This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Indigenous peoples article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Q: Why does this article only include "minority" ethnic groups?
A: Because we apply the definition of "indigenous peoples" used by international legislation by the UN, UNESCO, the ILO and the WTO, which applies to those ethnic groups that were indigenous to a territory prior to being incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state of which they are a part.
Q: Why does this article not include European ethno-national groups such as the Irish, French, Georgians, etc.? They are also indigenous to their countries.
A: Yes, they are indigenous to their countries and territories, but they are not indigenous peoples under the definition used by international legislation described above. The reason this definition is useful is that under a broader definition of "indigenous" simply as "native to a territory", the definition would include all peoples and ethnic groups, because all groups are indigenous to somewhere. The article would then have the same scope as an article on the ethnic groups of the world and it would be redundant as a separate article. Furthermore, literature on indigenous peoples always applies a definition similar to that used in international legislation, precisely because otherwise it would simply be an article about human political, cultural and migrational history; that is another topic.This is the RfC in which the inclusion criteria were decided by broad consensus.
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I would like it added in the first paragraph that we have been humans for approximately 150,000 years and that in actuality, all the indigenous peoples we know were not actually the first people in those areas and that they had conquered and wiped out the actual indigenous peoples there.
For example, we consider "native americans" to be indigenous, but in reality, they just conquered and wiped out all those before them and were the 'colonists' themselves.
If you choose not to add this detail, you are okay with the current misinformation that the indigenous peoples we know today were actually the first people in any given area. Jerharris90 (talk) 23:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Jamedeus (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 April 2024[edit]
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Please change "encomieda" to "encomienda" in the sentence "The Spanish enslaved some of the native population and forced others to work on farms and gold mines in a system of labor called ecomienda." Second paragraph in #History; Americas. Pissypamper (talk) 00:56, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To make it short: none of the sources supports the blanket statement that "Dravidian people" (I assume that you mean "Dravidian-speaking peoples") are Indigenous peoples of South Asia.
Masica (1991) and Avari (2007) only talk about the Dravidian language family being indigenous to South Asia, in contrast to Indo-Aryan that entered the region four millenia ago.
Sil's chapter in Kopstein & Lichbach (2005) likewise talks about "the dark-skinned Dravidians" as native (NB: not "indigenous") to the Indian subcontinent at the time when Indo-Aryan speakers arrived. Ironically, the only mention of the word "indigenous" (but not "indigenous people(s)") on the same page is in connection with Hindi, being described as "the main indigenous official language".
Please only make use of sources that explicitly use the phrase "indigenous people(s)", and ideally sources that cover Indigenous peoples as main topic, such as the ILO report The rights of indigenous peoples in Asia. Needless to say, it does not list the Tamils, Telugu, Kanndigas and Malayalis, or makes any mention of linguistic families at all, but talks at length about "Scheduled tribes" and "Adivasi" (regardless of linguistic affiliation) in the context of Indigenous peoples of India.
(@PadFoot2008: Another thing, the Web Archive links are both dead, so I assume that you have copied them from other articles, but without further scrutiny. Had you actually read the texts by Avari and Sil before making the edit?) Austronesier (talk) 19:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for opening this discussion here. I was holding off on opening my own until I could track down a copy of the Sil source to confirm what it contained.
I agree with Austronesier's evaluation of the provided sources, or rather, the two for which I could gain access. There is a very large difference between a language family and a specific culture (even accepting, as we usually do on WP, for sake of discussion that specific cultures can be bounded and thus considered as a unified totality). Neither the Masica nor Avari sources characterize "Dravidian" as "the Dravidian people" (singular), nor do they support the assertion that any such singular culture is the "largest indigenous population in continental Indian subcontinent". Given the lack of support in these two, I'm certain there would at least need to be more sources provided here to demonstrate what the edit asserts.
Schimdt, Karl. An Atlas and Survey of South Asian History. p. 8. The second major South Asian linguistic group comprises the Dravidian languages. Dravidian languages, as spoken by indigenous populations, are confined to South Asia and seem to have no links to any outside language families.
Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. p. 350. After 800 B.C. they penetrated the south of India and gradually became dominant over the whole subcontinent and its indigenous peoples. Of those, only the Dravidians of the South are clearly identifiable to us. It is not certain whether the indigenous peoples possessed a social structure with castelike elements.
An Atlas and Survey of South Asian History. p. 12. As far as present evidence goes however they are indigenous to India, and perhaps specially indigenous to Southern India.
Gutek, Gerald. A History of the Western Educational Experience. p. 78. The Aryans imposed their highly stratified hierarchical social organization on the conquered Dravidians, the indigenous people of south India, who began to follow the Aryan's Hindu religion and the caste system.
Fárek, Martin. India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies. However, the nature of their religion is a subject of discussion, some scholars speak of monism, some of polytheism, and some even of henotheism. They subdued the indigenous Dravidians and Mundas who had probably created the advanced civilisation of the Indus Valley. Seemingly, they pushed some of the indigenous people to the south of India. By approximately 500 BC, the Aryans occupied the north of India: from present-day Pakistan to Bangladesh, from the Himalayas down to the Vindhya Range.
Each one of these sources has the same issues as outlined before.–Austronesier (talk) 14:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first source clearly mentions that the Dravidian languages are spoken by indigenous populations. Please tell what exactly is your issue with the source. PadFoot2008 15:29, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That Schmidt citation does seem to address the criticisms that have been raised. Note that the contested addition to the article specifies plural, "Dravidian peoples," so it is not suggesting there was one Dravidian people. There were (and are) many indigenous people in the subcontinent who speak Dravidian languages. It would make the edit longer, but maybe it could list several of them, rather than putting them together as "Dravidian peoples" ? --John_Abbe (talk) 17:53, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)I am glad you've brought sources for discussion, but I do not agree that these support the statement "[t]he largest indigenous population in continental Indian subcontinent are the Dravidian peoples", for a number of reasons. First is one of phrasing: a group of peoples is not one population that can be labeled "the largest". But more importantly, none of these quotations support the statement of them being largest. The first source is about a "second major" linguistic group and clearly describes multiple populations. The source describes the linguistic group as being labeled "Dravidian" but does not claim this somehow unifies the populations themselves into an identifiable group. The second source does not make any claims about the size of "the Dravidians" relative to other indigenous groups, and this source is only an evaluation of past circumstances and not today. The third source is 122 years old (published 1902), refers to Dravidians as a "race", and qualifies its more-specific locative statement about them being indigenous to the south with "perhaps". The fourth and fifth sources do identify "the Dravidians" as a single indigenous population and locate them to south India, but again neither source supports the claim that they're "the largest indigenous population".
I would have reverted your edits had Austronesier not already done so because I have these objections. Perhaps others disagree with me (us?), but this is why the Discuss part of WP:BRD is important: there's no consensus built when no discussion has taken place.
@Pinchme123, Then the part "the largest indigenous group" can be removed. I'm not saying that it is very important to state that. PadFoot2008 15:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PadFoot2008: Just self-revert. This is very bad style. As for the first source, it doesn't discuss "indigenous peoples". WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. It talks about a linguistic family. Get a copy of that book. The term "indigenous" is used in the very same work a dozen of times not only in relation to Dravidian speakers. From chapters 12 onwards, "indigenous" refers to native South Asian against Muslim Persian and Afghans, e.g. Harsha Vardhana is referred to as "the last indigenous empire-builder in northern India". Starting from chapter 24, South Asians of all faiths are called "indigenous" against European colonialists. Why cherry-pick a demographic event that occurred four thousand years ago?
As for the remaining sources, they don't talk about indigenous peoples of today, but about which people were indigenous when Indo-Aryan speakers arrived. None of the present Dravidian-speaking ethnicities existed in their present form at that time (except maybe in some ultra-ethnonationalistic fringe POVs). –Austronesier (talk) 17:11, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PadFoot2008, I still object to the inclusion of this information, and as of this comment Austronesier appears to as well, so I have reverted your reinstatement. Please do not again add this information before consensus has been found here.
