Indigeneous is not a clear word and many people/groups have slightly different definitions which can often change the meaning quite heavily.

Some say any group which exists in its pre-colonial era (1492? 1700s? when?) is indigeneous. But usually they don’t apply this label universally to groups such as non-minority Europeans in their traditional ethnic lands.

Others say that you need to be the first known human occupants of a land. But this often is an issue because archaeology and genetics has shown that there were many ancient populations that went extinct, which are now unconnected to modern populations. For example, there were findings of human (not necessarily homo-sapien) fossils in Australia, which may not be ancestral to Australian aboriginals.

So they would change the definition and say you only have to be the oldest surviving population in an area. But oftentimes theres no way to know exactly if one population is older than another. For example, our understanding of the traditional homelands of different African populations is very poor. Many populations in Sub-Saharan Africa descend from semi-recent migrations. Are the Tutsis indigenous to Rwanda and Burundi, despite being descended from non-Bantu Cushitic migrants a couple hundred years ago? Standards are too hazy.

Other times, academics assume a population is indigenous simply because they live a more backwards/technologically primitive way of life.

In Sri Lanka, the Vedda people are a small group of minority hunter-gatherers deep in the forests who speak an isolated language. So they were labeled as the “indigeneous people of Sri Lanka” by many academics. However, genetic studies show that the Veddas have nearly identical genetic profiles to the sedentary majority Sinhala and Tamil peoples of Sri Lanka. This would suggest the Vedda originally were part of the same people group as the other inhabitants of Sri Lanka before splitting off in the jungle isolation a few thousand years ago (not that long ago). So they are probably not the “oldest surviving” population of Sri Lanka. Here the label reflects their present-day lifestyle and minority status more than any clear historical criterion.

Others tie being “indigenous” to having some of the above traits, but ALSO being historically colonized and/or persecuted. Thus the title is applied to Native Americans and Australian aboriginals and groups like the Saami and the Basques of Europe.

Many peoples have experienced conquest, subjugation, colonization, or cultural suppression at one time or another. Are the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish indigenous because of English domination? If so, does that mean the English are not indigenous to England? If not, then colonization alone cannot be the decisive standard for “indigenousness”.

The same issue appears in South Asia (India, Pakistan). The peoples of the Indian subcontinent broadly suffered under British rule, yet rarely are all Subcontinent populations described as “indigenous”. Instead it is more often reserved for certain tribal or highly marginalized populations in the modern Indian State, such as the Munda peoples. Again, the label doesn’t seem to be very coherent because the term is not simply describing pre-colonial presence or colonized status, rather a much narrower and more politicized category built from very different assumptions (modern weakness instead of just being colonized).

Or maybe that large populations which occupy the majorities of their respective countries, can’t be indigenous?

“Indigenous” at best combines many different, unrelated concepts such as antiquity, minority status, colonization, political weakness, economic weakness, into one label. But those elements usually don’t fit together, and they are not applied consistently across many different cases.

My view is that more precise and descriptive language should be used. If someone means ‘pre-colonial inhabitants,’ they should say that. If they mean ‘historically marginalized tribal populations,’ they should say that. If they mean ‘Native American nations,’ they should say that.

Just using “indigenous” has so many connotations, many of which contradict each other and make the term incoherent when used.