Hello all

I have changed the short description of Indigenous Peoples from "Earliest known inhabitants of an area" to " Peoples who identify as Indigenous and have a special attachment to their traditional territory." This better reflects the recent trend in the UN and international law whereby the most important factor in determining whether a people is Indigenous is their self-determination as such. Few recent sources state that Indigenous Peoples must be the first known people to inhabit a territory. This is because it is often very difficult to determine who first migrated to an area and whether any other groups were displaced or coexisted in the same area. The emphasis now is on whether a group identifies as Indigenous, existed on tradition lands when it was colonized, settled or current state boundaries were introduced, whether they have a special relationship to traditional territory, and whether they have experienced oppression by a dominant culture. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:34, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting debate since it deals with the definition itself of the word indigenous. I personally do not feel your change has improved the short description since it renders lots of potential problems, for example Europeans who have lived in North America for 300 years can be considered indigenous? I think most will agree Native Americans or Aboriginals are considered indigenous and not Europeans even if they were there for several hundred years... It's a complicated issue and I commend your efforts in trying to address it and am open to continue discussing and I await the input of other editors. Happy New Year :). Homerethegreat (talk) 09:29, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Aemilius Adolphin, but I have to agree with @Homerethegreat - your change to the short description still brings up a lot of issues. Just look at the discussion above surrounding the "indigenous" status of the Palestinians who lived in the Palestine territories (or whatever the terminology is) prior to the 1948 formation of modern-day Israel. Many Palestinian Arabs who have been living in "Palestine" for generations would surely call themselves indigenous to the land. Despite this, there are ongoing challenges from Israeli Jews who also claim indigenous status to the area, even if many of them are recent immigrants from Europe or Asia (especially other parts of West Asia). I'm sure there are counterarguments, just like the Europeans living in North America, that many Israeli Jews who are recent immigrants from other parts of the world are not really "indigenous" to Palestine/Israel/West Asia/the Levant/etc. But the Palestinian peoples do not appear to have recognized "indigenous" status as of January 2024 (save for one nomadic group IIRC).
Personally, I think something like People who are identify as or are legally considered indigenous to an area may clear up some of that confusion, especially since being considered "indigenous" is a rather arbitrary and touchy subject.
It clearly isn't about being the Earliest known inhabitants of an area, as the previous description stated, since, for example, I have never seen confirmation that the Sami people arrived thousands of years earlier than the other Nordic ethnic groups (Norwegian, Swedes, Finns, etc). Plus either way, no Norwegian or Finn I've known would say that their people are actually "indigenous" to say... Nigeria and not Norway or Finland respectively. The same goes with the Irish Travellers being legally considered "indigenous" peoples. Nor does indigenous identity revolve entirely around European settlers and their colonies, as noted by the opening section.
Furthermore, the current short description stating that one must have a "special attachment to their traditional territory", or some source definitions of being "indigenous" discussing how they're in touch with one's "traditional culture" seems dubious to me to. People who are ethnically Korean, or French, or German make up the vast majority of people in South Korea, France and Germany respectively. I'm sure they would all consider themselves to be "native" to those aforementioned countries and have a special attachment/identity to their homelands. All of those countries also have cultural festivals to honour and celebrate their respective heritages and what not. But as far as I know, neither of those three ethnic groups are legally considered "indigenous" to their countries and are not included in the population figures for being "indigenous".
Though the page notes that there is no single definition of the term "indigenous" that everyone can agree with, modern ideas seem to have some of overlap with many groups considered "indigenous" are largely nomadic, tribal, marginalized, minorities, etc. Because broadly speaking, much of the world is "indigenous" to their lands. Unless the majority of South Asians would say that they're really "indigenous" to East Asia or something like that.
That said, I'm obviously open to debate and again, I'm aware that this subject is rather contentious. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 14:46, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You raise some good points. The problem we have is that coming up with a short description flies against the recent trend of avoiding definitions in favour of lists of indicators. We are supposed to stick to the consensus of reliable sources but the relevant consensus is not to provide a short description of Indigenous peoples! The only indicator which has general support is self identification as Indigenous peoples. But, as you point out, that's not enough in itself. The problem with your suggestion of "People who identify as or are legally considered indigenous to an area" is that there is no legally binding list of Indigenous peoples in international law, and national laws tend to deliberately use different categories (such as "tribal peoples") in order to avoid admitting that they are Indigenous. One possibility is: "People who identify as Indigenous to an area and are recognized as Indigenous by the international community." The problem with this, however, is that the second part of the definition "...and are recognized as Indigenous by the international community" is only implied by the relevant sources, even if it seems self-evident. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the difficulty of concisely defining this term (see 90% of the discussions on this talk page), I'd leave this as {{short description|none}}. – Joe (talk) 16:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 9 February 2024[edit]

