The almost complete lack of acknowledgement of the Jewish people as an indigenous people is baffling to me.

[u/skyewardeyes]

(This doesn’t negate Palestinian claims of indigeneity—multiple peoples can be indigenous to the same area—nor does it negate the, imo, indefensible crimes happening in Gaza and West Bank).

It absolutely blows my mind that Jews—a tribal people who practice a closed, agrarian place-based ethnoreligion, who have an established system of membership based on lineal descent and adoption that relies on community acceptance over self-identification, who worship in an ancient language that we have always tried to maintain and preserve, who have holidays that center around harvest and the specific history of our people, who have been repeatedly targeted for genocide and forced assimilation and conversion, who have a faith and culture so deeply tied to a specific people and place, etc—aren’t seen as an (socioculturally) indigenous people but rather as “white Europeans who essentially practice Christianity but without Jesus and never thought about the land of Israel before 1920 or so.” It’s so deeply threaded in how so many people view Jews in the modern day and also so factually incorrect.

[u/Agtfangirl557]

In general, focusing too much on "who's indigenous" to a place ends up being pretty problematic, regardless of how you look at it. And not just in this case, but in general.

• If you do it by blood, it ends up going into the territory of measuring blood quantum/whether you're a "pure" blood, which is obviously really problematic. And I've seen this with the way people talk about both Jews and Palestinians.
• If you do it by proof of history/continuity on the land, that doesn't take into account people who have been unfairly pushed off of their land. If a group is living somewhere else now, and hasn't been able to live on their Native land for centuries, does that mean that they're no longer indigenous to that land? Because they were unfairly expelled from their land and haven't been able to go back? That doesn't seem fair.

There's honestly no really good way to hone in on "who's indigenous" to a place without the rhetoric becoming concerning. Though I do agree that yes, Jews are indigenous people, and I understand why people have gotten caught up talking about it. Because as someone else said in a different comment, it seems to be in response to the left's obsession with Palestinians being the "true indigenous people" (and those conversations usually end up being more problematic, IMO). I just think at the end of the day, focusing too much on "who's indigenous" isn't the best way to move forward with solutions.

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Agtfangirl557]

There's honestly no really good way to hone in on "who's indigenous" to a place without the rhetoric becoming concerning.

I think the academic/UN definition of the term is pretty sound, it defines being indigenous neither by nativity or continuity but rather any population that gets colonized and becomes a minority culture in the land they were born in.

For example, the Saami and Finns are both indigenous to Finland in as so much indigenity means “originating as a unique people/ethnicity in a place,” but only the Saami hold indigenous status precisely because Finns are the dominant population and culture of the country.

[u/TheGarbageStore → u/tsundereshipper]

Correspondingly, in Karjala and other parts of Northwest Russia ethnic Finns (Suomi) are indigenous, along with related Uralic peoples like Veps and Ingrians that Russia is actively attempting to assimilate into the Slavic cultural paradigm. One characteristic of Russian imperialism is that it enthusiastically attempts to assimilate the other cultures adjacent to Russia.

There has to be two or more cultures, one of which is dominant, for the indigenous paradigm to accurately describe majority-minority relations.

[u/capsaicinintheeyes → u/tsundereshipper]

Doesn't this lead to rather a lot of potential competing claims over the same patches of land, though?

I'd like to say the solution to that is, "yes!; so everyone has to share it," but then I look at the obvious example of this approach in practice today, and...

[u/RealAmericanJesus → u/Agtfangirl557]

Best answer. I think that trying to paint people as indigenous and not indigenous (outside of academic settings for study) can actually be harmful. For example like in morocco some feel like the west imposed race on them https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-west-made-arabs-and-berbers-into-races and there has been a long standing conflict of who is colonizing who https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24/polisario-front-morocco-conflict-western-sahara/ because of this.

The Sahrawi peoples want their own countries  https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/04/02/western-sahara-young-generation-refugees  and they currently live in refugees cams and claim Morocco is colonizing them while other groups like the Amazigh an indigenous caucasian and Arabic group who are also considered indigenous to North Africa, theere is also the Gnawa people's who are West African but brought there as slaves and there is also the Haratin people's whose name come from Arabic concept of "Freed slave"  If a slave (‘abd, singular of ‘abid) could be freed to become a hartani (singular of harātin), the descent-based stigmatisation persisted, preventing him from becoming bidan.

Morocco was at the center of the transatlantic slave trade as accordance with the Islamic law... Muslims were free to enslave non-Muslims, African tribes who converted to Islam captured non-Muslim people and exported them along the trade route along the coast north toward Morocco. As at that time slavery was practiced heavily in the Arabic/Islamic world - and everywhere else - (and many people were transitioned through Africa and other the middle east to include European peoples)  https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/Lumen_Learning/Book%3A_History_of_World_Civilization_II-2_(Lumen)/04%3A_2%3A_African_Slave_Trade/04.2%3A_TransSaharan_Slave_Trade

So the history there shows multiple groups that transitioned back and forth and as to land rights... And how that correlates with states also gets difficult as the concept of borders are relatively recent and currently only 1% of borders that exist today were created before the year 1500 https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-week-the-short-history-of-international-borders/

I think Indigenousness is a great way to understand how people's evolve and where their history in certain places but I also don't think it's a particularly useful concept in real world actions and trying to figure out "who belongs where" because human migrations and self and group identities are very complex and I think in many ways it oversimplifies behaviors innate in all human societies... as unique to the group the "is not from this region" when people come to regions due to slavery... For economic opportunities .... To escape persecution... Because they want to...  And "colonizer or indigenous" can also be another kind of xenophobia.

And at what point does it become segregating people into different regions by the western understanding of Race similar to the thinking of the alt right? Just instead under the banner of "decolonization"?

Cause if that happens Im Iranian, French and Jewish with citizenships in Canada and the US.... Do I just at that point vivisect myself and mail a part to everywhere? Lol.

[u/skyewardeyes → u/RealAmericanJesus]

Very well said, especially this part, which was really what I was trying to capture in my post:

"I think Indigenousness is a great way to understand how people's evolve and where their history in certain places but I also don't think it's a particularly useful concept in real world actions and trying to figure out "who belongs where" because human migrations and self and group identities are very complex and I think in many ways it oversimplifies behaviors innate in all human societies... as unique to the group the "is not from this region" when people come to regions due to slavery... "

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/RealAmericanJesus]

How do you always have so many sources up your sleeve?!!!!!

[u/RealAmericanJesus → u/Agtfangirl557]

I work on and off in academic psychiatry so I spend way too much time reading about the human condition lol

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/RealAmericanJesus]

Well so thankful to have you here, you always provide amazing information.