What is the meaning of Indigenous?

[Robert W]

I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense.

Are you indigenous?

Matt Walsh​

Stosepndorgfb5g0tl6c M0rcl4m4a8aa749uO371 e03P96t211l:t9 o c ·
The whole concept of “indigenous people” is arbitrary, if not totally nonsensical. What makes a person “indigenous” exactly? How long does their lineage have to be present here? If I can trace my family back 100 years, is that not good enough? 200 years? 300 years? The absurd reality is that if you are a white person living in the United States of America, and your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower 400 years ago, you still somehow do not count as either native or indigenous. This is not your native land, even after four centuries. Then where exactly is your native land? If you are not indigenous to this place, the place where you were born, and your parents were born, and your grandparents, and your grandparents grandparents, then where are you indigenous? The answer is nowhere. The cultural powers that be want you to consider yourself ancestrally homeless. You belong nowhere. You are a usurper and an invader no matter where you go. You have no native home, no matter how long your family has lived here.
Nobody applies this standard to the so-called “indigenous people.” None of them “originated” here. They all descend from people who came here at some point in the past and fought over the land and killed each other to claim whatever slice of it they possessed before the white settlers arrived. Those settlers fought for it too, and won. They built a life for themselves through work and toil and hardship and blood. Yet we are supposed to live in a state of perpetual shame over this history.
Well, I refuse to play that game. This is my home. I am native to this country. I originate here. I belong here. I am proud of our history. I am proud of the men who built our civilization. I celebrate those men. I will continue to celebrate them. Were they colonizers? Sure they were, and I celebrate that too. They colonized. Meaning they forged into an unknown wilderness and built a life for themselves, expanding western civilization in the process. It was a virtuous act. And through it, they earned the right to call this place home, and for all of their descendants through the ages to do the same.
That is why they get the holidays, they earned them.

 

[BackAgain]

The American Indians were not indigenous to America say 25,000 years ago.

Humans were not populating most of Europe until after migration started (we believe) out of the “cradle of civilization,” Africa.

 

[Robert W]

The American Indians were not indigenous to America say 25,000 years ago.

Humans were not populating most of Europe until after migration started (we believe) out of the “cradle of civilization,” Africa.

You can believe humans rose in Africa but I do not believe that is the sole location of early humans.

 

[Polishprince]

A lot of people don't know what the word indigenous means, some think its just the liberal way of calling someone a "dumb D**o" (slur word against the Italian people)

 

[BackAgain]

You can believe humans rose in Africa but I do not believe that is the sole location of early humans.

Ok.

 

[Yarddog]

Humans are indigenous to the planet earth. Everything else is subjective and open to interpretation depending on time and distance

 

[toobfreak]

What is the meaning of Indigenous?​

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE means: "I was here before you."

CONQUERED PEOPLE means: "Tough shit."

ENSLAVED PEOPLE means: "My gun is bigger than yours."

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense.

Are you indigenous?

Matt Walsh​

Stosepndorgfb5g0tl6c M0rcl4m4a8aa749uO371 e03P96t211l:t9 o c ·
The whole concept of “indigenous people” is arbitrary, if not totally nonsensical. What makes a person “indigenous” exactly? How long does their lineage have to be present here? If I can trace my family back 100 years, is that not good enough? 200 years? 300 years? The absurd reality is that if you are a white person living in the United States of America, and your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower 400 years ago, you still somehow do not count as either native or indigenous. This is not your native land, even after four centuries. Then where exactly is your native land? If you are not indigenous to this place, the place where you were born, and your parents were born, and your grandparents, and your grandparents grandparents, then where are you indigenous? The answer is nowhere. The cultural powers that be want you to consider yourself ancestrally homeless. You belong nowhere. You are a usurper and an invader no matter where you go. You have no native home, no matter how long your family has lived here.
Nobody applies this standard to the so-called “indigenous people.” None of them “originated” here. They all descend from people who came here at some point in the past and fought over the land and killed each other to claim whatever slice of it they possessed before the white settlers arrived. Those settlers fought for it too, and won. They built a life for themselves through work and toil and hardship and blood. Yet we are supposed to live in a state of perpetual shame over this history.
Well, I refuse to play that game. This is my home. I am native to this country. I originate here. I belong here. I am proud of our history. I am proud of the men who built our civilization. I celebrate those men. I will continue to celebrate them. Were they colonizers? Sure they were, and I celebrate that too. They colonized. Meaning they forged into an unknown wilderness and built a life for themselves, expanding western civilization in the process. It was a virtuous act. And through it, they earned the right to call this place home, and for all of their descendants through the ages to do the same.
That is why they get the holidays, they earned them.

