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How does the concept of indigeneity apply to the African diaspora in the Americas?
Executive Summary
The concept of indigeneity for peoples of African descent in the Americas is contested but increasingly framed as historically grounded and politically consequential: scholars and activists argue that Africans brought to the Americas carried indigenous identities, knowledges, and claims disrupted by the transatlantic slave trade, while others emphasize the distinct legal and political status of settler-colonial Indigenous nations [1] [2] [3]. Recent scholarship and essays advocate for the category of “Afro‑Indigenous” or “Black Indigeneity” to recover erased histories, recognize mixed ancestries, and build cross-cultural solidarity, even as debates continue over terminology, land claims, and the risk of erasing Native sovereignty [4] [5] [6].
1. How historians are reframing Africans as Indigenous people — and why that matters
Historians and authors are reframing Africans forcibly displaced to the Americas as indigenous peoples with disrupted continuities: they carried languages, political structures, and place-based knowledges that slavery severed but did not wholly erase, so treating African-descended people as wholly non‑indigenous misreads historical formations and contemporary identities [1] [2]. Kyle T. Mays and reviewers argue this reframing recovers neglected archives and shows how African and Indigenous experiences were interdependent in the formation of the modern Americas, reshaping narratives about state formation, resistance, and belonging [2]. This scholarship insists that acknowledging Afro‑Indigeneity changes legal and political conversations — from cultural preservation to land justice — because it questions assumptions that indigeneity is only a pre‑colonial territorial continuity rather than a lived, adaptable identity shaped through dispossession [3] [1].
2. Voices from arts and activism: lived Afro‑Indigenous identities push the conversation
Artists and activists who identify as Black and Indigenous foreground how identity is lived, not just debated in archives: webinars and essays by practitioners like Natalie Ball, Martha Redbone, Amber Starks, and others document everyday practices that combine African and Native cultural forms and assert belonging in both lineages [4] [5]. These participants emphasize that Afro‑Indigenous people are often erased within both mainstream Black and Native narratives, producing political invisibility while they face environmental racism, cultural dispossession, and the legacy of colonization. Their interventions are both epistemic and strategic: they recover genealogies and cultural practices while arguing for policy attention to intersectional harms, yet they also caution against simple assimilation of Black claims into settler-state frameworks without respecting Indigenous sovereignty [4] [5].
3. Analytical provocations: Black Indigeneity as a useful but contested lens
Scholars such as Kyle Mays formulate “Black Indigeneity” as an analytic that helps explain how African-descended communities created belonging on lands already dispossessed by colonization, while critics warn the concept can obscure distinct Indigenous sovereignties or be misused to legitimize settler claims [3] [7]. The debate centers on two empirical claims: first, that Africans in the diaspora retained and reworked indigenous knowledge and practices; second, that recognizing Afro‑Indigeneity can build coalitions across anti‑colonial struggles. Both claims find support in archival recovery and contemporary testimony, yet they diverge in political prescriptions — whether to prioritize restorative land claims for recognized Indigenous nations or to expand indigeneity as a reparative category for diasporic peoples [2] [6].
4. Evidence, omissions, and methodological stakes in the literature
Recent essays and reviews show robust archival, ethnographic, and artistic evidence for Afro‑Indigenous histories, but they also reveal methodological gaps: critics note limited engagement with gendered experiences, nonbinary identities, and transregional African origins, and call for more collaborative work with Native communities to avoid reproducing erasures [2] [5]. Several pieces stress that the strongest scholarship combines archival recovery with community-centered methods, mapping how cultural practices, mixed ancestry, and political alliances evolved across centuries. Omitted considerations include how contemporary legal definitions of indigeneity restrict access to land and resources, and how state-driven recognition processes can pit groups against one another; these practical stakes make methodological rigor and community consent essential in claims-making [6] [2].
5. The practical implications: politics, coalitions, and the path forward
If Afro‑Indigeneity is accepted as a historical and political category, it reshapes reparations debates, indigenous rights activism, and environmental justice campaigns by creating new constituencies and obligations while also demanding careful deference to existing Indigenous sovereignties [3] [4]. Activists propose coalition models that honor Native legal claims while addressing the specific dispossessions of African-descended peoples; scholars urge policies that recognize mixed ancestries and support cultural revitalization without instrumentalizing indigeneity for settler-state legitimacy. The most recent essays and events suggest a pragmatic, community-led approach: recover erased histories, center Afro‑Indigenous voices, and build alliances that protect Indigenous sovereignty even as they expand understandings of who counts as indigenous in the Americas [5] [4].