Vine Deloria Jr. gave a working definition of indigenous. He used the word in the sense of people who “live properly with the land.”
This country destroyed many of its original indigenous populations. Could it create another, at least in Deloria’s sense?
A rugged individualist can’t really be indigenous. A person or a family is indigenous by being part of a community.
People of Old-World ancestry have been here long enough to come to terms with the place. Some individuals know how to live properly with the land. Some families live properly with the land. But as a community, as a country, we don’t have that down. Even today, we choose representatives who favor exploitation and destruction, rather than conservation.
One of the recurring themes of this collection of online notes is place. What kind of place would this country be if it had an indigenous people, a people who lived properly with the land?
• Source: Vine Deloria Jr.’s essay “Reflection and Revelation: Knowing Land, Places and Ourselves” is in The Power of Place, edited by James A. Swan; Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1993, p. 40.
