Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of indigenous peoples


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. But not a simple no consensus defaulting to keep. There is a clear consensus that this article needs to be stripped back, modified appropriately, improved and better sourced.

While AfD is not cleanup, it is also not a suicide pact, and if significant modifications aren't made in line with the overwhelming sentiment expressed below over the coming weeks and months, we will be back at AfD in Q2 of 2022 and the outcome could potentially be very different. Daniel (talk) 02:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

List of indigenous peoples

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

I am not seeing how this is a maintainable or workable list. There is no clear, consistent definition of what defines an "indigenous people" across the entire planet. While the definition of "indigenous peoples" may be clear in some contexts (i.e. Indigenous Australians and Americans) in many others it is not clear what would be defined as an "indigenous person" as opposed to merely an ethnic group that is found in a particular area, such as in most of Africa. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I also endorse the comments of Joe Roe and Austronesier below, which probably get closer to the heart of the issue than my original rationale. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:06, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep There is a clear definition at the start of the article. We also have a category for Category:Indigenous peoples.   D r e a m Focus  07:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Doesn't mean that the definition is useful or is consistent. For example, who are the indigenous peoples in states where there are many small ethnic groups and no large ones, like Papua New Guinea. What ethnic group represents the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of? "Papuan" doesn't count because it is not an ethicity. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:31, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 *  Keep There is absolutely no reason for this to be put up for AfD, and it's extremely self-evident too. -- Tautomers (T C) 08:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment @Hemiauchenia it is unbecoming to edit out my statement and claim it to be a personal attack when it was not. It would be better to wait and see if other editors feel that way and to inform me as such (editors may review the edit history to make their own judgement). But being both judge and jury is unfair. Nevertheless, I shall re-explain more gently. This proposal reads as wikilawyering and feels frivolous given how self-evidently this article deserves to remain. If you feel it is so questionable and needing of editing, it would be much better to edit the page, and discuss the issue at hand on its talk page with other editors. Outright deletion is far, far to extreme and unwarranted. -- Tautomers (T C) 09:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You can't baselessly accuse me of Wikilayering for writing a deletion nomination that you disagree with. You have not responded to the actual nomination rationale, that the definition of worldwide "Indigenous peoples" is too vague and: inconsistent for a standalone list. I am not opposed for specific lists for the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas. Hemiauchenia (talk) 09:23, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - Actually, I can. I'm sorry that you dislike my opionion. This page has existed for over 16 years, has had thousands of edits, with dozens of sources, and hundreds of well-sorted links. It is a clearly well maintained and an important article. Your rationale that it should be deleted simply because it is too vague is nonsensical. You did not even attempt to bring up the issue at hand on the articles talk page to attempt to re-define or engage in a discussion about the articles scope. This is the first AfD this article has been put up for, and was only PRODed several years ago and was promptly removed. Also worth noting this article is also under 30/500 protection via the arbitration committee. Because of this, it does in fact strike me as wikilawyering, at best. At any rate, there is not much more to be said. Other editors can commence with their vote and review. Should this be a keep vote, I would encourage you to discuss on the articles talk page about your concerns over potential vagueness. You could even start that now in the meantime while this is reviewed since it is extremely likely Keep will be the outcome. Carry on~ -- Tautomers (T C) 09:45, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * None of the things you have mentioned are at all relevant for whether or not an article should be deleted. Mass killings under communist regimes has a similar antiquity and edit count, and is also under discretionary sanctions, and yet its most recent AfD closed as "no consensus" a few weeks ago. You have still not addressed the nomination rationale. Hemiauchenia (talk) 09:52, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that this list is not well-maintained at all, . Yes there are dozens of citations—45 at the moment—but that is not a good thing in a contentious list with hundreds of entities. Consider also that nearly half (19) of those citations are concentrated in the section on Jews, Palestinians and Samaritans. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 10:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Weak keep but stubify. I can see where the nominator is coming from, but we've been too hung up on "definitions" in this set of articles. Even UN bureaucrats now recognise that Indigeneity is a question of self-identification, not checklist-criteria. If a group self-identifies as Indigenous, and that claim is recognise in a significant number of reliable sources, then we should include them in articles like this. Of course there will always be disputes and edge-cases, but I don't think that criterion is any less precise than that used in the majority of our lists. That said, this version of the list is a giant mess. I've had it on my watchlist for about a decade and I really can't recall more than a handful of significant, constructive edits in that time. Instead there is just a tiresome repetition of the same disputes (notably the inclusion of Israeli Jews and/or Palestinians) and a familiar cycle where somebody adds their ethnic group, complains when it is reverted because "we've always lived here!", and we have to patiently explain, again, that if we included every ethnic group that has ever been indigenous to anywhere, we'd have to call it list of ethnic groups. Meanwhile, coverage of groups who are without question Indigenous people, and for whom Indigeneity has been a central part of struggles for recognition and legal rights, has been ignored: the sections on North and South America, Australasia, and the Arctic—where the majority of the world's Indigenous peoples live—are woefully incomplete and entirely unsourced. We should take this AfD as an opportunity to start again with verifiable information a inclusion criteria based on Indigenous self-identification and coverage in reliable sources, not armchair lawyering based on what this or that NGO says. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 09:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment This is a fair take and I have revised my vote to keep instead of speedy keep given this. A page like this is bound to be messy basically however you slice it and it will never be perfect. I noticed the intense bickering when looking through the edit history which (sadly) didn't surprise me. I agree this AfD could be a good opertunity for people to come together and improve the article. The topic is inherently very political and will need to be treaded gently and with understanding. I hesitate to suggest draftify though as I worry it might never exit draft space due to how contentious the topic will certainly become during the editing processs. -- Tautomers (T C) 10:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment The term "indigenous peoples" has become a catch-all term for politically and culturally marginalized ethnic groups all over the world, and undoubtedly has helped to create awareness about the strife of these peoples. But alas, this does not always match the stricter definitions of the term (which may vary based on the temporal cut-off point and whether the criterion of political participation is included). The current largely unsourced list is all apples and oranges; e.g. why are Amhara, Yorubas, Hausa included (technically they are non-majority autochtonous peoples, but in no way politically marginalized), but not Visayans who are also a non-majority and non-marginalized autochtonous group? Tongans are listed, even though they have all the political power over their country. But still, a huge part of the list contains groups that are Indigenous peoples by all standards, as pointed out by . I am aware of WP:NOTCLEANUP, but I share with the OP the concern of how to realistically turn this into a manageable list that lives up to its definition. At the current state, I'd opt for draftify or TNT-delete stubify. –Austronesier (talk) 09:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I am tempted to support deletion, but that would not solve the underlying problem. I do think the List needs to be drastically reformed, and maybe re-named. As other have noted, it is too much of a hodge-podge. In my humble opinion, "indigenous" is a valid term for peoples that entered the awareness of the wider world fairly recently, say, in the last five centuries, and who are now minorities and/or oppressed by other peoples in their own ancestral territory. It overlaps with, but is not the same, as "minority", or "oppressed people", or "ethnic group". I think we need a serious dicussion on what the scope of this list should be and, depending on what that discussion decides, what to call the list. - Donald Albury 16:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Insidiously misleading weasel term as others have intuitively grasped and I don't see much room for reform because it's a political term that doesn't match the etymological origin in practice. --Killuminator (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per Joe's reasoning. Not only is there a clear definition at the start of the article, there are multiple others linked that say more or less the same thing. I agree that this version of the article is a mess, though. It may be better to make this an outline linking to the articles for respective continents. ThadeusOfNazerethTalk to Me! 12:41, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, draftify or stubify - While a list on this subject would be useful, this article at present falls short at every turn. I disagree about whether the definition is clear. I'm not sure why it does not simply start with the same definition as on the Indigenous peoples page. Instead, it cites a far more random journal entry. In the definition section, it then seems to paraphrase some elements on the UN definition. Not a great or particularly consistent start. No wonder the article has become an inconsistent WP:COATRACK. I would tend towards delete only because WP:TNT may be the only way to rationalise this content. Overhauling it, when there are no citations for 90% of the content, will be a mammoth effort. Drafting is another reasonably option, but this obviously has the problem of who would take it on. The stubify option is therefore possibly more viable as it, like WP:TNT, would encourage the article to be rebuilt, bottom up, with inline citations throughout justifying the inclusion of individual entries - the ideal level of sourcing intensity for all such lists. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:08, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The definition given in the lead of "Indigenous peoples" constantly changes over time, in December 2020, the defintiion was " ethnic groups who are native to a particular place on Earth and live or lived in an interconnected relationship with the natural environment there for many generations prior to the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples." In October 2019 the definition was "ethnic groups who are the original owners and caretakers of a given region, in contrast to groups that have settled, occupied or colonized the area more recently." Arguably a RfC is needed to fix the definition. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:50, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree that there are some serious definitional issues at play. The quote They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system. is sourced to some random person (apparently?) and basically ascribes universal political ideals to all indigenous groups across the world - which is absurd. This article can't seem to make its mind up on what it wants to include. I can see this being a viable list, but it's in a moribund state. Also, re the nominator "it is not clear what would be defined as an 'indigenous person' as opposed to merely an ethnic group that is found in a particular area, such as in most of Africa" the most of Africa thing is not exactly true. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, you have various ethnic groups who are essentially "native" to the country (by political Western standards) and make up the vast majority of the population, such as the Luba people, Lulua people, and Songye people, but because they are descendants of the Bantu migrations thousands of years ago they are not considered "indigenous" in the way Twa/African Pygmies are. In some places, "indigenous" is also a legal category. -Indy beetle (talk) 17:11, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep - useful page, and as has been said, it has a definition at the start. However, it needs to be re-written and simplified, having every single tribe listed for each indigenous group could result in this page having tens of thousands of individual entries - and that's not what Wikipedia is. Deathlibrarian (talk) 06:01, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - I don't even see why this article was nominated for deletion, the term is defined in the article. I see no huge problems with it. oncamera   (talk page)  08:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep but purge This is a horrid article, at least in part, with some people being named as indigenous, where that is at best doubtful; if anything, they are the settler community despite being nomadic. We seem to have Roma and other travelling communities all over western Europe, but the best view is that they migrated from India during the medieval period, long after the area was settled.  In Britain the Celtic peoples of the west have a case for being indigenous, but colonisation by Angles, Saxons, Norse Vikings, and then Normans took place so long ago, that the distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous is meaningless.  It is utterly different with those parts of the world that have been subject to large-scale colonisation by Europeans, African ex-slaves, Arabs, or Han Chinese.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:33, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - This list is maintainable, it is just entirely uncited. The first step in making this article functional is going through every single ethnic group and determining what the current consensus among scholars or the people themselves is. Additionally, this topic is subjective, caveats should be included wherever required.
 * --💬 KaerbaqianRen 22:30, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. and edit forconsistency with other articles.  DGG ( talk ) 06:18, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. To broad to be of any use and will never be well verified or maintained. Yuchitown (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2021 (UTC)Yuchitown


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.