The problems with each source, both from before and with those you have now provided here, have been spelled out. Only the fourth and fifth sources potentially support including this information in the article, but I'm still not convinced they're even quality sources, given that so many others do not refer to the Dravidians as some single indigenous population.
@Pinchme123, I think we can try following @John Abbe's idea and mention the Dravidian groups that are (and are not) indigenous perhaps? I agree that Dravidians do not form a single indigenous population, and include many populations of Indo-European origin who are Dravidian-speaking but do not have indigenous Dravidian-ancestry, hence, we can specifically mention that they are not indigenous. PadFoot2008 19:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Austronesier, "None of the present Dravidian-speaking ethnicities existed in their present form at that time", what (or where) is the proof for this claim of yours? That in itself is an incredibly POV-ish view in your part. There exist many tribal Dravidian-speaking ethnicities which have no Steppes ancestry at all, so how in the world does your claim make any sense? PadFoot2008 19:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@John Abbe: Let me answer your above comment here, since I have already gone into some detail regarding the citation from An atlas and survey of South Asian history Karl J. Schmidt, which I refer to in my last comment as "the first source". The full quote goes as follows: The second major South Asian linguistic group comprises the Dravidian languages. Dravidian languages, as spoken by indigenous populations, are confined to South Asia and seem to have no links to any outside language families. Linguistic historians have been unable to determine whether ancient Dravidian speakers were indigenous to South Asia or, like the Aryans, came from outside the subcontinent, but apparently at a much earlier date. Throughout the book, Schmidt follows this pattern in using the term "indigenous" in a relative manner in contrast to ousiders/intruders in the respective period, as I have outlined above. When talking about the colonial period (which is obviously less remote than the period of Indo-Aryan migration), he refers to all native inhabitants of South Asia as indigenous, regardless of whether they're tribal groups or urban literate elites, Dravidian, Munda or Indo-Aryan speakers, Hindus or Muslims etc. FWIW, he doesn't use the term "indigenous" in the present-day context, but this is exactly what we require here: sources that talk about contemporary indigenous peoples.
@PadFoot2008: You appear to be stuck in the thought that "Dravidians" are a biologically defined block of people and that indigeneity itself is biologically determined. They are not. Dravidians are multiple distinct ethnic groups that are solely linked by the common genealogical affiliation of the languages they speak, and a statistically greater amount of Ancient South Indian ancestry when compared with Indo-Aryan speakers (but keep in mind that this correlation has a large bandwidith: individual Indo-Aryan speaking tribal groups may have more ASI ancestry than the sanskritized major Dravidian-speaking groups). So again: none of the present Dravidian-speaking ethnicities (I am not talking about genes, but ethnic groups!) existed in their present form at that time. I am aware of South Indian primordialist ideologies, but do you in all earnest believe that there were Tamils, Telugus, Tuluvas, Kanndigas in the 2 millenium BCE (e.g. check when the linguistic split between Kannada and Tamil is generally assumued to have occurred)? I'm not talking about their ancestors, but individual ancient ethnic groups that were exactly aligned by the same divisions as individual present-day ethnic groups? –Austronesier (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Austronesier, you completely misunderstood me. I never said that all Dravidian-speakers are a genetically united group. That would be a stupid statement to make. There are multiple Dravidian-speaking ethnic groups which have no actual Dravidian-ancestry. If we were to exclude peoples of Indo-European origin who simply adopted Dravidian languages, then, most Dravidian-speaking peoples (in plural), are genetically indigenous. And additionally I think you have another confusion here. The Ancient South Indian genetic component is not equal to Dravidian peoples. The Dravidian peoples, prior to the Indo-Aryan migrations, were composed of an Ancient South Indian component (predominantly) and a Neolithic Iranian component as well, and most of them still are. And lastly, I think you are confusing "people" with "language groups" here. Tamil, Kannadiga, etc. are linguistic groups. But the people here are, in fact, indigenous, of course excluding those who do not have indigenous Dravidian ancestry but only speak those languages. This is not about linguistic groups but about the people and their ancestry. A change to my original proposal I would suggest is too mention that not all, but most Dravidian-speaking peoples are indigenous. PadFoot2008 20:03, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"most Dravidian-speaking peoples are indigenous"
Something like this seems a good direction to go. John_Abbe (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PadFoot2008: Now we're getting somewhere. It's not that I've "completely misunderstood" you. Your text goes The largest indigenous population in continental Indian subcontinent are the Dravidian peoples. (07 June 2024) and Numerous indigenous groups are present in South Asia. These include the Dravidian peoples. (15 June 2024) "The Dravidian peoples" are the Dravidian-speaking peoples in toto. If this hasn't been your intent, all the better.