please add to the existing article:

Indigenous peoples by region[edit]

Asia[edit]

Central Asia[edit]

The Iranian peoples are indigenous to much of Central Asia, descending from the ancient Proto-Iranians.[1] By the 1st millennium AD, their area of settlement was reduced by Slavic, Germanic, Turkic, and Mongolic expansions, and they were subject to Slavicization[2][3][4][5] and Turkification.[6]

Today, modern indigenous groups include the Tajiks in northern and western Afghanistan, most of Tajikistan and southern Uzbekistan,[7] the Pamiris in eastern Tajikistan (Gorno-Badakhshan, Afghanistan (Badakhshan), Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan) and China (Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County), and Yaghnobis in Tajikistan (Sughd Region).

Southeast Asia[edit]

Thailand was inhabited by several indigenous groups before the arrival of the ethnolinguistically Tai peoples, including Austroasiatic speaking groups (Khmer Surin, Khmu, Kuy, Lawa, Mon, Paluang and others), Sino-Tibetan speaking groups (Akha, Karen, Lahu, Lisu and others), Austronesian speaking groups (Malay, Moken, and Urak Lawoi), and Hmong-Mien speaking peoples (Hmong, Miao, and Yao).[8] Various groups who inhabit the high mountainous Northern and Western regions of the country are refered to as Chao Khao (ชาวเขา), literally "Hill tribes" by the Thai Government.[9]

Dilshodjon24666 (talk) 07:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Done — FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 01:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do the sources describe all of these groups as indigenous peoples? I can see that some use that term, but is it used to describe Iranians, for instance? Cordless Larry (talk) 08:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Young, T. Cuyler Jr. (1988). "The Early History of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid Empire to the Death of Cambyses". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 11 (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-521-22804-2. The Iranians are one of the three major ethno-linguistic groups who define the modern Near East.
  2. ^ Brzezinski, Richard; Mielczarek, Mariusz (2002). The Sarmatians, 600 BC-AD 450. Osprey Publishing. p. 39. (...) Indeed, it is now accepted that the Sarmatians merged in with pre-Slavic populations.
  3. ^ Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 523. (...) In their Ukrainian and Polish homeland the Slavs were intermixed and at times overlain by Germanic speakers (the Goths) and by Iranian speakers (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans) in a shifting array of tribal and national configurations.
  4. ^ Atkinson, Dorothy; Dallin, Alexander; Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky, eds. (1977). Women in Russia. Stanford University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-8047-0910-1. (...) Ancient accounts link the Amazons with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who successively dominated the south of Russia for a millennium extending back to the seventh century B.C. The descendants of these peoples were absorbed by the Slavs who came to be known as Russians.
  5. ^ Slovene Studies. Vol. 9–11. Society for Slovene Studies. 1987. p. 36. (...) For example, the ancient Scythians, Sarmatians (amongst others) and many other attested but now extinct peoples were assimilated in the course of history by Proto-Slavs.
  6. ^ Roy, Olivier (2007). The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. I.B. Tauris. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-84511-552-4. The mass of the Oghuz who crossed the Amu Darya towards the west left the Iranian Plateau, which remained Persian and established themselves more to the west, in Anatolia. Here they divided into Ottomans, who were Sunni and settled, and Turkmens, who were nomads and in part Shiite (or, rather, Alevi). The latter were to keep the name 'Turkmen' for a long time: from the thirteenth century onwards they 'Turkised' the Iranian populations of Azerbaijan (who spoke west Iranian languages such as Tat, which is still found in residual forms), thus creating a new identity based on Shiism and the use of Turkish. These are the people today known as Azeris.
  7. ^ Foltz, Richard (2019), A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East., I.B.Tauris
  8. ^ Draper, John (2019-04-17), "Language education policy in Thailand", The Routledge International Handbook of Language Education Policy in Asia, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 229–242, doi:10.4324/9781315666235-16, ISBN 978-1-315-66623-5, S2CID 159127015
  9. ^ Morton, Micah F.; Baird, Ian G. (2019). "From Hill tribes to Indigenous Peoples: The localisation of a global movement in Thailand". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 50 (1). Cambridge University Press: 7–31. doi:10.1017/s0022463419000031. ISSN 0022-4634.

