> The Chagossians are a mix of African, South Asian, and Malay descent. The French brought some to the Chagos Islands as slaves from Mauritius in 1776. Others arrived as fishermen, farmers, and coconut plantation workers during the 19th century. Under international law, they are the indigenous peoples of the Chagos archipelago, as they are descended from the earliest human settlers of the islands.
Eventually though, the UK government came back again, and forcefully removed these people who weren't natives before, but essentially because of forced re-population by colonizers became the natives. Now they want access to the land they were forcefully migrated to, after being removed from it.