Indigenous peoples - who are they?

	The Afraid of Bear sweat lodge at Slim Buttes on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota was funded by the Onaway Trust in 2003. Operational since the 1880s, the lodge is used for prayer and purification

Indigenous peoples are the disadvantaged descendants of those peoples that inhabited a territory prior to the formation of a state. The term indigenous may be defined as a characteristic relating the identity of a particular people to a particular area and distinguishing them culturally from other people or peoples.

When, for example, immigrants from Europe settled in the Americas and Oceania, or when new states were created after colonialism was abolished in Africa and Asia, certain peoples became marginalised and discriminated against, because their language, their religion, their culture and their whole way of life were different and perceived by the dominant society as being inferior. Insisting on their right to self-determination is indigenous peoples’ way of overcoming these obstacles.

Today many indigenous peoples are still excluded from society and often even deprived of their rights as equal citizens of a state. Nevertheless they are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity. Self-identification as an indigenous individual and acceptance as such by the group is an essential component of indigenous peoples’ sense of identity. Their continued existence as peoples is closely connected to their possibility to influence their own fate and to live in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.

Indigenous peoples face other serious difficulties such as the constant threat of territorial invasion and murder, the plundering of their resources, cultural and legal discrimination, as well as a lack of recognition suffered by indigenous institutions.

At least 350 million people worldwide are considered to be indigenous. Most of them live in remote areas in the world. Indigenous peoples are divided into at least 5000 peoples ranging from the forest peoples of the Amazon to the tribal peoples of India and from the Inuit of the Arctic to the Aborigines in Australia. Very often they inhabit land which is rich in minerals and natural resources.

Indigenous peoples have prior rights to their territories, lands and resources, but often these have been taken from them or are threatened. They have distinct cultures and economies compared to those of the dominant society. The importance of indigenous peoples' self-identification is crucial and a part of their identity.

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs

Supported by Onaway since the 1970’s, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) is an independent membership organisation staffed by specialists and advisers on indigenous affairs.

There is a Native American story about a grandfather, talking to his young grandson. He tells the boy that he has two wolves inside him that are struggling with each other. One is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other is the wolf of fear, greed and hatred. "Which wolf will win grandfather?" asks the boy. "Whichever one I feed" came the reply.

Wars are fought to see who owns the land, but in the end it possesses man. Who dares say he owns it - is he not buried beneath it?
Cochise, Chiricahua Apache

The Onaway Trust is a registered charity - number 268448.