What is Indigeneity?

Indigeneity is a fairly recent term that has emerged among colonized communities who have are fighting against erasure, genocide, and forced acculturation under colonial regimes. The term is global in scope, describing Indigenous people around the world who have a historical continuity with pre-colonial societies within their traditional territories.

Indigeneity usually includes efforts among Indigenous peoples to preserve ethnic identities and ancestral territories for future generations, including displaced people whom prior to colonization identified with specific land areas or regional areas as homelands, as well as Indigenous communities that have for decades been in hiding in areas away from their initial homeland areas.

Many descendants of Indigenous people were forced to hide their identities for their own safety due to colonization and genocidal policies focused on physical and cultural erasure. That does not make them non-Indigenous. It makes them survivors of genocide, erasure, and forced acculturation.

Many Indigenous people are just coming to terms with the impact of ethnic cleansing and the work to reclaim and revive their identities and cultures. Indigenous is both a legal term, and a personal, group, and pan-group identity. Indigeneity is not as simple as an opposition to identity erasure or a push back against colonization. Indigeneity is woven through diverse experiences and histories and is often described as a pan-political identity in a colonially-enduring time. Diverse Indigenous communities weave Indigeneity through a multifaceted array of space and time to revive identities and cultural practices and to regain or retain land, human rights, heritage, and political standing.

Adapated from Steeves, P. (2018). Indigeneity.