Who is indigenous?

[Johanna Laakso]

Dear Dave, Alex & all,

thanks for an inspiring discussion!

In the research project ELDIA (European Language Diversity for All), this question has been the subject of some interesting discussions. Some of the minority groups which we have investigated beautifully illustrate the problematics of this terminology.

The terminological consensus we seem to have ended up with (so far...) is as follows:
1. Indigenous peoples are "First Nations" in the sense of "the first inhabitants ever (known)", and ALSO peoples whose culture and identity sharply differ from those of the majority and whose history includes colonisation, dispossession, marginalisation or subjugation. (This is roughly in accordance with the "elements of description" in the ILO convention.) In this sense, the Sámi sometimes call themselves "the only indigenous people of the EU". (And the claim that "indigenitude" in a non-fascist meaning only applies outside Europe doesn't quite hold true.)
2. Autochthonous peoples are peoples who have lived in their areas "from times immemorial" or since the beginning of proper historical documentation (which in Europe typically means the great Migration Period in the first millennium AD or the (Early) Middle Ages) but do not fulfil all criteria of "indigenitude" (which are obviously based on the situation of non-European peoples colonised by European states).
3. Further minorities are allochthonous (migrant) minorities -- either fairly recent migrants, "old migrant communities", or migrants belonging to a migration pattern which may be centuries old. In this sense, the Finns in Sweden, although they (or at least their overwhelming majority) are mainly immigrants from the 1960s-70s or their descendants, have been officially recognised as a minority (alongside the indigenous Sámi, for instance):  there have "always" been migrations from present-day Finland to present-day Sweden. (The Karelians in the easternmost parts of historical Finland, in contrast, would count as an autochthonous minority, while most of today’s Finland was probably originally inhabited by the indigenous Sámi.)

These distinctions, however, are far from clear. Are the Hungarians autochthonous in Europe – they arrived in the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century AD – and are, thus, the Hungarian minorities in their ancient areas in the neighbouring countries of today’s Hungary "autochthonous minorities"? What about the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland – mostly immigrated in the Middle Ages, but so early that there is no proper historical documentation? In the Far North of Fennoscandia, some speakers of Kven ("Finnmark Finnish") and Meänkieli ("Tornedal Finnish") aspire to an "indigenous" status and see no crucial difference between themselves and the indigenous Sámi also inhabiting those regions. 

Furthermore, different languages have different terminologies. In the Austrian Act on Ethnic Groups (Volksgruppengesetz), for instance, the officially acknowledged, "established" minorities are called "beheimatet in Österreich" ("having their home in Austria") – "beheimatet" is often translated with "autochthonous", but some of these ethnic groups such as the Viennese Czechs and Hungarians have come into being by way of historically documented, partly fairly recent, migrations.

These definitions can be politically very problematic, and not only in connection with today’s immigration, new racism and Neo-Fascism. Especially if it comes to "who was here first" (Transylvania and the Daco-Romanian continuity theory...), or if it can be expected that an officially acknowledged indigenous people may profit from its "indigenous" status in some way. An excellent example is what has been going on in Finnish Lapland for some time. Beside "real" Sámi (who identify themselves with the Sámi language and the cross-border Sámi identity), the "Lapps" (or however they call themselves now) have been aspiring to an equal status. The latter are local people, living there since times immemorial and often -- as can be documented -- descendants of people listed as "Lapps" in centuries-old taxation lists, that is, descendants of Sámi who were assimilated already long ago. They speak Finnish and do not identify themselves with the Sámi language or culture, but they have a strong local identity, they continue the traditions of livelihood of their ancestors, and purely juridically they can claim to represent a continuity of local indigenous population (while, as they have often pointed out, the local Sámi partly descend from reindeer herders who migrated from Norway). 

To sum up: Maintaining the distinction between "indigenous" and "autochthonous" highlights the role of (well-documented, historical) colonisations and conquests (by major European powers) in the history of a people, perhaps at the cost of less well documented but similar (pre)histories and ethnic continuity. The boundaries between the categories "indigenous", "autochthonous", "allochthonous" are all problematic, can be contested and instrumentalised in ethnopolitical conflicts.

It would be interesting to hear whether and how others have dealt with these problems in their work.

