Thinking about Indigeneity with Respect to Time and Space: Reflections from Southeast Asia

Most people take it for granted that it is relatively easy to determine who is Indigenous and who is not. Indeed, in the Americas and Oceania, where a lot of settler colonialism occurred, Indigenous peoples are generally considered to be the descendants of those who inhabited these spaces prior to the arrival of white settlers. In Southeast Asia, however, there was plenty of European colonialism, but much less white settler colonization. This has made the question of “who is Indigenous” much more difficult to answer, and politically contested, as both ethnic minority and majority populations are able to credibly claim that they are “Indigenous” to where they live. Indicative of the contested nature of the issue, and following what has come to be known as the ‘salt-water theory’, most states in Southeast Asia stipulate that their populations are either all Indigenous, or that there are no Indigenous peoples within their borders. Yet new globalized conceptions of indigeneity are circulating, hybridizing and taking hold, albeit unevenly. Crucially, Indigenous peoples are now increasingly being conceptualized as “colonized peoples” rather than simply “first peoples”, thus partially uncoupling indigeneity from space and time. In this paper, I contend that relational ideas associated with indigeneity are perpetually changing and are best considered through the lens of time and space, concepts that serve as the foundation for assertions related to who is Indigenous and who is not.