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The word indigenous – like native or first – is problematic, but English doesn’t offer us a better word.

The dictionary definition is: ‘originating or occurring naturally in a particular place’ or ‘naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place.’

Both definitions and their applications are suspicious when applied to humans.

Why?

Because the word can be used to falsify an immobilising history, one that stagnates a people in both time and space, and one in which any kind of change – from innovation to migration – equals the dirtying or diminishment of a mythical state.

Also, the definition pits nature against culture – a concept rooted in colonialist or patriarchal hierarchies – rather than viewing nature and culture as so intertwined that even the horrors of an all-plastic world could never fully untangle them.

What to do?

The English language needs a better definition.

We need the word to express the legacy of deep and abiding relationships between people and places, and the resilience of traditions sensitive to their environment, and the centrality of origin to a longstanding culture which has been marginalized by an incoming power.

So, Dennison has suggested some tweaking to the OED. She hopes the dictionary writers are listening!

Indigenous: originating or occurring in historical and ongoing relationship to a particular place, or experiencing oneself and culture as naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place.

Here, at least, the word has a little subtlety and breadth. And it can be used to embrace both the hardiness and the natural changefulness of cultures, reflected in the work of First Nations artists, like Steve Smith, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Robert Davidson and Preston Singletary, who are, at once, rooted in tradition, contemporary realities, and a creative and innovative practice.

©Dennison Smith



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