Talk:List of Indigenous peoples

Where's Mali people for instance, the Dogon etcetera? Saharan people

This article is deceptive, it's missing information Qwepo (talk) 05:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I concur. The West African peoples were removed by an editor. There was a West Africa section years ago [1]. Very strange!Tamsier (talk) 15:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Because if we're just going to include every ethnic group in Africa, it may as well be called List of contemporary ethnic groups, which already exists. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I 100% disagree with this sentiment. If groups are indigenous and spoken about as such by relevant sources, then they should be included. As for singling out "Africa", there are very specific ethnicities found on the continent that do not qualify for this article because they are not indigenous, so no, we won't be "includ[ing] every ethnic group in Africa". That the great majority of the others on the continent do belong here does not then mean the whole concept of indigeneity for the continent should be ignored.

@Qwepo: and @Tamsier: I did my best to undo the damage that editor did to the part of this article with which I have much more familiarity (restoring nearly all of what was incorrectly deleted to that part of the article, which was ~30% of all that were deleted) and would encourage anyone else who can bring a source to support reinstating West African indigenous groups to this article to do the same.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 06:21, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

You did an awesome job, but you need to create a new sub heading for West Africa under Africa section, because some of the West African peoples are placed under North Africa. Tamsier (talk) Tamsier (talk) 09:36, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, but I edited the sections of the article with which I am most familiar (Horn of Africa and African Great Lakes). I did not do any work to restore any of the West Africa section, which appears was fully deleted at that time. If you notice a problem with some other section or a section heading missing, I encourage you to add it to fix the categorical error. --Pinchme123 (talk) 16:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

South Asian section

Hello @Pinchme123, much of the content in the section South Asia is completely unsourced. Indo-Europeans are not considered indigenous to South Asia, (Kalash people only speak an Indo-European language but have an indigenous isolate ancestry). Additionally, all Adivasis too are not indigenous to the subcontinent, rather the term refers to both indigenous and non-indigenous tribal groups. PadFoot2008 16:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

PadFoot2008 The image you removed using the edit summary "Unsourced" is of an Assamese woman, who is indeed indigenous. I have added two scholarly, unambiguous citations supporting Assamese as an entry on this list (and in those references I have included the exact quotations supporting them). Determining whether a culture is considered indigenous and thus appropriate for inclusion in this article is done by consulting reliable sources, particularly peer reviewed journal articles written by scholars. Given that Assamese are called indigenous by reliable scholars, and that Assamese are considered one of many cultures under the Adivasis label, it seems it isn't accurate to assert "all Adivasis too are not indigenous to the subcontinent". --Pinchme123 (talk) 17:20, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@Pinchme123, Since when did the Assamese as a whole start to be considered Adivasis? And this is incorrect Assamese are sometimes referred to as indigenous to distinguish them from Bangladeshi immigrants, they are not actually indigenous. See this source: [2]. Also you are yet to prove that Indo-Europeans are indigenous to South Asia. That just seems like you are propagating Indigenous Aryanism which has been disproved by scholars. And just see the Adivasi article, it clearly states (with sources) that all Adivasis are not indigenous communities, only some are. PadFoot2008 17:52, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what technicality this author is referring to, can you point to elsewhere in the source where this technicality is spelled out? Because this could mean anything, including defining the technicality as 'what the government of India decides', which is in no way the ultimate authority of indigeneity. At any rate, we have here two sources explicitly asserting Assamese indigeneity (linked in the article), compared to one with a qualified (i.e. not full) refutation; in my estimation the sources favor the indigenous label. If "only some [Adivasi] are" indigenous, then there's nothing here refuting that Assamese are indigenous. I don't have to "prove" anything, you are the one here proposing a change to consensus, the onus is upon you to provide sources supporting the change. I'm not "propagating Indigenous Aryanism" by providing sources supporting their inclusion here as there's nothing here suggesting Assamese migrated out of the area to Europe (apparently a key component of the fringe theory you've accused me of). --Pinchme123 (talk) 18:39, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Indigenous Aryanism (incorrectly) claims that Indo-Europeans (the Assamese are IE) originated in India, which you too are claiming by mentioning that Assamese are indigenous to the region. The Assamese are Indo-Europeans, a group not indigenous to South Asia. See the article on Indo-Europeans. Besides the section also lists multiple other Indo-European groups for which sources have not been provided. Btw there exists no community consensus on this article talk page that says that Assamese are indigenous. Pinging @Austronesier, an expert in the field for his opinion on this matter. PadFoot2008 18:54, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

From WP:EDITCON: "Wikipedia consensus usually occurs implicitly." Not sure why you think there must be discussion on Talk for consensus to be established. I strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's consensus policy.

I reject your absurdly simplistic description of the fringe theory, just so you can shoe-horn it into this conversation. At no point have I even suggested that any Assamese people spread out away from India and populated anywhere else, much less Europe (a key component of the fringe theory). Not to mention, none of this is relevant to determining what reliable sources say about Assamese groups and indigeneity.

If other editors wish to bring reliable sources here for discussion, I greatly welcome that! Please do! For now, the sources I see support the page's standing consensus, which is to include "Assamese" as a category on the page.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 19:29, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

And what is perhaps even more horrifying is that this article calls the Assamese people "Sino-Tibetan speaking peoples". PadFoot2008 19:02, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

So wait, is your entire objection based on your misreading of the entry? It clearly says "Indigenous Assamese people" and is therefore clearly in reference only to the indigenous groups listed underneath. Is your objection that the Assamese label is applied both to a narrowly-specific group of people (who are ethnically Assamese) indigenous to the area called Assam (presumably how the area got its name), and to other groups who are also found in that area and so called this because of the area's label? I see you've removed other entries, did you check any if they could be verified before you removed them? I seriously doubt this... --Pinchme123 (talk) 19:29, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and moved entries around in that section of the article, to remove confusion over all this. Sourcing supports inclusion of Assamese people on this list. However, there's no reason to list the other groups under an "Assamese" label when that label is one of geography and not of ethnicity/language, so I removed that over-arching label for those groups and then moved them for alphabetical ordering. --Pinchme123 (talk) 19:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008: I disagree when you say: The Assamese are Indo-Europeans, a group not indigenous to South Asia. The Assamese speak an Indo-Aryan, thus Indo-European language, but (like – to various degrees – many other Indo-Aryan-speaking peoples of South Asia) have a complex history of ethnogenesis that involved assimilation of non-Indo-Aryan-speaking peoples and language shift over many centuries. Sure, Indo-Aryan speakers encountered autochthonous inhabitants when they migrated into South Asia four millenia ago. But you cannot apply this ancient migration event for labeling present-day ethnicities as "indigenous peoples" or "non-indigenous peoples" of South Asia. Most sources talk about Indigenous peoples in the context of colonialism and the resulting economic/cultural marginalization of native populations—in the worst case, expulsion and genocide (see the lede of Indigenous peoples). Contrasting Indo-Aryan vs. non-Indo-Aryan isn't relevant at all for this topic. It is also for this reason that I have reverted your recent addition to Indigenous peoples.

I cannot comment yet on the question of whether it is appropriate to include the Assamese people in this list article. Undeniably, the Assamese have experienced large-scale demographic pressure in the last century, but I am not sure if the majority of reliable sources cover this topic under the label of indigeneity, or if the use of this label is just a politicized POV. (You can check the history of Indigenous peoples and Talk:Indigenous peoples to see how that page regularly gets hijacked by POV-pushers in the Arab–Israeli conflict.) For this matter, I'm sure User:Chaipau can weigh in here much better than I can. –Austronesier (talk) 18:21, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, yes maybe there are some Assamese who are indigenous populations who adopted the Assamese language, but not all Assamese are indigenous even though all Assamese have some degree of indigenous ancestry. Just because a non-indigenous population has some degree of indigenous ancestry that wouldn't make the population indigenous. Native Americans are regarded as indigenous to the Americas, but Mestizos (Spanish people with varying degrees of Native American ancestry) are not regarded as indigenous. Similarly Anglo-Indians too are not "indigenous" to India. Additionally, the most important classifying criteria in the Indigenous peoples article are reliable sources that call them so, which there are plenty for Dravidians. See the section above (#Dominant populations as potentially indigenous). The only required criteria is for the group to be called indigenous by a reliable academic sources, the government, an NGO or a body that is represents the people (any one). Nad nowhere is it mentioned that indigenous peoples should only be used with regard to colonialism and/or a genocide is mandatory. PadFoot2008 03:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008, I agree with @Austronesier. Let us not confuse "ethnic group" and "indigenous"/"autochthonous". All the people in Northeast India are immigrants. The earliest immigrants were Austroasiatic people, and linguists today agree that Austroasiatic languages form a substratum for the Assamese language. So the Assamese people do constitute an indigenous people. It also is indigenous in the sense that the Assamese people formation occurred in Assam. It is definitely not an immigrant community. Chaipau (talk) 13:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Citations