The writing is ignorantly silly. It's full of strawmen, red herrings, stereotypes, caricatures, and bullshit. For example: He calls my family 'colonizers.' Well, in North America, they were. But hhe claims they tamed unknown wildernesses, and that's a misrepresentation, an outright fabrication, a myth based on lying through omission. I am proud of my family roots. I always say we were not immigrants, we were colonizers. And I do not engage others who try and refute that fact, or use it for purposed of propaganda, myth, and hatred of others.

We all know what is meant by the term indigenous, and how it is being used today. I've long held that it's usage today is as specious and ridiculously ignorant as your post and it's link. No one can really be 'indigenous' as it is being used, except maybe of course our ancestors back in Africa?

But Matt -- "Matt Walsh is a writer, speaker, author, and one of the religious Right’s most influential young voices. He is known for boldly tackling the tough subjects and speaking out on faith and culture in a way that connects with his generation and beyond." is about as objectively credible as the Daily Wire.

Robert: When did your family come over to North America?

 

[Robert W]

The writing is ignorantly silly. It's full of strawmen, red herrings, stereotypes, caricatures, and bullshit. For example: He calls my family 'colonizers.' Well, in North America, they were. But hhe claims they tamed unknown wildernesses, and that's a misrepresentation, an outright fabrication, a myth based on lying through omission. I am proud of my family roots. I always say we were not immigrants, we were colonizers. And I do not engage others who try and refute that fact, or use it for purposed of propaganda, myth, and hatred of others.

We all know what is meant by the term indigenous, and how it is being used today. I've long held that it's usage today is as specious and ridiculously ignorant as your post and it's link. No one can really be 'indigenous' as it is being used, except maybe of course our ancestors back in Africa?

But Matt -- "Matt Walsh is a writer, speaker, author, and one of the religious Right’s most influential young voices. He is known for boldly tackling the tough subjects and speaking out on faith and culture in a way that connects with his generation and beyond." is about as objectively credible as the Daily Wire.

Robert: When did your family come over to North America?

Early in the 1600s.

I am not clear what you are complaining about. His was well written. Actually so is yours. But you seem very very angry.
Why is that?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The opening sentence of the OP is arbitrary, if not totally nonsensical.

 

[Polishprince]

What's this shit about "indigenous" anyhow? Why not just call them "Indians" like they always have been in the past? The name is hardly offensive.

 

[Sixties Fan]

I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense.

Are you indigenous?

Matt Walsh​

Stosepndorgfb5g0tl6c M0rcl4m4a8aa749uO371 e03P96t211l:t9 o c ·
The whole concept of “indigenous people” is arbitrary, if not totally nonsensical. What makes a person “indigenous” exactly? How long does their lineage have to be present here? If I can trace my family back 100 years, is that not good enough? 200 years? 300 years? The absurd reality is that if you are a white person living in the United States of America, and your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower 400 years ago, you still somehow do not count as either native or indigenous. This is not your native land, even after four centuries. Then where exactly is your native land? If you are not indigenous to this place, the place where you were born, and your parents were born, and your grandparents, and your grandparents grandparents, then where are you indigenous? The answer is nowhere. The cultural powers that be want you to consider yourself ancestrally homeless. You belong nowhere. You are a usurper and an invader no matter where you go. You have no native home, no matter how long your family has lived here.
Nobody applies this standard to the so-called “indigenous people.” None of them “originated” here. They all descend from people who came here at some point in the past and fought over the land and killed each other to claim whatever slice of it they possessed before the white settlers arrived. Those settlers fought for it too, and won. They built a life for themselves through work and toil and hardship and blood. Yet we are supposed to live in a state of perpetual shame over this history.
Well, I refuse to play that game. This is my home. I am native to this country. I originate here. I belong here. I am proud of our history. I am proud of the men who built our civilization. I celebrate those men. I will continue to celebrate them. Were they colonizers? Sure they were, and I celebrate that too. They colonized. Meaning they forged into an unknown wilderness and built a life for themselves, expanding western civilization in the process. It was a virtuous act. And through it, they earned the right to call this place home, and for all of their descendants through the ages to do the same.
That is why they get the holidays, they earned them.