Best
Johanna
--
Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at • http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/ 




Dave Sayers kirjoitti 7.1.2013 kello 17.17:

> Hello one and all,
> 
> I do hope the new year is treating you all well so far, and that you managed to get some sort of a
> break during the festivities. I'm well and truly back in harness, and I hope I'm not butting into
> anyone's continued vacation with this question, especially one that has turned out to be such a
> monster as I've written it. (I also apologise for cross-posting.) Well, here goes...
> 
> In language policy research, I've always been struck by the implicitness of the meaning of
> 'indigenous', usually referring to those with the oldest known historical ancestry in a given
> location. One example that comes to mind is Nancy Hornberger's 1998 article:
> 
> http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=28435
> 
> Since 1998, the emphasis on education has been increasingly called into question (including by Nancy
> Hornberger, I hasten to add), but I haven't really seen the same critical deconstruction of what
> 'indigenous' means -- either in language policy or elsewhere. I hope I'm just looking in the wrong
> places and that the debate is alive and well, somewhere. From what I have seen in language policy
> research, the meaning of 'indigenous' is complex and varied...
> 
> In some cases, it's highly politically salient, defined starkly against the backdrop of historical
> injustice and present-day inequalities (e.g. USA, Australia, Canada). Language policy is often a
> central aspect of such debates. The indigenous people are typically socially excluded, poorer, with
> relatively high rates of incarceration, alcohol and drug dependence, shorter life expectancy and so
> on. (I do have concerns about quite how substantively language policy in these contexts is actually
> motivated by concerns over material human wellbeing, but that's another matter.)
> 
> In other cases, the picture is very different. In much of Europe, 'indigenous' is a term used often
> by elements of the political far right, in contrast to 'immigrants', those with more recent
> ancestries on other shores. In these cases though, the 'indigenous' ones are relatively privileged,
> while the 'immigrants' tend to be socially excluded, poorer, etc. 'Indigenous' in these contexts is
> seldom equated explicitly to the struggles of, for example, Native Americans. I'm not suggesting
> this is the case in all of Europe, of course. My point is that 'indigenous' in European contexts is
> a varied condition -- some richer, some poorer, and variously the beneficiaries and the dispossessed
> in different historical struggles.
> 
> The longer histories of migration and conquest in Europe mean that 'indigenous' is much harder to
> define based on original inhabitation of a given location. The English popularly like to define
> themselves as Anglo-Saxons since time immemorial, but try telling that to the sixth century Britons
> as they were driven ever further westward by successive waves of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Franks
> (who were themselves later shoved around by the Vikings for a few centuries, and so on and so on).
> 
> Defining an indigenous Brit these days continues to embarrass the British far right (no bad thing).
> But whatever its meaning, it isn't strictly "us what was here first". Nevertheless (and back to my
> original question), I've always wondered what is meant by 'indigenous' in these historically more
> convoluted cases, in language policy research. Where the term is used in LP research, I've tended to
> find it mainly as a contrast with (im)migrants (not in a far-right type of way, but
> just as a way to counter-define). That in turn begs the more important question: If the Anglo-Saxons
> ultimately 'became indigenous', then how long should others wait to qualify for indigenous status?
> How many centuries do you have to be around?
> 
> The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages might not actually use the word
> "indigenous", but its somewhat mealy-mouthed focus on "languages that are traditionally used within
> a given territory of a State" is placed in contrast to the "languages of migrants", which it
> excludes. I've seen Anthea Fraser Gupta call the ECRML a racist document for this reason, which is a
> fair heckle to an extent. Without wanting to put words in Anthea FG's mouth, I took her point to be
> that languages like Hindi have a centuries-long 'tradition' in, say, parts of the UK, but they just
> happen to be associated with ethnic groups whose migration is ongoing, not ancient history -- yet
> those languages are perfectly 'traditional' in those parts of the UK. If 'traditional' here is a
> kind of definition of indigeneity, then how long, in years, is 'traditional'?
> 
> The conundrum for the creators of the ECRML (and let's remember it took 8 years to write, so there
> were bound to be compromises made and corners trimmed) was that Europe is host to hundreds of
> languages, depending on the measure, and so protecting all of them would be practicably impossible.
> But the next question is: well, why not decide on an actual definition of how long it takes to be
> counted as 'indigenous', or 'traditional' etc., after which you can join the club? We've already
> established that it isn't based on being there first, and that it is just a matter of time (e.g.
> Anglo-Saxons). I doubt the current 'minorities' of Europe will all count themselves as
> non-indigenous in a few hundred years' time. So how long is it?
> 
> I'm not really looking for an answer in the form of X years. I'm really hoping for this idea of
> 'indigenous' to be picked apart and ultimately discarded, as it doesn't seem helpful to any but
> those on the far right (and it's not particularly helpful to them; it's so nebulous it just makes
> them look silly). I'm not trying to rhetorically equate anyone who uses that word with far right
> extremists! But I am asking... after all this... am I re-inventing the wheel with all of the above?
> Has there been a decent deconstruction of the 'indigenous' label, either in language policy research
> or elsewhere? If so, please let me know as I've run out of leads. If not, then let's start it...!
> 
> All the best,
> Dave
> 
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers
> Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University
> and Visiting Lecturer (2012-2013), Dept English, Åbo Akademi University
> dave.sayers at cantab.net
> http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers