What makes a culture indigenous?

What exactly makes a culture indigenous, and can you point to a few examples of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures?

Would you say, for example, that Australian culture is non-indigenous because it came from the British?

Would you say that Egyptian culture is non-indigenous because it came from the Arab Muslims?

Would you say that South Korean culture is non-indigenous, because it came from the US?

Would you say that the entire country and identity of India is non-indigenous because it would not have existed without Alexander the Great or the British Raj?

Reply 1

AdvanceAndVanquish

Original post by felamaslen

This is a really great question and something I have thought a lot about. I am coming to believe that 'indigenous' is a concept that really has very little objective analytical use.

If I had to define an indigenous culture, I would say that it is one in which there is cultural and ethnic continuity stretching back to the first people to inhabit the land. This is imperfect, but will do for now.

There are a number of problems with this, and not only to do with how to assess cultural and ethnic continuity (which is itself a massive can of worms that I'll leave unopened for now). On a practical level, this definition of 'indigenous' often means the first known people to inhabit a land, or sometimes, when archaeology reveals an earlier people, the first historic people. This means that a people who conquer another and wipe out every trace of them, not even preserving their memory, are generally considered indigenous. This need not be deliberate. A people without written records, who have lived in an area for countless generations, may genuinely have forgotten that their ancestors conquered it several hundred years ago and might even believe in their religious traditions that they sprung from the Earth at the very spot they are now. This has been observed across the world.

There is also the problem of where to draw the line when it comes to cultures and territories. A close look at anywhere often reveals complex division and amalgamation that makes a mockery of the attempt to determine who is really from where. I'll use an example from my own graduate work. The idea that African peoples and their traditional cultures are indigenous to Africa seems pretty straightforward. But is each people indigenous to the spot where it now resides? Or where it resided when it was first encountered by Europeans who recorded it for the first time? When Sir Harry Johnson was incorporating what became the British Central Africa Protectorate and NE Rhodesia (now Malawi and part of Zambia) into the British Empire, he argued that the local African ruler had no better claim because his people, the Ngoni, had by their own traditions come up from the south and conquered the area forty years previously, and they were oppressing the other African peoples in the area who were truly indigenous. Of course, that the other peoples could be labelled indigenous simply meant that they, unlike the recently-arrived Ngoni, hadn't preserved the memory of the place they came from unknown years previously or the earlier people they had certainly displaced at the time. The Ngoni also incorporated a number of individuals from these other African groups who had been captured and assimilated.

Indigenous is sometimes used sloppily simply to refer to the remaining previous inhabitants of a colonised region who retain a coherent culture separate from the colonisers, even if they are certainly not the original people. It is in this way that former imperial peoples such as the Aztecs, Zulu, or Iroquois are called indigenous once their empires have in turn been conquered by others, even if they remain outside anything they can remotely claim as their original home before their imperial expansion.

This 'original home' concept of indigeneity creates even more confusion. 'Indigenous' can sometimes be used to refer to peoples or practices which originate in their current location, even if they are not the first to do so. Zulus coalesced as a people with their own distinctive identity in a small part of what eventually became the Zulu Empire, but they are a branch of the larger Bantu ethno-linguistic group which migrated south along the coast from a totally different place. Where are they indigenous to? What about African-Americans? As a distinct people with a distinct culture, they can be said to be indigenous to America, as that is where they were forged together out of many different strands to create something wholly new. But they are not the first people there. This phenomenon can be observed again and again as people who arrive in a new place, as slaves, settlers, or conquerors, forge new identities and new ethnicities.

'Indigenous' is also used, in contrast, to refer to biological origins. People who are biologically related to the first people (again, practically, usually the first known people) to inhabit a land, they are sometimes called indigenous, even if they have no cultural or ethnic continuity whatsoever. Generally speaking, and with certain notable exceptions, people in history moved around a lot less than we often imagine when we see the maps with big colored arrows on them that chart 'barbarian invasions' or 'Arab conquests' or any of those things. Frequently, only the elite would change, and the more humble folk would gradually adopt the new identity, language, religion, etc. over generations, and then be conquered again, get a new set of elites, and gradually change again. The conquerors would also absorb some of the culture of the lands they conquered, sometimes wholeheartedly. This is what we see from Britain to Egypt. Of course, some new people did arrive, and some of the existing people were killed off. That is why, genetically speaking, most people currently in these places, again using Britain and Egypt as examples,are descended partially from the earliest [known] inhabitants, but also from all the peoples who have invaded, conquered, settled, etc. Are these people indigenous, because they have some DNA from the first [known] inhabitants, even though they are also descended from many, many other peoples and have little to no cultural and ethnic continuity with their 'indigenous' ancestors?

All of the definitions I have detailed are used, nearly always inconsistently, and usually to make some sort of moral claim. It is this incoherence that really makes me question whether the term has any useful analytical, as opposed to rhetorical, power at all.

Reply 2

felamaslen

That basically sums up my opinion. I think that the word is often used as a political tool, maybe even quite disingenuously.

Reply 3

marko19

indigenous communitites live in isolation of the modern world. they live on wild fruits for vast majority of their life spans unfortunately they face extinction due to the world being a globalized economy. i hope this helps :tongue:

What makes a culture indigenous?

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