Talk:Indigenous peoples

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Frequently asked questions

Q: Why does this article only include "minority" ethnic groups?

A: Because we apply the definition of "indigenous peoples" used by international legislation by the UN, UNESCO, the ILO and the WTO, which applies to those ethnic groups that were indigenous to a territory prior to being incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state of which they are a part.

Q: Why does this article not include European ethno-national groups such as the Irish, French, Georgians, etc.? They are also indigenous to their countries.

A: Yes, they are indigenous to their countries and territories, but they are not indigenous peoples under the definition used by international legislation described above. The reason this definition is useful is that under a broader definition of "indigenous" simply as "native to a territory", the definition would include all peoples and ethnic groups, because all groups are indigenous to somewhere. The article would then have the same scope as an article on the ethnic groups of the world and it would be redundant as a separate article. Furthermore, literature on indigenous peoples always applies a definition similar to that used in international legislation, precisely because otherwise it would simply be an article about human political, cultural and migrational history; that is another topic. This is the RfC in which the inclusion criteria were decided by broad consensus.

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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]

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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]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 April 2024[edit]

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‹ The template Edit extended-protected is being considered for merging. ›

Please change "encomieda" to "encomienda" in the sentence "The Spanish enslaved some of the native population and forced others to work on farms and gold mines in a system of labor called ecomienda." Second paragraph in #History; Americas. Pissypamper (talk) 00:56, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done Cullen328 (talk) 01:06, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indigenous people[edit]

indigenous people were here for 65,000 years 125.253.17.31 (talk) 05:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on where "here" is but yes this is true if you're in Australia. See Aboriginal Australians. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:45, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

South Asia[edit]

@PadFoot2008 and Pinchme123: For better visibility, I will continue here with the part of our discussion in Talk:List_of_Indigenous_peoples#South_Asian_section that directly relates to the contested edits[1][2].

To make it short: none of the sources supports the blanket statement that "Dravidian people" (I assume that you mean "Dravidian-speaking peoples") are Indigenous peoples of South Asia.

Masica (1991) and Avari (2007) only talk about the Dravidian language family being indigenous to South Asia, in contrast to Indo-Aryan that entered the region four millenia ago.
Sil's chapter in Kopstein & Lichbach (2005) likewise talks about "the dark-skinned Dravidians" as native (NB: not "indigenous") to the Indian subcontinent at the time when Indo-Aryan speakers arrived. Ironically, the only mention of the word "indigenous" (but not "indigenous people(s)") on the same page is in connection with Hindi, being described as "the main indigenous official language".

Please only make use of sources that explicitly use the phrase "indigenous people(s)", and ideally sources that cover Indigenous peoples as main topic, such as the ILO report The rights of indigenous peoples in Asia. Needless to say, it does not list the Tamils, Telugu, Kanndigas and Malayalis, or makes any mention of linguistic families at all, but talks at length about "Scheduled tribes" and "Adivasi" (regardless of linguistic affiliation) in the context of Indigenous peoples of India.

(@PadFoot2008: Another thing, the Web Archive links are both dead, so I assume that you have copied them from other articles, but without further scrutiny. Had you actually read the texts by Avari and Sil before making the edit?) Austronesier (talk) 19:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for opening this discussion here. I was holding off on opening my own until I could track down a copy of the Sil source to confirm what it contained.

I agree with Austronesier's evaluation of the provided sources, or rather, the two for which I could gain access. There is a very large difference between a language family and a specific culture (even accepting, as we usually do on WP, for sake of discussion that specific cultures can be bounded and thus considered as a unified totality). Neither the Masica nor Avari sources characterize "Dravidian" as "the Dravidian people" (singular), nor do they support the assertion that any such singular culture is the "largest indigenous population in continental Indian subcontinent". Given the lack of support in these two, I'm certain there would at least need to be more sources provided here to demonstrate what the edit asserts.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 20:57, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Page move discussion of interest[edit]

Given how often the subject of capitalization of "Indigenous" has been discussed here, I thought I would notify those here about the page move discussion at Talk:Genocide of Indigenous peoples#Requested move 25 May 2024. --Pinchme123 (talk) 02:57, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]