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Indigenous people are the people who are members of ethnic groups living on the same land they originated from, and are named such in their struggle against colonizers. A historical and preferably ongoing relationship to a land is the origin or starting point of the conversation about indigeneity. Indigenous is not a mythical measure of traditionality versus modernity, and it is not a rejection of industrial society.[1]
Original communism developed the essential features of the original Community through an evolutionary process, in which the cultural root formed. Hence, there are no 'new' indigenous people-groups, especially not after the emergence of imperialism. With the arrival of monopoly capitalism, most formal colonies transformed into neocolonies or semicolonies because it became possible to control a country and its resources from afar without direct governance, although occasionally direct invasion is still used under imperialism.[2][1]
The indigenous struggle is a national struggle, and national struggles are class struggles.[3] Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Cabral, and Kim Il Sung all developed relevant theories of this struggle over the evolution of Marxist theory.[1]
Revolutionary struggle is required to engage in restoration of indigenous lifeways; reforms through social democracy is not enough to achieve liberation.[4][5][6] Principled Communists hold that colonized indigenous people, no matter the extent or duration of oppression, must be supported in the full restoration of their intangible culture, national characteristics, economic self-determination, territory, unity and power, by all means at their disposal. Everything that was stolen must be returned to their control. Revolution occurs with respect to specific material conditions, and every indigenous community or nation must be considered according to its own conditions.[1]
A national community should be clearly differentiated from the liberal, ahistorical, ephemeral sense of "community" as "gamer community", "women's community", "disabled community", etc, which are not communities in the material and stable sense. Every individual is originally native to some place based on historical relationship to a Community, and their membership to a Community is defined by a complex and nuanced interaction of lineage from that Community and their actual lived identity and loyalty to the national community demonstrated through action. Through a lived process of culture, identification, spiritual disposition, belonging, and community, the individual comes to be part of a national community. Genetic drift, "race", "mixedness", etc, also do not cancel ethnicity. Also, having the genes or "racial characteristics" does not automatically confer the ethnicity. Race is a bourgeois invention, akin to caste, based in idealism and upheld by violence. Diaspora status, migration, adoption, foster care, attempted assimilation, or other displacement does not cancel or prohibit one from their identity. Likewise, simply living in or being born in a place while having ancestors from somewhere else (e.g. a settler who was born in a settler colony) does not make that person native to that land, no matter how many generations pass. The oppressed native Community, no matter how many members are eliminated, is the ultimate and rightful keeper of the land, no matter whether the land is managed well or mismanaged. Also, the fact of being oppressed (while being native to somewhere else) does not grant that a person or people are native to a land they migrated to. However, not being native to their current location due to historical displacement, immigration, or having a migratory pattern, does not mean a people are not an oppressed nation with rights to defend. Likewise, indigenous Communities can be oppressors of other Communities.[1]
Some "indigenous" Communities are actively engaged in oppression of other "indigenous" Communities (e.g. Castillians against Basque; English against Welsh or Cumbria; Japanese against Chinese, Koreans, or Vietnamese). Their "indigeneity", while still a material fact, is not a primary concern because other national contradictions (such as being colonizers and imperialists) are of greater consequence. Some indigenous Communities not suffering direct occupation are imperialized while also actively oppressing other indigenous Communities (e.g. Hindu against other communities of India), while this is not a settler relationship because they historically share a territory, it is one of national oppression. Some global south countries are mired in a semicolonial relationship with the original indigenous people because the majority population may have had indigenous ancestors themselves, but now carry on the oppressive role and cultural traits of their colonizers while the entire country is simultaneously being neocolonized or semicolonized by the global north.[1] The concept of "national minorities" does not describe accurately the situation of at least most national communities, and Stalin's 1913 thesis during the era of the Second International was not meant to be the final dogma on the question of national liberation or decolonization.[7]
Indigenous national communities that oppose immigrants fleeing imperialism are themselves allied with imperialism.[8] Whether because of imperialism or other circumstances, any national community may become xenophobic and this is a reactionary tendency whether it occurs in the global north or the global south; such "nativist" tendencies can be stirred into a bourgeois if not fascist movement; in fact it is frequently promoted by the bourgeoisie.[9] This is not to be confused with the revolutionary task of land back struggles or national liberation struggles (for example the Algerians expelling French from their land) in conditions of colonialism, which are class struggles against the colonizer, not the neutral section of immigrant, non-native, or foreign peoples.[10] Due to the dynamics of imperialism, an indigenous national community in an imperialist country is more likely to be co-opted and identify with the labor aristocracy than with its own interests as a whole people, if it has access to such privileges.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Essay:Indigenous Principles
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin. Imperialism, the current highest stage of capitalism. marxists.org.
- ↑ J. M. Blaut (1987). The National Question: Decolonizing the Theory of Nationalism. https://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/national_question.htm.
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1918). The state and revolution. Marxist Internet Archive.
- ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1916). The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Moscow: Vorbote No. 2.
- ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1913). Theses on the National Question. Moscow: Lenin Miscellany III.
- ↑ J. M. Blaut (1987). The National Question: Decolonizing the Theory of Nationalism. https://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/national_question.htm.
- ↑ “"We have enough sex offenders and drug dealers and criminals in Ireland — we don't need any from the Third World," he said.”
Gerard Donaghy (2026-06-28). "Councillor tells anti-immigration rally in Dublin that 'country is full'" Irish Post. Archived from the original. - ↑ “From the chauvinism of the Senegalese to the tribalism of the Yolofs is not a big step. For in fact, everywhere that the national bourgeoisie has failed to break through to the people as a whole, to enlighten them, and to consider all problems in the first place with regard to them--a failure due to the bourgeoisie's attitude of mistrust and to the haziness of its political tenets--everywhere that national bourgeoisie has shown itself incapable of extending its vision of the world sufficiently, we observe a falling back toward old tribal attitudes, and, furious and sick at heart, we perceive that race feeling in its most exacerbated form is triumphing. Since the sole motto of the bourgeoisie is "Replace the foreigner," and because it hastens in every walk of life to secure justice for itself and to take over the posts that the foreigner has vacated, the "small people" of the nation--taxi drivers, cake sellers, and bootblacks--will be equally quick to insist that the Dahomans go home to their own country, or will even go further and demand that the Foulbis and the Peuhls return to their jungle or their mountains.”
Frantz Fanon (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. PDF. - ↑ “National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. At whatever level we study it-- relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks-- decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain "species" of men by another "species" of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and absolute substitution.”
Frantz Fanon (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. PDF.