Indigeneity

Abstract

Caste thinking and racializing discourse prepare the way for a special and broader category, that of the “native.” the spatio-temporal criteria determining indigenous status are sometimes vague and unverifiable. the native designation, furthermore, is often imposed by outsiders. A native is generally the presumed descendant of an ethnic group—a tribe or people—named and defined as such at the time of the non-native’s first awareness of, or actual encounter with, the group in question. “Native,” however, is a generic and multitudinous label applied to and encompassing many different groups (e.g., “Native-American”). The native status of such groups is determined by their racialized history, attributed to them by the appliers of the label: not that they are really what they are said to be, but that they have to live with being so classified. The individual and collective response of group members to this categorization may vary; native status may be ignored or rejected, negotiated or reclaimed, by those to whom it is ascribed; tribes and peoples may migrate or be forcibly relocated. What tends to persist through time, despite circumstantial tinkering, is the nativized profile. however much the groups defined by the latter may differ among themselves, they are collectivized under the catch-all heading of “native” or its synonyms.