- published: 19 Apr 2012
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Indigenism, Native nationalism, or Indigenous nationalism is a kind of ethnic nationalism emphasizing the group's indigeneity to their homeland. This may be embraced by post-colonial anarchism as well as in neo-völkisch or national mysticist nationalism building on historical or pseudohistorical claims of ethnic continuity.
While New World movements usually go by the name indigenism (notably in South America and in Mexico, "indigenismo" is a political force), the term autochthonism is encountered for Eastern European and Central Asian nationalisms. The term indigenism(o) as used in the Americas was popularized by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1935-1991) in Latin America in the 1970s to 1980s, and in the 1980s to 1990s by Ward Churchill (b. 1947) in the United States (From a Native Son).
The question of who is indigenous may be less than straightforward, depending on the region under consideration. Thus, for the New World, in the Americas as well as in Australia, the question is rather straightforward, while it is less easy to answer in the case of South Africa.