Rembran R.

Maruhom AB- Philo 3B

A448 –Indigenous Philosophy

Indigenous People by Geoffrey Benjamin

Summary:

At first glance, the meaning of the word ‘indigenous’ might seem obvious. Indigenous
people have society, culture and languages for over half a century, and their changing life-
circumstances. Currently, the word is used as a label for at least six distinct social circumstances
even though they differ, sometimes profoundly. Since each of these circumstances engenders
its own political and legal consequences, they are clearly not all ‘indigenous’ in the same sense
or to the same extent.

Indigeneity a newly coined word that lumps together under a single portmanteau label the very
different circumstances listed below. Instead, as a more neutral cover-term, I suggest the word
‘indigenousness’, which has an older history than the recently coined ‘indigeneity’.

Indigeny is a concrete reality constituted of the historically maintained connections of

particular individuals and families to particular places.13 In the strictest sense, ‘indigeny’ should
therefore cease to characterise those who have moved away from their ancestral places.
Moreover, a person can be more or less indigenous with respect to any or all of several
features. First, place can be more narrowly or more broadly defined. Second, because indigeny
attaches primarily to individuals and families rather than to whole populations considered as
undifferentiated ‘peoples’ or ‘ethnic groups’, an individual’s own ancestors may have lived
there longer than someone else’s. Third, some ancestors may be considered more salient than
others, especially in the unilineal or unilaterally biased systems found in several parts of Asia.

Indigenism unlike indigeny and exogeny, which label a variety of socio-cultural circumstances,
indigenism identifies a set of overt political stances or ideologies. Indigenist discourse usually
relates to politically defined territories rather than to concrete individuated places, and is
therefore necessarily espoused within an exogenous, rather than indigenous, frame of action.