What does ‘indigenous’ mean, for me?

What does 'indigenous' mean, for me?This editorial starts from the understanding that identity formation is one of the primary purposes of formal education, especially schooling, and that processes of national identity-building are reflected in the national school curriculum, both the acknowledged curriculum, and what is called the 'hidden curriculum' (Anyon, 2006).One intriguing identity concept often raised in schooling in relation to culture or ethnicity is the notion of the 'indigenous'-but this term is controversial; its meaning contested.I will explain my understanding of this term in order to clarify why PESA established the IPG or Indigenous Philosophy Group, and comment on the group's experiences and future aspirations.The word 'indigenous' is an adjective used of a person, language, culture, or some aspect of cultureand it is a word I do not capitalise, for reasons explained in the following paragraph.As commonly used, 'indigenous' means something similar to the older word 'native'; nowadays not considered 'polite' given its overtones of meaning of 'primitive' and all the associated negative implications.But this likeness to older words such as 'native' does not capture the full meaning described by 'indigenous' .Indigenous is a primary adjective that does not stem from a noun: Despite the emergence of 'indigene' for an indigenous person/people and 'indigeneity' for the quality of being indigenous, it is the adjective 'indigenous' that remains the dominant usage.The reason for the dominance of the adjectival form is clear once the full meaning of the 'indigenous' concept is taken into account.The word 'indigenous' refers to the notion of a place-based human ethnic culture that has not migrated from its homeland, and is not a settler or colonial population.To be indigenous is therefore by definition different from being of a world culture, such as the Western or Euro-American culture.Despite this fundamental difference, however, 'Western' and 'indigenous' are similar identity labels in the sense that both are general words for heterogeneous groups of peoples, who nevertheless understand themselves as aligned in some way.I borrow the idea of 'placeholder' from mathematics to describe the concept of 'indigenous' , in the sense that 'indigenous' is a placeholder for any of many specific identity names.Indigenous is an umbrella term that includes peoples from Aotearoa, Aboriginal Australia and Indigenous America, the island nations of the Pacific, the Sami people of Finland, and others.Indigenous is a generic term that has no positive categorical content, except in relation to terms such as Western.As such, as a placeholder for a specific cultural identity (such as Mori, etc.) I consider 'indigenous' better uncapitalised.Conversely, those who consider themselves Westerners relate to the contemporary dominant global culture, dominated by the West, also known as Euro-America.Therefore, although 'Western' is also an umbrella term, it is not a placeholder term because it has definitional specificity, in that it refers to the globally dominant Western culture, which thereby counts as an ethnicity or identity label, thus deserving of a capital 'W' .A recent academic fad is to decapitalise 'western' in a purportedly political move: A symbol (letter) of defiance, of seeking to decentre or de-emphasise the dominance of the West.But this textual preference is not only ineffectual, it is also illogical, according to the argument given in the previous paragraphs.Decapitalisation normalises the West in the text, and makes it easier to write and think of 'western' ways as acultural.These are strong grounds for retaining capitalisation, understood as the right to call attention to the Western ethnicity: Indeed to do so is undoubtedly an important function of the adjectival concept of 'indigenous' .