Definition And Meaning Of The Term Indigenous

By the mid 1800's, the violence, disease and dispossession resulting from colonisation had caused a dramatic drop in the Indigenous population. For many Indigenous people, the cost of survival was very high, as they lost their culture, family, land, language and independence in the name of 'protection'.

Unique traditions, language, beliefs and values all comprise Indigenous culture. It is critical that a meaningful appreciation of their culture

Colonisation has impacted profoundly on indigenous communities worldwide and this essays examines and details some of those impacts.

Indigenous people as defined by the Cobo report (1987) are “a group having a historical

Indigenous peoples are undeniably some of the toughest and most courageous peoples that have ever walked the Earth. The horrific events that have shaped their past could have easily been enough to wipe out their race as a whole, but instead of allowing it to beat them down they remained resilient and are even pushing back in order to change the way the public views them. Eve Tuck and an author from Pine Ridge have spoken out in hopes to gain a consensus about viewing indigenous peoples in a different light - one that identifies their strength instead of their pain. Before delving into the main context of the paper, I want to first summarize the arguments of Eve Tuck and the author from Pine Ridge in order to assure the rest of the paper is

Indigenous nations have always had their own ways governing their society. These ancient traditions were passed down to the future generations, even making it through the forces of colonialism. By saying that, it can be understood of the importance and significance it had and has to

Indigenous people are constantly put into categories by the North American government without the White Canadians and Americans realizing it. Thomas King has a particular notion that as a society there are three classifications that an Indigenous person can fall under; Dead, Live, or Legal Indian. King uses the term Indian which some may seem as offensive although King proclaims: “Terminology is always a rascal” and that there will never be a correct term to use, he suggests using the term that people call themselves. Considering King’s quote this paper will mainly include the terms Indian and Indigenous when referring to Native Americans. Thomas King explains a Dead Indian as the North American indigenous cliché of beaded, shirts, fringed deerskin dresses, loincloths, and moccasins. With this description, Dead Indians are those who are noticeably Indigenous due to their clothing that is typically only worn for ceremonies or dances. Live Indians are the forgotten about because they happened to be forced into a reservation, dispersed in the rural areas, and cityscapes of North America whereas King suggests where they were supposed to die out. King suggests that Live Indians are the Indigenous people who are living in North America currently. Live Indians are biological Indians, but due to the white society’s perception of the Indigenous People Live Indians are not “real” Indians. Lastly, Legal Indians are also Live Indians, but only the ones who are recognized by the

Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian tells the story of Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, it challenges the narrative on how Indigenous history is taught and explains why Indigenous people continue to feel frustrated. King’s seeks to educate the reader as he provides a detailed accounts of the horrific massacres Indigenous people endured, yet he simultaneously inserts humorous moments which balances out the depressing content and enhances his story. The books highlights the neglect and assimilation that Indigenous were subjected to and how their survival was seen as an inconvenience to western culture. King directs his message at a Euro-centric audience to offer an accurate explanation of Indigenous culture and

In this article, Borrows explores Indigenous-Canadian treaties, governmental relations, and self-government to argue the complexity of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and its need to be addressed on multiple levels. He deconstructs colonial racism and sexism to link it to the enduring issues faced by Indigenous communities. He reasons that government and Indigenous issues are inherently linked through his dissection of historical connections. Borrows also cites the difference between Canadian and US governmental treatment of Indigenous

The article “Why question the rules” written by Larissa Behrendt in 2003 is a compelling piece that shines a light on the gap in Indigenous peoples lives and the psychological ‘terra nullius’ that continues due to the lack of understanding by nonindigenous people that the indigenous feel (Behrendt, 2003). Behrendt is concerned in making long-term, permanent changes to regional framework agreements, constitutional protections, economic redistribution and creating a treaty, just to mention a few (Behrendt, 2003).

Indeed, it is firmly “rooted in indigenous laws that speak of duty to protect the water and the land for future generations” (Wotherspoon and Hansen 23) and defends traditional idiosyncratic and reciprocal relations with the environment. These relations are central to indigenous culture and laws and are incompatible with the resource-based economic agenda imposed by federal government. Idle No More represented a new assertion of indigenous identity by allowing communities to push back against the media’s silence and colonialist attempts to resituate indigenous people through the use of disempowering discourse (Barker 2). The mode of action and the rhetoric of Idle No More placed land as its focal point. Indeed, its earliest concerns were directed towards the communities’ land and environment. By claiming sovereignty in the epitomic centers and articulations points of the settler colonialist and capitalism system where indigeneity is spatially and ideologically excluded from, activists managed to re-enact indigenous identity and nationhood in a process of self determination, disrupting “the settler colonial relationship by which those spaces are integrated into (…) geographical imaginaries” along the way (Barker 52). The opposition to federal policies itself is viewed as a return to first forms of indigenous identity as an “oppositional, placed based

In this class, I was presented with an opportunity to reflect upon my personal knowledge of Indigenous

Each individual makes up the society as it is, and various characteristics and beliefs makes up an individual. Although, individual lives together with a variety of personal ideologies, emotions, cultures, and rituals, they all differentiate one person from the other making up one’s own identity. This identity makes up who one is inside and out, their behaviour, actions, and words comes from their own practices and values. However, the profound history of Indigenous people raises question in the present about their identities. Who are they really? Do we as the non-native people judge them from the outside or the inside? Regardless of whether the society or the government were involved in their lives, they faced discrimination in every

Indigenous people are those that are native to an area. Throughout the world, there are many groups or tribes of people that have been taken over by the Europeans in their early conquests throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by immigrating groups of individuals, and by greedy corporate businesses trying to take their land. The people indigenous to Australia, Brazil and South America, and Hawaii are currently fighting for their rights as people: the rights to own land, to be free from prejudice, and to have their lands protected from society.

Who are the indigenous people? Emery and Associates defined indigenous people as descent of populations that lived in a particular country or geographical regions to which the country belongs, at the time of colonization or conquest and who irrespective of their legal status retain some or all of their own cultural, social and political institutions (Emery and Associates, 1997). While most literature on the traditional ecological knowledge focused on North American indigenous people, there are also indigenous societies in Australia, South America, Asia and Africa, each with its own version of traditional ecological knowledge.