Surely a list does not need citations for every entry. Alexanderkowal (talk) 22:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

But, every entry has to be verifiable. So, a citation is not required, unless and until someone challenges the entry. Donald Albury 22:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. On most pages for ethnic groups there’s a list of the countries with the highest populations, would you still need a citation to say which countries this ethnic group is in? Or can you ‘cite’ the page as a tertiary source? Alexanderkowal (talk) 22:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source. If there is a reliable source in the linked article that supports the presence of the entry on the list, you can cite that. I try to provide cites for all content I add to an article, but other experienced and knowledgeable editors will tell you that is not necessary. Donald Albury 00:01, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Han Chinese

Where would the Han Chinese people fit in? Would they be indigenous to the Yellow River? What about the Mongols, Jurchens and Manchus that conquered all of China and suppressed the conquered peoples? What about the times when the Chinese conquered the Viets? Yrotarobal (talk) 19:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — kashmīrī ^TALK 12:12, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Source: [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418768/

Add "Han Chinese" to List of Indigenous peoples

Though, to be fair, the Han Chinese was a small community of folks, and then their population grew and expanded and migrated. Now, they are everywhere in China and around the world, but they primarily live in China. Overseas Chinese is a relatively small number. Yrotarobal (talk) 03:19, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Please note the definition of "Indigenous peoples" in the "Definition" section of the article: Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those which have a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, and may consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system. In my understanding, "Han Chinese" do not meet that definition. Donald Albury 12:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

So, the Chinese concessions and colonial Hong Kong don't count as the invasion of foreigners on Chinese soil?

Also, why does it have to be "non-dominant sectors of society"? Who or what has made up this definition of an "indigenous" community?

My main question is: can you explain your understanding of the term "indigenous peoples" in your own words?

What about the Kinh people of Vietnam? Yrotarobal (talk) 16:39, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The source provided does not support adding this group here, because it does not refer to Han Chinese as Indigenous to anywhere. This is the guiding principle of what groups are included here: what reliable sources say. Not whether Wikipedians believe a particular definition applies. --Pinchme123 (talk) 16:43, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

How are you using the term 'indigenous'?

The source above talks about the origin of the Northern Han Chinese. That's where they originate from. Where else would the people be indigenous to? Yrotarobal (talk) 16:48, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The definition at the top of the article page that controls which peoples are included in this list has been agreed upon by the users who have expressed an opinion on the topic. If you do not agree with that definition, you can try to find a new consensus for a different definition, but, in any case, the criteria used to determine which peoples are included in this list must be verifiable from reliable sources. Changing a consensus is generally not easy, and can take a while. I do not see any particular sentiment for changing the definition at this time. The Han Chinese do not qualify as "Indigenous peoples" under the above definition because there is no place where they lived prior to the arrival of other people that now are the dominant population. Indeed, there are many peoples in China that qualify as "Indigenous peoples" because they have been adsorbed into the Chinese state which is dominated by an expanding Han Chinese population. As for Hong Kong and the concessions, despite temporary European rule, the populations were always overwhelmingly Han Chinese. - Donald Albury 19:56, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hold up one minute. You say:

The Han Chinese do not qualify as "Indigenous peoples" under the above definition because there is no place where they lived prior to the arrival of other people that now are the dominant population.

Wait a minute, what? In order to classify as "indigenous", you have to be a minority in the land?!?

What about the Kinh people of Vietnam? They are the dominant majority people there. And you are saying that they are not indigenous to their own soil?

Why does Wikipedia make up definitions different from how normal people use the term 'indigenous'?

Searching on Google, I bring up 2 definitions:

originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.

(of people) inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists.

And apparently, Wikipedia leans toward the latter instead of the former. Why?!? Yrotarobal (talk) 20:13, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Controversial move

Local discussions do not apply site-wide. I have opened a technical request to revert this page back to its correct longstanding title so that this controversial move can be appropriately discussed. Ping Anachronist, who should have known this would be controversial and thus opened this discussion first.--Pinchme123 (talk) 16:40, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

That was a WP:BOLD action on my part based on a request at RFPP here. It looked to me like the referenced discussion was long and drawn out and well-argued, so I figured its closure would apply to other articles. I can move it back. Would that be best? ~Anachronist (talk) 00:04, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

@Anachronist: I do think it's best to move it back and then the discussion can proceed, yes. There are a lot of reasons the one move request of another page shouldn't be taken as site-wide policy (including the fact that there are a bunch of "Indigenous people" and similar pages that are capitalized, and a bunch that aren't, so there's no consistency to point to), so it's best to put this page back to status quo and then move forward with discussion from there. --Pinchme123 (talk) 01:13, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done! It is now as it was. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:19, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Anachronist, I really appreciate it. Please accept my apologies for being short in my opening comment to this section. --Pinchme123 (talk) 04:11, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Leaving a link here to the parallel discussion which took place at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests for future reference: Special:Permalink/1239403332. Adumbrativus (talk) 02:51, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, let's go into another discussion with more insulting comments comparing colonial and religious people to Indigenous people. That is totally and unbiased discussion that should be continued. (sarcasm) I know White fathers and mothers. I know Black fathers and mothers. I know Indigenous fathers and mothers. The difference between those three is, for one race and one group, Wikipedia would have you believe being an Indigenous person is beneath those other two in respect and stature. Wikipedia never ceases to amaze me the depth it will go to align itself with degrading and insulting positions which have caused irrevocable harm to Indigenous communities the world over. But we are the ones asking for favoritism. No, just equality, per the sources. Honestly, I think this should not be relitigated causing further damage and hurt by presenting this bigoted point of view. If Wikipedia wants to take that stance, let it. History will show it for the anti-Indigenous positions it holds despite multiple world bodies and international sources which give Indigenous people the respect that is given other races of people. As stated, if I am allowed to continue to edit Wikipedia and for as long as I am allowed to I will continue to capitalize Indigenous as the sources I research show it to be. This comment does not single any one particular editor out but speaks to an overall pervasive and sinister attitude which permeates the Wikipedia community even if individual view points are innocent. --ARoseWolf 13:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

@ARoseWolf Let me remind you of WP:NPA and WP:CIV. Both are binding policies.

By the way, indigenous peoples can be white, black, red, yellow, and any other colour. Outside of Canada and Australia, indigeneous does not mean any specific race or ethnicity. Besides, I have no faintest idea why you're so obsessed with skin colour or the outdated and unscientific concept of race, both here and in the earlier discussion. See, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not an American tabloid – we refer more to science than to American media discourse. — kashmīrī ^TALK 21:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

It's Indigenous peoples. --ARoseWolf 03:21, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Canada and Australia are not special. Indigenous people the world over deserve respect. Anyone looking at my comments can see that my fixation is not on skin color but on the level of respect shown in each o Wikipedia. Whether you like it or not modern academia is beginning to turn against your old and outdated view points that being an Indigenous person is equal to rocks and plants. We are Native people, not just a native species of something. I would remind you that your behavior in recent discussions are equally under scrutiny so if you think you could make the case that I'm singling out any one editor in my comment above then take me to the drama boards, otherwise don't ping me to another discussion to respond to your nonsense. --ARoseWolf 03:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a personal letter, capitalisation has to follow strictly the rules of the English language. Besides, you are native to the US/Canada/Australia, much like those who relocate are migrants, refugees, expatriates, and not "Migrants", "Expatriates", etc. Idiotic capitalisation shows not respect but ignorance of language rules. — kashmīrī ^TALK 15:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Time for our hobbies editors to catch up with the academic world =Style guides and academic publications.Moxy🍁 23:22, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Thing to do here if this is an issue is to open an RM. Selfstudier (talk) 15:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Wow, "idiotic"? This capitalization convention has changed. You might want to learn to update your internal prescriptive chart accordingly, rather than flail wildly about something having changed organically --Pinchme123 (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2024 (UTC)