But at the risk of becoming repetitive: it is not a useful approach to dissect and interpret a single cherry-picked sentence from a source that employs a context-dependent use of the term "indigenous" that can result in different scopes of applicability in different historical periods. Schmidt's usage makes perfect sense for the purpose of his topic (= South Asian history), but is of little value for this article, especially when multiple sources are at hand that explicitly discuss the topic of Indigenous peoples in Asia. I've already presented one above, here is another (NGO-based) valuable open-access book: The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia: A Resource Book, chapter "The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in India" (p. 223). The author describes at length the issues that come with the literal application of the word "indigenous" in the Indian context and the inadquacy of linguistic affiliation as a marker of indigeneity. He also explains why "indigenous peoples" are not simply peoples who are/were indigenous:
Today, aspects of marginalisation are built into the definition of indigenous peoples. Only those people that have been subjected to domination and subjugation have come to constitute indigenous peoples. [...] The coming of the Aryans is invariably considered the decisive historical factor to determine the “original” people of India. Yet not all the original people have been called indigenous people. The Hinduized Dravidian language speakers are without doubt also descendants of inhabitants of India who lived there before the coming of the Aryans. Yet they have never been described as indigenous peoples, mainly because they do not constitute marginalised groups.
For a handy definition, this is from a chapter by Mitra & Gupta in Land and Cultural Survival: The Communal Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Asia (J. Perera, ed,. 2009, ADB):
In India, the indigenous peoples are predominantly composed of the large and diverse tribal populations scattered across several states. Anthropological literature suggests that the tribal designation arose as a colonial construct, in which all those living on the margins of mainstream agrarian society but within the structure of the Hindu caste system were delineated as “primitive” and “tribal”. In Indian languages, there is no exact equivalent for the word “tribe”, but close synonyms are vanavasis (forest dwellers) or adivasi (original inhabitants).
But they add in a note:
It has been argued that the definition of indigenous peoples as “original settlers” is problematic in the Indian context. Sociologists like Dube (1977) and Beteille (1998) have pointed out that “tribal traditions themselves make repeated mention of migration of their ancestors. There is considerable evidence to suggest that several groups were pushed out of the areas that they were first settled and had to seek shelter elsewhere.”.
Last but not least, here's a source from an academic publisher that is entirely devoted to the core issue here: Indigeneity in India (Karlson & Subba, eds., 2006, Routledge). I won't quote from it, but I strongly suggest to make use of it and thus finally build the South Asia section on adequate sources that are directly tied to the topic of this article. –Austronesier (talk) 08:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Austronesier, @Pinchme123 and @John Abbe, then I would suggest is to simply mention "most Dravidian peoples" as indigenous without going into much detail, while perhaps also mentioning that their inclusion is contested due to most not being marginalised. Also as a side note: I think we are putting too much emphasis on "marginalisation" here. The two are related but not synonymous, and you don't need to be necessarily marginalised to be indigenous. PadFoot2008 11:36, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Based on what source do want to include such a text? And please note that this article is about "indigenous peoples", not simply peoples that are somehow considered to have been indigenous somewhere at some time. It is reliable sources about the topic of indigenous peoples that define what "indigenous peoples" refers to, not the dictionary definition of the word "indigenous". While "you don't need to be necessarily marginalised to be indigenous", marginalization is an essential component in the description of "indigenous peoples" in the relevant literature. And virtually every source that talks about the indigenous peoples of India takes the adivasi-categorization as a starting point, rather than linguistic affiliation or biological ancestry. So this is what we will have to reflect when expanding the section about South Asia. –Austronesier (talk) 16:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Jamedeus (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done Cullen328 (talk) 01:06, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
