Indigenous peoples

Summary

Indigenous peoples are the first inhabitants of an area and their descendants. However, the term has no strict definition and can be used to describe a variety of peoples and cultures. In its modern context, the term Indigenous was first used by Europeans, who used it to differentiate the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the European settlers of the Americas, as well as from the sub-Saharan Africans the settlers enslaved and brought to the Americas by force. The term may have first been used in this context by Sir Thomas Browne in 1646, who stated "and although in many parts thereof there be at present swarms of Negroes serving under the Spaniard, yet were they all transported from Africa, since the discovery of Columbus; and are not indigenous or proper natives of America." Peoples are usually described as "Indigenous" when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with the first inhabitants of a given regi

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples

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Devout Landscape Migrant Placemaking through the Afterlife in Huế, Vietnam

Phi Nguyen Yen

The settlement history of Huế is one of constant demographic shifts, political turmoil, and natural vulnerability. A borderland and battleground during Vietnam’s invasion of Champa Kingdom, the North-South Civil War between two Vietnamese clans Trịnh - Nguyễn, then the Indochina and Vietnam Wars, Huế is essentially a frontier territory and its people one of diaspora. Such postcolonial displacements and coercions have amalgamated in a fabric phantasm of memories, materialized in sacred sites and rituals engaging with the Afterlife: ancestral past, supernatural beings – territorial patrons, and Death. An investigation into locals’ everyday life shows how religious beliefs have created a sacred thread that connected communities throughout the region into a seamlessly consecrated landscape where the living cohabits with the dead, and the natural coexists with the supernatural. Existing artifacts are oftentimes in hybrid forms, related to the present as a part of the community’s shared history and attested to the dialogues and negotiation among different cultures: Việt migrants from the North, Chinese refugees (after the Qing’s conquest of the Ming), defeated Cham indigenous people, Việt imperial rulers, French and American colonial forces. Moreover, they manifest local tactics in the transmission of knowledge and the handling in the ambivalent memories of violence. Using personal field works, archival materials, and other secondary sources, this paper seeks to unravel the interplay among religion, migration, culture, and identity through their spatial manifestations while giving voice to marginalized social groups.

2021

Summary Understanding the peopling of the Americas remains an important and challenging question. Here, we present 14C dates, and morphological, isotopic and genomic sequence data from two human skulls from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, part of one of the indigenous groups known as 'Botocudos'. We find that their genomic ancestry is Polynesian, with no detectable Native American component. Radiocarbon analysis of the skulls shows that the individuals had died prior to the beginning of the 19th century. Our findings could either represent genomic evidence of Polynesians reaching South America during their Pacific expansion, or European-mediated transport. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Cell Press2014

Characterizing neutral genomic diversity and selection signatures in indigenous populations of Moroccan goats (Capra hircus) using WGS data

Stéphane Joost, Kevin Leempoel, Sylvie Stucki, Pierre Taberlet

Since the time of their domestication, goats (Capra hircus) have evolved in a large variety of locally adapted populations in response to different human and environmental pressures. In the present era, many indigenous populations are threatened with extinction due to their substitution by cosmopolitan breeds, while they might represent highly valuable genomic resources. It is thus crucial to characterize the neutral and adaptive genetic diversity of indigenous populations. A fine characterization of whole genome variation in farm animals is now possible by using new sequencing technologies. We sequenced the complete genome at 12X coverage of 44 goats geographically representative of the three phenotypically distinct indigenous populations in Morocco. The study of mitochondrial genomes showed a high diversity exclusively restricted to the haplogroup A. The 44 nuclear genomes showed a very high diversity (24 million variants) associated with low linkage disequilibrium. The overall genetic diversity was weakly structured according to geography and phenotypes. When looking for signals of positive selection in each population we identified many candidate genes, several of which gave insights into the metabolic pathways or biological processes involved in the adaptation to local conditions (e.g. panting in warm/desert conditions). This study highlights the interest of WGS data to characterize livestock genomic diversity. It illustrates the valuable genetic richness present in indigenous populations that have to be sustainably managed and may represent valuable genetic resources for the long-term preservation of the species.

2015