Reverted lede changes[edit]

I've reverted the lede to a previous version, importantly including the language "usually colonized" rather than always "colonized".

I do not believe the new version written by Aemilius Adolphin just a few dozen edits ago represents consensus. We should decide here what to do before changing it.

In particular, "indigenous" really does usually the meaning of "the first inhabitants" of a land. A real wikipedia user, who really doesn't know what the word "indigenous" means, will be looking for something to grasp, rather than a long description emphasizing only that there are multiple definitions. DenverCoder19 (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A dictionary definition of the first of "Indigenous peoples" is however not the best thing for us to offer to our readers to grasp. The common usage of the entire phrase is what counts here, and "the first inhabitants" is just part of the package that defines "Indigenous peoples" in modern discourse. The second half-sentence that begins with "especially" goes in the right direction for this purpose (except for "one" in "especially one..."; there is no singular noun phrase in the preceding part). –Austronesier (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have restored the stable version which more accurately reflects the sources. If you wish to make specific changes then seek consensus for these specific changes, don't just replace the entire lead which is properly sourced. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Specific problems with the 2023 version of the lead:
1) It stated: "Indigenous peoples are the earliest known inhabitants of an area and their descendants, especially one that has been colonized by a now-dominant group of settlers." However, there is no source for this and it is flatly contradicted by the rest of the article.
2) The second sentence stated: "However, the term lacks a single, authoritative definition." This flatly contradicts the first sentence. And under policy if the reliable sources disagree on a topic then we editors can't just make something up ourselves. There is no consensus on a single definition of Indigenous therefore the article should state this upfront. The current lead does this.
3) The third and 4th sentences about the origin of the term were too detailed for the lead and belong in the main article. The lead is supposed to be a concise summary.
4) The next paragraph was a discursive argument, not a concise summary of the contents of the article. It belonged in the body of the article not the lead. See MOS:LEAD
5) The next paragraphs were again discursive, not a summary of the article. They included generalizations which are not supported by the cited sources, and are often flatly contradicted by the article. Other sources were out of date: there were pre-UNDRIP and therefore didn't reflect the current international law on the subject.
In summary, the current lead better conforms to policy on what a lead is supposed to do. It is a concise summary of the article which accurately reflects its content. It supports potentially contentious statements with reliable sources. I think that if we have specific problems with the current lead it would be more productive if we discussed these specific problems and sought consensus for desired changes. But it's best to start from the base of the current lead which at least is reliably sourced and is a concise and accurate summary of the article as it stands. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 00:27, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 17 April 2024[edit]

I would like it added in the first paragraph that we have been humans for approximately 150,000 years and that in actuality, all the indigenous peoples we know were not actually the first people in those areas and that they had conquered and wiped out the actual indigenous peoples there. For example, we consider "native americans" to be indigenous, but in reality, they just conquered and wiped out all those before them and were the 'colonists' themselves. If you choose not to add this detail, you are okay with the current misinformation that the indigenous peoples we know today were actually the first people in any given area. Jerharris90 (talk) 23:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Jamedeus (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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