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Comment by jtraffic | Hacker News Reader

This got me into a rabbit hole on Wikipedia about where all the peoples of Japan came from, and what makes the Ainu indigenous. If an indigenous people is the first to settle, not sure the Ainu are clear winners. Lots of dispute about early population dynamics of Japan.

It seems the Ainu are considered indigenous because some have maintained their culture instead of assimilating into the larger group, which is unlike the Jomon and Yayoi people who many believe are the ancestors of modern Japanese people.

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Surely the Yamato people are indigenous to southern Honshu. And surely the Ainu are indigenous to Hokkaido. Certainly the Ainu are not not indigenous to Japan.

"Indigenous" is frequently used in a context where a people's rights to their ancestral lands are threatened. It is an assertion of their claim to places where they are threatened. In the case of the Ainu, much of Japanese colonization and colonialism was justified with the ideology that the Ainu were "dying race" or "disappearing". This was acompanied by the usual policies of social oppression and linguicide—taking them away from their parents to Japanese-only schools and beating or shaming them if they dared to speak the language of their parents.

> Surely the Yamato people are indigenous to southern Honshu

Sort of. It's worth clarifying that "indigenous peoples" is a specific legalistic term which connotes more (less?) than just "indigenous". In that context the "Yamato people" as the dominant cultural group in Japan typically do not qualify as an "indigenous people". Confusing matters further, "indigenous" itself is often used in the same, more restrictive context.

As I understand the Ainu and the literature regarding them, they are considered an indigenous population rather than the indigenous population, not just to northern Honshu, but Hokkaido and also Choka/Sakhalin/Karafuto.

The Ryukyuan people also probably deserve (some of) the title, genetically they are closer to Ainu (and Jomon people) than to "Yamato" japanese.

> If an indigenous people is the first to settle

Not what it means.

Japan consists of islands, everybody there came from somewhere else.

This is true in Australia and the US as well, the Aboriginals and Native Americans just came several thousand years before the next waves of settlement.

I'm not sure what your point is but I'm just pointing out he's extrapolating from an incorrect definition.

I'm certainly not claiming that 'indigenous' means their ancestors literally sprouted from that ground.

Go on then, enlighten us with the definition, and failing that, the most precise definition you can give.

That basically is what it means, or at least, it's a primary defining characteristic.

There are some other relevant characteristics, which make the definition a bit fuzzy.

The biggest one is that they need to have retained some identifiable aspects of their culture in the face of subsequent settlement.

But to a first approximation, first to settle - or at least being among the first to settle - is the primary basis for determining indigenousness.

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