Some people are questioning the word Indigenous in order to take away what actually belongs to Indigenous people. Their lands, their identity, their history.


The Muslim Arabs started doing it to the Jews by saying that they are all Europeans, and some Americans have lately been doing the same to the Indigenous First Nations of this Continent.


Attempting to change the meaning of the word Indigenous in order to make colonizers look like they are the native people of the land by simply being born that is an affront to all indigenous people who have had to put up with massacres, persecution, expulsions, theft of land by all governments which became the power of those lands.

 

[Robert W]

The opening sentence of the OP is arbitrary, if not totally nonsensical.

Where did I find it then? What is arbitrary? What is nonsensical?

By Robert:
"I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense."

 

[Sixties Fan]

Early in the 1600s.

I am not clear what you are complaining about. His was well written. Actually so is yours. But you seem very very angry.
Why is that?

Very psychological game you play by calling out someone else's anger, if indeed they are angry.

I, for one, get very angry with ignorant posts on the threads. What of it?

You can either accept that your article is full of it, or continue to defend it.

Where are You indigenous of, and do not say somewhere in America.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Where did I find it then? What is arbitrary? What is nonsensical?

By Robert:
"I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense."

Well written or not it is false. End of story.

You either understand the meaning of the word indigenous or, as I wrote before, are trying to change the meaning of it to encompass all who are born in a place after a certain time AFTER the land has been colonized by others.

You, in America, are the other. Are the colonizer. Are the immigrant who came to the land long after over 500 Nations made their history on the land.

 

[Robert W]

Some people are questioning the word Indigenous in order to take away what actually belongs to Indigenous people. Their lands, their identity, their history.


The Muslim Arabs started doing it to the Jews by saying that they are all Europeans, and some Americans have lately been doing the same to the Indigenous First Nations of this Continent.


Attempting to change the meaning of the word Indigenous in order to make colonizers look like they are the native people of the land by simply being born that is an affront to all indigenous people who have had to put up with massacres, persecution, expulsions, theft of land by all governments which became the power of those lands.

Democrats changed the meaning of the word Woman!!!!
We have to evaluate the truth about the native tribes in America.
1. Did they own land? They thought of land as we think of the Ocean, the Air and land under the ocean. They saw it as non ownable.
2. Identity? Sorry your case is not well developed and frankly I don't get it.
3. Their history? The people here that paid for the land, also have history. And many people, especially democrats, want that erased to make the points you make.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Early in the 1600s.

I am not clear what you are complaining about. His was well written. Actually so is yours. But you seem very very angry.
Why is that?

Angry? I believe you project. Most everyone on the Religious Right can be exposed as what they are in reality -- people with a conclusion, looking for premises to back it all up. They all have an agenda. And before I pull my psychic powers out -- I know you're thinking of responding with something about 'everyone has a bias' when in reality, you'd be ignorantly clueless that having a bias is far from having an agenda.

I know I've long argued with the use of 'indigenous' the way it's used in political arguments today, but I almost always try to rub the stink off of myself when the religious right sides with me.

I do not hate or despise religiously minded people. But I have enormous contempt for political and ideological arguments pushed by the religious right. I do similar when the far left sides up to my ideological liberalism.

 

[Unkotare]

Semantics.

 

[TNHarley]

Indigenous simply means the first inhabitants of a land, correct?
Do we really know who the first inhabitants of a land were? Human history goes back hundreds of thousands of years, possibly longer. There is no way to tell who the first people was.
We just go by things we find. Doesnt mean there isnt something else out there.
Not to mention, who tf cares? We did the same thing all other cultures and peoples have done. In fact, we did the same thing THEY were doing when we got here.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Where did I find it then? What is arbitrary? What is nonsensical?

By Robert:
"I found this on Facebook. It is well written and makes tons of sense."

Matt Walsh can think whatever he likes. He is actually indigenous of the Land of Israel.

Being born in the USA does not make him or anyone else who came after Columbus, into Indigenous.

Born is one thing, one becomes American.
Indigenous is something else.
Walsh is Indigenous of where his ancestors came from and that is the Land of Israel.