Stevens, Scott Manning. "Race and indigeneity." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/race-and-indigeneity. [Date accessed].
Race and indigeneity
Disambiguating the conflation of the terms "race" and "indigeneity."
The concepts behind the terms "race" and "indigeneity" are intimately linked and can be traced back to early settler colonial projects in the 17th century. As the system of settler colonial rule was being established, Europeans began to build a theory of race based on physiognomy and skin color. Likewise, the term "indigenous" was used to denote the vast populations of people in the Americas with whom Europeans were making first contact. Understanding the relationship between race and indigeneity is imperative to understanding how Europeans leveraged these categories in order to undermine Native populations' knowledge and sovereignty.
Further learning
The false conflation of indigeneity and race
It is imperative that, while teaching about indigeneity in our classrooms, we dissect how the term came to be and how it is often conflated with race. Using texts by Richard Hakluyt and Sir Thomas Browne help to demonstrate the conflation to students.
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The real work of centering Indigenous voices
In 2023, Larissa FastHorse, Micheal John Garcés, and Ty Defoe collaborated to produce For the People, the first ever full-length Native American production at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They share their insights on how institutions can reorient to honor and center Indigenous communities.
